Dragon Cafe – Peer self care and learning

 

Peer learning and mindfulness: The Amazing Dragon Café

 

Dr Tamara Russell and some of her assisants have been running regular sessions of Body In Mind Training at the Dragon Cafe for a peer led project in south London. The work has included:

1. Mindful Management Process using BMT Framework – consultancy with the management team on how to integrate mindfulness into their process of work.

2. Peer Supporters BMT-Five – Volunteers and management have completed the five week Body in Mind Training course. This was offered as a way to support the team in their amazing work.

3. 10 week Body In Mind Training open rolling group.  Mixing up the closed group model of mindfulness to see how we can adapt the training to be more flexible in this setting. Offering a core set of mindful movements in the first half of the session, followed by core teachings on mindfulness using the BMT approach in the second half. At it’s busiest, this group has been about 30 practitioners of mindfulness. inlcuding those using services and those providing them. A great place to learn and explore. Next course in Spring 2017 (tbc).

The Dragon Café is Mental Fight Club’s latest creative project: a relaxing café and imaginative space, open to all, located in the Crypt of St George the Martyr Church, opposite Borough tube station. The Dragon Cafe also provides simple, affordable, healthy meals and a wide range of creative and well-being activities which are free and open to all.

 

In 2016 Dragon Cafe Fonunder and “mother of drangons” Sarah Wheeler lost her battle with breast cancer. She was the most amazing woman whose spirit lives on in the Cafe. Sharing her vulnerability with a courage I have yet to see anywhere else, this woman provided a template for really deep sharing and openness, through the creative process, for transformation in even the most dire circumstances. What would Sarah do? She would show you her broken heart, her most beautiful and disturbed thoughts, and show you the way the creative arts can help you to heal and reconnection. We can all learn from her.