Mindfulness and Lifestyle Medicine with Vidyamala Burch and Dr Tonya Cruikshank
February 3, 2025 @ 4:00 pm - February 9, 2025 @ 2:00 pm
Mindfulness and Lifestyle Medicine using the HEALS method. A 6-day immersion retreat with Vidyamala Burch OBE and Dr Tonya Cruikshank
Join Vidyamala Burch OBE and Dr Tonya Cruikshank for a 6 day Mindfulness and Lifestyle Medicine Retreat to help you make sustainable and informed changes across key pillars of well-being: Nutrition, Movement, Awareness, Love and Compassion, Nature Connection and Sleep. Drawing on science, the evidence base, and their personal experience as teachers and practitioners, Vidyamala and Tonya will help you return home with personalised next steps to reclaim agency for your health. Whatever your personal circumstances, join this immersive week of learning and experience to help you find your unique path to healing and vitality
Small changes to your lifestyle can bring about big changes to your wellbeing
Seize this rare opportunity to learn from Vidyamala Burch OBE in person, during her visit to New Zealand from the UK. Vidyamala is a global pioneer when applying mindfulness to health and she co-founded the Breathworks Foundation.
On this event she will introduce her latest innovation, the HEALS programme, where mindfulness is applied to wider domains of lifestyle medicine such as nutrition, exercise and sleep. She presented this programme to the annual conference of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine in 2023, including the evidence-base for its wide-ranging benefits and has run cohorts within the NHS in the UK.
She is delighted to be offering the retreat alongside Dr Tonya Cruikshank who places the principles of lifestyle medicine at the heart of her work as a holistic medic helping clients and patients learn how to feel better and re-claim their lives.
In this 6-day retreat Vidyamala and Tonya will offer educational and practical sessions so you can come away with personalised next steps to reclaim agency for your health.
The HEALS programme is usually offered as an 11-week course through The Breathworks Foundation. This residential retreat offers the benefits of immersion in all the core modules within supportive retreat conditions in the beautiful surroundings of Mana Retreat Centre.
WHAT IS HEALS?
HEALS is an acronym for the key pillars of a healthy lifestyle designed to empower you to take control of your wellbeing.
- Healthy Nutrition: principles of nutritious dietary choices to support overall health.
- Engaging with Movement: how to enhance strength, stamina, and flexibility for better wellbeing.
- Awareness and mindfulness: the foundational practice for behaviour change in health management.
- Love: promoting emotional healing through cultivating love for yourself, others and connection with nature.
- Sleep: Strategies to improve sleep quality for better health outcomes.
WHAT IS LIFESTYLE MEDICINE?
Lifestyle Medicine is an exciting and emerging field that acknowledges the impact of lifestyle on a range of health conditions. Whether you suffer from pain or illness, or want to learn how to stay well, this retreat will offer education and experiential exercises on each of the key pillars, mindfulness practice, mindful movement, and an introduction to how to create successful habits.
IS THIS RETREAT FOR YOU?
If you’re interested in optimising your well-being in a friendly, kind space, then this retreat is for you!
We welcome:
- Health professionals wanting to learn how to apply the HEALS approach in their work
- People who live with pain or a chronic health condition wanting to learn how to put the principles of lifestyle medicine into practice
- People who want to learn the HEALS approach to stay well
- People looking for a healthy break from their busy lives in a calm, beautiful place with the opportunity to eat well, relax and engage with mindfulness practices
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WHAT WILL YOU GAIN FROM THE RETREAT?
Improved Self-Awareness: develop mindfulness as a foundational skill for wise decision-making.
- Sustainable Lifestyle Changes: make small, manageable changes that are easy to maintain.
- Enhanced Physical Wellbeing Through movement: learn about the importance of strengthening, stretching and stamina to improve physical fitness and balance the nervous system
- Breathing techniques: learn new breathing habits to bring about balance and ease.
- Improved Nutritional Habits: learn and apply principles of healthy nutrition.
- Better Sleep Quality: discover strategies to improve sleep, crucial for recovery and mental clarity.
- Connection with nature: learn about the health benefits of being in touch with nature and the science of awe.
- Emotional & Psychological Benefits: cultivate love and compassion and reduce stress.
- Control Over Your Health: feel empowered to manage your health through mindful practices and awareness.
- Positive Behaviour Change: use Tiny Habit Methodology to implement gradual, positive changes.
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WHY ARE AWARENESS & MINDFULNESS CENTRAL?
Awareness is at the heart of HEALS. It forms the crucial bedrock to all the other pillars as it allows you to make small and achievable ‘wise choices’ in how you respond to your experience to bring about positive behaviour change for whole-life health management. Vidyamala is a globally recognised expert in mindfulness for health management and will be sharing her skills and learning mindfulness practices on the retreat.
