HEALS is a mindfulness-based course designed to help you feel better, live well, and support your health in simple, practical ways. Whether you're living with a painful body, a health condition or just want to get back to feeling your best self, this course is here to help.

The 8-week course combines:

➡️ Exploration on key areas of lifestyle medicine

➡️ Mindfulness & compassion training

➡️ Evidence-based methodology for lasting behaviour change

You'll leave the course with the knowledge, resources and confidence to identify and work towards the goals that will support your physical and emotional wellbeing.

About the course

Managing your health can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle, especially if you're juggling pain, fatigue, or other ongoing health challenges. With so much advice out there, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Where do you even start? And how do you stay motivated when life already feels like a lot?

HEALS was created to help reduce this overwhelm. By putting mindfulness and compassion at the core of the course, HEALS invites you to apply awareness and kindness to positive health and lifestyle changes, and supports you in maintaining those changes. 

HEALS represents key pillars of a healthy lifestyle:

• Healthy Nutrition: Become curious about your relationship with food, and to how and what you eat. 
• Engaging with Movement: enhancing strength, stamina, and flexibility, in your own way, for better wellbeing.
• Awareness: the foundational practice for behaviour change in health management.
• Love: promoting emotional healing through cultivating love for yourself, others and nature
• Sleep: improving sleep quality and promoting relaxation for better health outcomes.

Throughout the 8-weeks, you will identify the goals that matter to you. Developing or deepening a mindfulness and compassion practice, and using the 'tiny habits' methodology, an evidence-based structure for lasting behaviour change, you will work towards your goals in a way that feels possible, motivating and sustainable. 

What HEALS offers:

• A clear, supportive structure: eight weeks of live sessions, guided practices, and reflective exercises — enough to build momentum, without feeling overwhelming.
  
  
• Exploration of five key pillars of whole-life health: practical, evidence-based approaches to nutrition, movement, sleep, awareness, self-compassion and nature connection — whether you're learning for the first time or revisiting familiar ideas in a new light.
  
  
• A library of practical resources: guided meditations, videos, further reading, and exercises, with lifelong access to all course materials so you can return to them whenever you need.
  
  
• Community and support: you'll move through the course alongside a group of up to 15 participants, connected by shared intentions and experiences. Many people find this one of the most valuable parts of the course.
  
  
• A flexible approach: there's no pressure to do everything perfectly or keep pace with others. You're encouraged to take what's useful and build it into your life in a way that works for you.
  
  

Since completing the HEALS course I have joined the NHS weight loss app.I am using it as a mindfulness tool to be more aware of what foods I am choosing. For the first time I am seeing results without feeling deprived."

– Anon, 55, breast cancer survivor

The power of tiny habits

When we notice something we're not happy with, we often jump to making big changes. This typically sets us up to 'fail', triggering an unhelpful cycle of self-criticism, loss of confidence and exhaustion. 

The HEALS approach is based on one powerful idea: small changes matter. Drawing on the Tiny Habits methodology developed by Stanford behavioural scientist BJ Fogg, you'll learn how small actions, done consistently, build confidence and momentum — also known as a "spiral of success."

Instead of trying to change everything at once, HEALS helps you move forward gently and sustainably.

Who is this course for?

HEALS is designed for anyone who wants to take better care of their health in a way that feels manageable and sustainable — particularly if you:

• Feel overwhelmed by health advice and aren't sure where to start
• Want to make changes to your health and wellbeing but find it hard to know how
• Live with chronic pain, illness, or fatigue
• Have caring responsibilities, a busy life, or limited energy

I would definitely recommend this course to anyone wanting to make better life and health choices... I stand up and move about more now, I eat more vegetables, and another mini habit is to tidy up as I go along. I even bought a plant! That’s good for me!" 

– Anon, 70, lives with depression, anxiety and chronic pain

Do I need experience with mindfulness or meditation?

The core principles of mindfulness and compassion run through everything in HEALS. Each week includes guided meditations in the live sessions, as well as a library of practices to try in your own time.

If you're new to mindfulness, you're very welcome. The course introduces the key principles in the first week and returns to them throughout, so there's plenty of time to learn and practise at your own pace.

