Niamh began her training in teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in 2007 with a foundation year at the University of Bangor in North Wales, and completed her training with the Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches (Germany), graduating in 2010. Prior to this, her working life was in documentary film and television production.
In 2010 she began teaching the MBSR programme in Kilkenny and Waterford and since 2013 she's offered it in Wicklow, Dublin city and in 2021, online. She is also a mindfulness-teacher trainer and supervisor. Niamh has been a committed meditation practitioner for fifteen years and regularly attends silent retreats and further training, receives supervision while teaching and adheres to the Good Practice Guidelines.
Most recently she has been exploring the intersection of mindfulness and social engagement through her own practice, retreats and teaching. From summer 2019 she facilitated a group through a six-month, long-form mindfulness and social engagement project, showing up. In 2019 the showing up programme of retreat days engaged directly with the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland. With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, it moved online to offer mindfulness and 'connection circle' sessions to groups of foster carers, healthcare workers, school principals and members of the general public who wanted to connect in a mindful and meaningful way with others during the pandemic, and to build community. It continued with its socially-engaged focus online with anti-racism practice and study circles, which are ongoing.
A core practice in showing up is the connection, or 'council' circle. In 2019, Niamh received training in the facilitation of this simple, healing form of mindful communication by the Center for Council (U.S.).
