Bringing Mindfulness to the Armed Forces and families in Kinloss Barracks

Elke and I were invited to the Kinloss Barracks where the Royal Engineers are based in Morayshire. It was a day of bringing the civilian community to the barracks to share our ideas and learning opportunities to the serving personnel and their families. We set up our lovely new pop up banners and started chatting with the lads about what Mindfulness is all about. Some of the guys were really interested in what mindfulness can do for them. They sometimes experience stress and we explained that mindfulness is about being in the present moment, and enjoying life as it really is...enjoying the small moments of fun, laughter, beauty of nature...and that comes about by engaging in doing short mindfulness practices. Mindfulness has been shown to help Marines in the US to be able to 'down-regulate' the natural stress response when it is time to relax and recuperate after a difficult day at work.

Some of the wives of the soldiers were really keen to join in with courses as they experience quite a lot of stress when their husbands are away on training and deployed away from home. We enjoyed meeting the wives from Fiji...they are a good laugh and seem to look after each other on the base which was inspiring...we all know how it is to move to a new area with young children, and how important it is to create a new 'family' from home.

We are here to help, and are making lots of contacts with the local MOD bases here in Moray and Highland.