Course participants will learn how to bring a greater degree of awareness to their experience and become able to make the vital distinction between what, at Breathworks, we call primary and secondary suffering.

 

Primary suffering is the stressor, whatever the cause. For example, in the case of physical pain, the primary suffering is the unpleasant sensations felt in the part of the body that is hurting.

 

Secondary suffering is all the ways that we react to the primary suffering; all the different ways we resist and say ‘I don’t want this to be happening to me’.

 

Most people find that this secondary suffering is the cause of much of their distress.

 

The eight-week course guides participants through a variety of mindfulness practices. Through using this toolkit of practices, participants learn to ease, and to let go of, the burden secondary suffering brings. The overall quality of life for course participants can be greatly improved through these mindful practices.