16 Guidelines in Somerset: Discussing, Creating and Intuition for Wellbeing

One thing that FDCW is passionate about is encouraging communities of practice where people come together to share, discuss and support one another in developing their compassion and wisdom. We have a wide range of resources available to support these communities. 

Nick Durnan leads meditations at the Saraswati Study Group in Somerset, England. In February, he ran a 16 Guidelines-inspired series of sessions for the group and describes the experience they had and what has emerged after the course ended:-

I decided to run the course over four sessions with four guidelines in each. My partner Hannah is a Forest School teacher and she runs a Woods for Wellbeing course in the woodland next to our house. I thought I would ask Hannah’s Wellbeing group if they would be interested in the Guidelines course and gave them a brief outline. I had a positive response.

We had six people who all returned for each of the first three sessions so I was really pleased as this is a good number because it gives everyone time to speak. The last session is this Monday.

I have a feeling the group will continue in some way and I am not sure whether to turn it into a Sharing Circles group where we can each talk about topics related to the Guidelines or maybe a Mindful Art course where people can draw and paint mindfully as a meditation practice.

I have made several of my own mindful artworks this way and find it very helpful for developing a calm, peaceful mind and have found this can be a mentally healing process. Or maybe go into the 16 Guidelines in more detail over more sessions. We will discuss it on Monday.

Here is an outline of how I structured the course. It was delivered in four sessions of 90 minutes each held in my garden studio. We covered four of the Guidelines in each session. The session structure was:-

11.00 Welcome

11.05 Check-in (internal weather report from each participant)

11.10 Read out our Agreements (to make sure we are still happy with them) confidentiality, respect etc.

11.15 Aims and purpose of the course

11.20 Summary of the previous week

11.25 Discuss my illustrated chart explaining the overview of the 16 Guidelines

11.30 I discuss this week’s four selected Guidelines.

11.50 Discussion in Pairs (each person chooses to talk about which of the four Guidelines resonates with them)

12.05 Group Discussion (each person summarises their paired discussions)

12.20 Guided meditation/reflection on one of the Guidelines

12.25 Check out (how each participant feels about the session)

12.30 Tea/coffee and depart

What’s next?

“What we decided to do, which has turned out quite well is to meet every Monday morning for 2 hours and have three separate themed meetings which then rotate. 

So, the first week is 16 Guidelines looking at each Guideline in turn, one Guideline per session.

The second week is themed Speaking Circles where each person has the chance to speak a couple of times on a topic of their choice with no interruption – just being deeply listened to by the group.

The third week is themed Mindful Art—either clay modelling, drawing or painting which we do in silence and then discuss at the end. The Mindful Art is about being in the present moment with the process rather than the finished result. 

Whatever the theme of the session, we begin and end the same way: an individual check-in and check-out at the beginning and end of each session and a short breathing meditation.

What unifies the three sessions is the idea of personal well-being through sharing, discussing and intuitive creating. We feel as our well-being increases this will ripple out to other people around us in a positive way. Speaking from the heart and trusting our intuition seems to be a healing process for us all.

So, we are just going to continue like this and see where it leads us. I am the facilitator of the group but it is developing an energy of its own so can evolve as time goes on. We are all open to it changing as and when it needs to. We now have nine people in the group at the moment which seems a good number.“

Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom (FDCW)

At FDCW we are committed to a more compassionate, wiser world. We provide resources, courses and training to develop qualities such as kindness, patience and honesty – qualities that are essential for meeting the challenges of the world we all share.

The Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom (FDCW) was established as a global charity based in London in 2005. Since then we have provided secular training, programmes and resources across many sectors of society – schools, universities, hospices, workplaces, healthcare, youth groups and community centres. Our courses have reached thousands of people across the world through our dedicated and growing network of facilitators in more than 20 countries.

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