KNOW YOUR ‘WHY’- LEARN ABOUT BEHAVIOUR DESIGN AND ‘TINY HABITS’
Many of us know the theory of how to optimise our health and well-being, yet we struggle to put it into practice. On this retreat we will help you succeed in your behaviour change by following the ‘Tiny Habit’ methodology developed by BJ Fogg at Stanford University. We will also do exercises to help you connect with your deepest values so you can stay in touch with the ‘why’ behind your intentions and actions.
YOUR DAILY PROGRAMME
7.30 – 8.30 Mindful Movement and Meditation
Breakfast and free time to relax and enjoy the environment
10.30 – 13.00 Input on each pillar and experiential exercises
Lunch and free time to relax and enjoy the environment
15.30 – 16.15 Body Scan or Mindful Movement
16.30 – 17.30 Small Groups
Supper and free time to relax and enjoy the environment
17.30 – 21.00 Meditation and breath work
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THE HEALS COURSE
“The HEALS course is full of useful and experiential learnings that have made me reconsider my relationship to food, nature and movement” – HEALS 2024 pilot course participant
“I now routinely surpass ten thousand steps per day; before the course I took no particular pleasure in walking or nature. The walking process was simply A to B for me, now it’s A into B.” – HEALS 2024 pilot course participant
“The course gave me hope about some things that I had quietly felt quite hopeless about, particularly the very micro things you can do to improve your wellbeing when you are not great. Really helpful and inspiring”. – HEALS 2023 pilot course participant
Introducing
Your Facilitators
Vidyamala Burch, OBE
Vidyamala Burch is a mindfulness and compassion teacher, author, disability spokesperson and Co-founder of the Breathworks Foundation, a leading international mindfulness and compassion organisation. In 2001, she developed the world’s first Mindfulness-based Pain Management (MBPM) programme which has helped over 100,000 people worldwide. The programme emerged from her personal experience of pain and disability following spinal injuries, as well as her decades of meditation practice and teaching as an ordained Buddhist.
Recently, she has developed this work further with the HEALS Mindfulness-based Lifestyle Medicine programme which applies the core skill of awareness to wider lifestyle pillars. She presented this programme to the annual conference of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine in 2023, including the evidence-base for its wide-ranging benefits, and has run cohorts within the NHS in the UK.
Vidyamala is the author of Living Well with Pain and Illness (2008), Mindfulness for Health (2013), and Mindfulness for Women (2016). Mindfulness for Health was awarded first prize in Popular Medicine in the British Medical Association Books Awards in 2014, and was named the best self-help book in its category by health professionals in the UK’s Reading Well Scheme. The British Pain Society awarded Vidyamala an honorary membership for her contribution to the field of pain management in 2018, and the Shaw Trust’s Power List named her one of the most influential disabled people in the UK for four years running. She is also a member of the advisory council to the Global Compassion Coalition.
In 2022 Vidyamala was honoured with an OBE in the Platinum Jubilee Honours List for her services to pain management and well-being. Vidyamala teaches retreats and workshops in both Buddhist and mindfulness contexts worldwide. Her teachings can also be found on meditation apps such as Insight Timer, Simple Habit and Mindfulness.com.
www.breathworks-mindfulness.
Dr Tonya Cruikshank MBBS, FRNZCGP
Tonya completed her medical training in 1994 in the UK. She worked in acute care before spending 20 years as a specialist GP and running a large GP practice in the South Island of NZ.
Latterly, her journey within medicine has led her to believe a more personalised and holistic approach is needed for wellbeing. This has led her to train in more holistic modalities and specialise in gut and emotional health. She has become a certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) practitioner, accredited Breathworks Mindfulness Teacher, and Emotional Release ™ Coach.
Tonya draws from western medicine, functional and lifestyle medicine and eastern philosophy to facilitate a blend of science and intuition. She believes that the whole of us determines our health – our body, mind, spirit, and the community and land around us, and is passionate that we can reactivate our own internal healing systems with the right approach.
She is based in Queenstown and has three teenage children who are her greatest teachers.
Tonya is available for one-to-one personalised assessments and programmes. For more info www.drtonyacruikshank.com
Sona Fricker
Sona is one of the co-founders of Breathworks and has been a meditation and yoga teacher for more than 50 years. He will be assisting on the retreat leading mindful movement and meditation.
Guidelines
Payment is required in full at the time of booking, by credit or debit card, or direct bank transfer using our secure POLi payment gateway.
We draw special attention to two of our guidelines before registration: Mana provides lacto-ovo vegetarian food only, this means no fish or chicken and is an alcohol and drug free environment.
Mana caters for Gluten Free, Dairy Free and Vegan.
Cancellation Policy
This group requires a minimum number of participants to go ahead, if that number is not reached we reserve the right to cancel the event.
Should you, for any reason, decide to cancel your registration; please note our cancellation policy::
- A $50 administrative fee is applied to all cancellations prior to 72 hours before event.
- A $100 administrative fee is applied to all cancellations within 72 hours of event.
- A Tuition cancellation fee may apply in certain circumstances.
- These policies are reassessed in certain circumstances.