
Home » Wellbeing & Self Care
Mindfulness in the Workplace
Well Being and Self Care for Community and Workplace
All of the programmes delivered out of the Sanctuary contribute to the cultivation of wellbeing and self care.
Sanctuary Way (SWAY)
In Ireland, between the years 2010 and 2015, work related stress doubled.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the increase in stress has wide reaching implications, including a cost of 20 billion euro in the EU alone, due to sick days.
However, work related stress does not only affect employee absenteeism. It has numerous organizational consequences including lost productivity, poor job performance, higher rates of employee turnover, increased accident frequency, and greater healthcare and legal spending (Quick, Quick, Nelson and Hurrell,1997).
One of the main factors influencing work related stress is work place culture.
So, how do we go about changing culture?
How do we answer the call of the WHO to create “a healthy working environment… in which there is not only an absence of harmful conditions but an abundance of health-promoting ones”?
The Sanctuary’s SWAY programme is designed to provide the resources and training for organizations to create healthy working environments- to change culture through contemplative practice.
It has been evidenced that mindfulness, compassion and contemplative practices within organisations has decreased employee stress, emotional exhaustion, and job burnout and increased mood and life satisfaction (Shapiro, Astin, Bishop and Cordova, 2005;Galantino, Baime, Maguire, Szapary and Farrar, 2005; Neff, 2011).
Through a face to face training, along with online resources, the SWAY programme incorporates experiential practices based in mindfulness, reflection, self-kindness and communication, arming organisational teams with the tools to flourish within the workplace, while helping to sustain personal wellbeing and mental health.

SWAY Programme
All our SWAY programmes can now be run online and tailored to suit your Organisation
Self Care Resources to Help Guide You Through The Pandemic
Free Self Care Resources to help Guide you through the Pandemic
Introduction to Mindfulness – With Orla Burchael
One morning per week for three weeks.
The next ONLINE course is starting 8th -22nd January 2021
Responding with Compassion
4 sessions starting on 2nd February and will run every second Tuesday from 7.00-9.00pm on Zoom
Mindfulness SWAY Half-Day Self Care Programme
For groups of 16-20 people
10.00 am – 2.00 pm
Mindfulness SWAY One-Day Self Care Programme
For 16-20 people
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
Mindfulness SWAY 16-Week Self Care Programme
One day per week for 16 weeks
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
An Cuan Programme
An Cuan Programme is designed to break down barriers and make the activities of the Sanctuary available and accessible to adults of all ages and abilities, with a particular emphasis on people who are going through a vulnerable period in their life.
The word An Cuan means harbour in Irish and it represents presence, resilience and stillness.