Mindfulness for People with Tourette Syndrome
A Five-Week Online Course: October 31 – November 5, 2022
Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Eastern Time
Slow down, be more relaxed, and learn to struggle less with your Tourette’s and ticcing.
Mindfulness may seem impossible for someone with Tourette syndrome. But in fact, it’s VERY possible.
Hello, I’m Craig Mollins, the creator and instructor of this course and I have Tourette syndrome. I’m a meditator, a meditation teacher, Health and Wellness Coach and Life Coach.
Mindfulness meditation has helped me tremendously to lessen my Tourette’s struggles. Mindfulness is possibly the simplest practice ever created, and yet, I have to be completely honest and tell you that it’s not an easy practice, for anyone. However, as challenging as it is, the benefits can be life changing.
About the Program
Within a supportive community setting, this program will instruct in several mindfulness based practices, and help you apply the practices to your everyday challenges with Tourette Syndrome.
A common misconception about mindfulness is that it’s about trying to stop your thoughts and/or empty your mind, which are impossible anyway. Rather the practice is about being present with your experience, and developing a more spacious, more relaxed, kinder relationship with yourself.
Mindfulness has the capacity to benefit many people in general, and people with Tourette Syndrome are no different in this regard. However Tourette Syndrome presents a number of unique challenges for mindfulness practice, and this program was created with these challenges in mind.
Everyone is different, and ultimately the only way to know if this program or if mindfulness practice in general will benefit you, is to try it and find out for yourself. But here are a few program details that may help you to decide if the program feels like a good fit:
- The overall program theme and intention is to create an atmosphere and experience of ease, to help you learn to relax more with your Tourette’s, and with life in general.
- The sessions of sitting meditation during the course are brief: We’ll begin with three minutes, and work up to 15 minutes by the end of the third week of the course.
- Sitting mindfulness sessions will be interspersed with walking mindfulness, somatic mindfulness practices, and communication exercises.
Potential Program Benefits
- Feel more grounded in your sensorial, bodily experience.
- Learn to relax more in your body and mind.
- Discover more ‘space’ around the urges to tic and the actual tics.
- Uncover more clarity, confidence and courage.
- Ease your overactive thinking brain.
- Put your best self in the driver’s seat of your life.
During the course we’ll work with three mindfulness processes to help you slow down, tune in and ease your struggles with Tourette’s. The methods are shaped specifically with the challenges of Tourette syndrome in mind:
- Sitting and walking mindfulness meditation
- Somatic practices to release and unwind tension
- Communication practices
Mindfulness Meditation
We’ll practice an embodied mindfulness, in the form of brief periods of sitting and walking mindfulness with a specific focus for Tourette syndrome. A 2014 study of mindfulness for Tourette syndrome resulted in “significant reduction in tic severity and tic related impairments.”
Somatic Practices
These Tourette syndrome specific practices are designed to help you:
- Develop more ability to be with your bodily experience rather than struggle against it.
- Develop your inner somatic resources and abilities to relax.
- Have more creative agency in working with urges to tic.
- Develop your abilities to feel pleasure and flow.
- Feel more confident and strong in your body.
Communication Practices
We’ll work with two communication methods that help you become more relaxed and confident with speech and communication, and to give everyone opportunities to learn from each other. These practices will also help us create a friendly supportive community.
These processes work together to create a “layered synergy” to activate significant benefit, including: body, mind, heart, and spirit. This is not a shift to a foreign new state, but rather a shift towards a more relaxed, authentic version of yourself.
- The course is for adults 18 years and older.
- Fee: $200.00 USD
- The course is limited to 20 participants so register soon to reserve your spot.
- Location: Zoom
- Dates: October 18 – November 15, 2022
- Schedule: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern Standard Time Zone
- Please log on 5 minutes early at 6:55 so we can all be ready to start at 7 pm.
What to Bring
- Relaxed clothing
- Notepad and pen
- Water and other refreshments
Register for the Course
* Course is limited to 20 participants.
If for any reason after the first class and before the second class you are unsatisfied with the course and wish to drop out, I’ll return your full payment within 2 business days of request. If you cancel before attending the first class you’ll receive a refund minus a $50 processing fee.
The Facilitator
Hello I’m Craig Mollins, a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, meditation teacher and passionate proponent of the human capacity for betterment. I hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, a small city on the east coast of Canada, and currently live in Mexico City.
As a boy of 6 years old I began a healing path when I would return home after school feeling overwhelmed with tension, and would lay on my back for an hour of deep breathing to calm myself down and relax. At age 18 I began a lifelong training in Buddhist meditation, along with a wide spectrum of somatic, movement, and healing studies and practice.
Now, I’m thrilled and honoured to be making use of some of my experience and learning through this program for people who struggle with Tourette’s. May you find relief, and may we all find increasing levels of relief from struggle.