If you already have some experience — perhaps from a course like Mindfulness for Health — HEALS offers a chance to revisit those foundations in week one, and then helps you apply qualities of awareness, acceptance and compassion to positive habit formation.

I use the body scan for sleep several times a week and this enables me to get a good rested nights sleep also the breathing techniques assist me to relax before bed.

– Liz, lives with fibromyalgia

How the programme works

HEALS runs over eight weekly live sessions on Zoom, in a small group of up to 15 participants. Each session is two hours long, with the exception of the first week which is two and a half hours, to allow time for orientation and introductions.

What happens each week

Each session follows a similar rhythm: a short settling meditation, a recap of the previous week, time to share how your home practice has been going, exploration on that week's theme, and guided meditation. At the end of each live session, through a mix of reflection and discussion with a small group, you'll come up with your own 'tiny habit' to try out during the week. You'll also have suggested mindfulness and compassion practices to do in the coming week

The eight weekly sessions are:

• Week 1: Awareness & Breath
• Week 2: Tiny Habits, Compassion & Connection
• Week 3: Nature
• Week 4: Nutrition
• Week 5: Movement
• Week 6: Sleep
• Week 7: Revisiting Tiny Habits
• Week 8: Reflection & What's Next

The course brought together lots of strands and ideas that I had read about, but struggled to connect together up until now."

– Wendy, 55, lives with chronic pain

Can't make every session?

We encourage you to join as many live sessions as you can in order to get the most from this course. If you're having a particularly challenging day, we invite you to participate however you can – for example you may decide to turn your camera off and simply listen that week. Your course leader is there to support you, so please contact them if you have any concerns or requirements.

If you need to miss a session completely – don't worry! You will have access to summaries of the key ideas of that week, links to the suggested guided meditations for the coming week, and lots of supporting materials, helping you to get back on track.

Course materials

All resources are available through Breathworks' free online platform, which you'll have access to throughout the course and beyond. Here you'll find:

📚 Educational presentations & resource library on that week's theme
🧘 Guided meditation practices for awareness training & wellbeing
💬 A discussion space to share insights with fellow participants
🏠 Recommended practices to try at home to consolidate each week's learning

What People Say About HEALS

Feedback from recent HEALS courses gives an average overall rating of 4.5 out of 5, from 62 participants — and 84% said they felt better able to make positive changes to their health and wellbeing since starting the course.

Our pilot study, which used validated clinical measures to track changes in anxiety, depression, quality of life and pain, found statistically significant improvements across all measures — many of which were still present three months after the course ended. The full findings are available to download here.

"[The HEALS programme] should be offered to everyone with a chronic pain condition on prescription! I wish I’d found it years ago."

– Teresa, 53, lives with chronic pain & fatigue

Everything is covered to allow you to take control of your life: your mind, body and health are brought to your attention in a wonderful way. Using the tiny habits is actually fun as well as changing the way I live my life.

To anyone thinking about doing the course, I would say: please do it! You'll enjoy it and get lots from it. After a while you'll find out how much better you feel in the whole of your life."

– David Rose, lives with spinal injury & chronic pain

Cost & Financial Support

Breathworks is a UK registered charity with a mission to make mindfulness accessible to everyone. When you purchase a ticket for one of our events, you are not only investing in your own wellbeing, but paying it forward to someone else in need - All profits are reinvested to support our charitable work, helping us cover essential costs like staff, operations, and expanding our impact

We're offer three different pricing options to those wishing to join us: 

Rate	Cost	Details
Standard	£325	Full priced rate
Concessionary	£250	Choose this if you cannot afford the full priced rate
Bursary	Pay what you can	A limited number of bursary places are reserved for individuals with significant financial barriers that limits them from affording the Concessionary Rate.

We trust our participants to assess their eligibility honestly and ask you to consider the Standard Rate if you possibly can, to keep our offering sustainable. If you have any questions or would like to discuss your situation, please contact us here.

Bursary Places (Pay What You Can)

A limited number of bursary places are reserved for individuals with significant barriers that limit them from affording the Concessionary Rate. As we want as many people as possible to benefit from Breathworks courses, we ask you to consider how much you are able to fund yourself. Subject to available funds, our charitable fund will cover the remainder of the course fee. To apply, please complete this form and click submit.

Considering joining a HEALS course? 

Browse Dates Here