Bedford Chambers and the Royal Opera House




1st February

(view details of our next introductory TIR training: 1st February 2008).

Mindfulness Training offers training to counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, social workers and educators. Our training provides professionals and trainees with effective methods for facilitating stress reduction and personal growth, employing TIR, ACT and MBCT (defined below). We also offer coaching and counselling to individuals.

What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility means contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being, and based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behavior in the service of chosen values. ACT also applies Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a well developed theory for understanding how human language contributes to how we think and suffer.
Click here for more on ACT

What is Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)?

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has been developed with the aim of reducing relapse and recurrence for those who are vulnerable to episodes of depression. This empowering way of working has also gained empirical validation. It is needed because the risk of relapse and recurrence in those who have been depressed is very high, and the amount of triggering required for each subsequent episode becomes lower each time depression recurs.
Click here for more on MBCT.

What is Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR)?

Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is an integrative mindfulness-oriented approach to counselling, best known for addressing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The broader subject of TIR and Life Stress Reduction provides a well developed, thorough and coherent model for mindfulness-based case-formulation and integrative mindfulness-based counselling.
Click here for more on TIR and Life Stress Reduction


For information regarding receiving individual counselling please go to
Mindfulness Clinic

Meet the trainers:

TIR, Schema and LSR Trainer:

Henry J. Whitfield MSc (CBT/REBT) Accredited Advanced TIR trainer and TIR practitioner (TIRA) Henry has been teaching TIR and related techniques since 2003. He has research interests in the theoretical and practical integration of mindfulness with cognitive behavioural theories, and in case-formulated applications of mindfulness. He also runs a specialist brief therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder project, for Victim Support Lambeth. Go to training page

MBCT and MBSR Trainer:

Dr. Patrizia C. Collard PhD, BABCP accredited, UKCP reg., MISMA, MAC Patrizia is an experienced MBCT and MBSR trainer and is a Senior Lecturer for Integrative Psychotherapy and Counselling (University of East London). Patrizia was also resident in Hong Kong and China for 9 years where she studied Taoism, Buddhism, Energy work, Meditation and Yoga. Patrizia also has research interests in Autism and Mindfulness. Go to training page

ACT Trainer:

Martin Wilks MSc BSc. Psychol, Dip Couns. MSc Couns Psychol,Dip Couns Psychol. BPS Chartered Martin has cultivated a personal mindfulness practice for over 20 years. He runs mindfulness-based groups and counselling services in a London prison. In private practice, for the last 4 years, he has used ACT in short term work and weaves many ACT practices and procedures into longer term mindfulness-based psychotherapy. His research interests include the integration of meditation with co-counselling. Go to training page

More on TIR

TIR and its related techniques provide a highly coherent approach to integrative and case-formulated mindfulness-based counselling. Many of the tools consist of repetitive exercises, practised in the absence of judgment, that train the client to better focus his/her attention on mental pictures, thoughts or other 'private events'. The continuous focus of attention, intensified through repetition and a suitable environment, can lead to the reduction and even 'extinction' of specific unwanted psychological phenomena. TIR counselling can achieve such an 'extinction' or resolution even with severe trauma symptoms. This is usually accomplished within a small number of sessions.

The broader subject of TIR-LSR (Life Stress Reduction) is a systematic approach for enabling detached, non-judgmental observation of almost any inner or outer world event, whether cognitive, emotive, physiological, behavioural or other.

Tools are varied, person-focused and applied in order to:
1) maintain congruence with the client's own experience
2) to maximise client engagement moment to moment, and
3) to cater to the client's mental resources and problem type at a given time.

The approach also consists of useful strategies for accessing awareness the client was previously unable to access. The broader subject of metapychology is also multimodal, consisting of coaching methods for affecting behavioural changes in the service of specific values (c.f. ACT).

All tools enable the client to achieve greater equanimity* with respect to his/her mental and physical environments.

Mindfulness Training provides regular trainings, supervision groups and support TIR/TIR-LSR counselling, ACT counselling and MBCT. We also provide counselling organisations with in-house training, consulting and supervision for setting up mindfulness-oriented counselling projects or incorporating TIR/TIR-LSR/ACT/MBCT into existing counselling projects. Go to training page...