About Emma
I grew up in south-east London, a shy child who liked gymnastics and our big arts/crafts cupboard with a pull-down table! My Dad worked overseas a lot, so I was lucky enough to travel in many of the school holidays, giving me insight into many cultures and ways of life as a child. Although painfully quiet, I had an inner confidence which led me to take a year out at 18 and go travelling…..I came back feeling the world was my oyster!
After studying at the University of Cambridge and then as a postgrad at the University of Leeds, my career path started in transport planning, working in consultancy and then for London Buses’ policy department. In my late 20s, my years of chronic illness began, triggered initially by a bout of chicken pox. The chronic fatigue I was left with led to me dropping down to part-time working, and struggling through life, resting in the first-aid room at lunchtime and going straight to bed when I got home.
Having pretty much recovered, we brought two children into the world, and I absolutely love being a Mum. The hectic lifestyle and lack of sleep took their toll though, and I was struck down again by chronic fatigue, this time far more intense and challenging, and I was eventually diagnosed with ME. Life became about survival, guilt and desperation.​
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My path to recovery over the following 15 years included rest, nutrition, psychology, ‘bouncing the boundaries’ with fulfilling voluntary work and incorporating mindfulness into my everyday life. I feel deep gratitude on a daily basis that I am pretty much recovered.
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I went on to be a primary school teaching assistant, which I loved and found very rewarding. At this point my children were teenagers and I came to see the importance of teaching children emotional awareness and self-help tools in primary school, ahead of the teenage years. My experience with mindfulness in helping with my years of illness inspired me to train with the Mindfulness in Schools Project. It also led me to me working as a volunteer mentor for young people through Bromley Y.
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I now work part-time as a Take Home and Settle assistant for Bromley Well, through Age UK Bromley and Greenwich. It’s a job that I love, meeting new people every day, from all walks of life. I have however seen a lot of social need and loneliness. Working with older people inspired me to take my inner passion to the next level and I trained with Mindfulness Now in Devon.
Since then, working as a part-time Mindfulness teacher has been a key part of my life and something that I feel passionate about. My longer term vision is to run community Mindfulness groups alongside my private teaching. People are drawn to Mindfulness for a variety of reasons and I specialise in making this life skill accessible and personalised to each and every client. Difficulties and challenges happen in all our lives, but I truly believe that bringing Mindfulness into our everyday lives can make the storms easier to navigate and help us to appreciate every pocket of joy along the way.
About Mindfulness Now
Although drawing on ancient philosophies and religions, notably Buddhism, Mindfulness is a secular practice with no religious affiliation. It was first developed by Dr Jon Kabat Zinn in the late 1970s, as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and then further developed by Mark Williams and colleagues into Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Clinical trials of MBSR and MBCT have established a strong scientific evidence base for Mindfulness in assisting with a wide range of issues such as anxiety, depression and pain.
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Nick Cooke (on the right in the photo) developed the Mindfulness Now programme after his own experience of using mindfulness to help him with his recovery and rehabilitation, to manage the pain and cope with the subsequent trauma, following two serious illnesses. He already had considerable experience of learning and practicing mindfulness meditation himself and, as a therapist.
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Mindfulness Now offers a psycho-educational fusion of mindfulness-based approaches including the evidence-based MBSR and MBCT. The Mindfulness Now Programme offers the latest in modern scientific approaches to teaching mindfulness, proudly leading the way in delivering trauma informed mindfulness and is constantly evolving and moving forward to meet the ever-changing needs of society. The Mindfulness Now 8-week Programme has been taught in 55 countries internationally.
Why the dragonfly?
The short answer, and the actual reason, is that I associate dragonflies with my Dad, one of my greatest teachers.
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The longer answer is that they can be thought of as symbolising change, transformation, courage and agility; they are diverse in type and yet individually beautiful. They are also associated with water, a symbol of life, purity, power and transformation.