Breathworks is a Community Interest Company, a not-for-profit organisation that helps people living with pain, long term illness or stress to manage their condition and improve their quality of life. We are rapidly gaining recognition internationally as experts in the field of mindfulness-based pain management.

Our mission statement

• Breathworks exists to alleviate human suffering
• We help people who are living with pain or other long term conditions
• We help people living with stress
• We teach people to help themselves and others using mindfulness-based techniques

How we started

Our pain management programme was developed primarily by Vidyamala Burch, who has used the practice of mindfulness to manage her own chronic pain for over twenty years. In 2003 she teamed up with Gary Hennessey and Sona Fricker to form Breathworks.

Our legal status

Breathworks is a Community Interest Company, which means that any profits are used to serve the community of people who suffer from pain and stress, not the company owners.

Who are our clients?

Our clients are people throughout the world who:

• are living with pain, long term conditions, or stress; OR
• are committed to helping people with pain, long term conditions, or stress

What do we do?

• Research and innovation: we work with other experts to continue to deepen our understanding of how practising mindfulness can help people living with pain, stress or long-term conditions
• Promotion: we promote the use of mindfulness-based techniques and share our research and experience with the world so that more people can benefit from what we have learned
• Training and education: we train health professionals and others in mindfulness-based techniques; we provide educational products that help people living with pain or stress to help themselves
• Support the Breathworks community: we nurture and support an international community of people who want to use mindfulness-based techniques to help both themselves and others to improve their quality of life

Sharing our expertise

Breathworks gives talks and runs workshops at many conferences, including:

• Annual Scientific Conference of the British Pain Society (2006)
• International Conference on Mindfulness and Acceptance, University of Wales, Bangor (2006)
• Annual Congress of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (2006)
• Fifth Annual International Scientific Conference: Integrating Mindfulness-Based Interventions into Medicine, Health Care and Society (Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society, University of Massachusetts) (2007)
• Karolinska Instutet, Sweden (2007)
• Second Annual Conference of the North East Branch of the British Psychological Society (2009)
• Meditation in Health Care Conference, Bristol (2009)