I’m Laura Ashurst. I am a Breathworks-trained mindfulness meditation teacher, aromatherapist, and wellbeing practitioner. I have 30 years career experience within the health and wellbeing industry, including 15 years as a lecturer in Further Education where, as a senior lecturer, in 2004, I co-wrote the first Foundation Degree in Complementary Therapy (Aromatherapy) delivered within the North-East of England.
I am passionate about creating bespoke mindfulness and mindfulness meditation programmes for groups and individuals that are embedded with two of the most important philosophies by which human beings can live: self-kindness and self-compassion. I combine my love of poetry with my professional work too. All of my therapeutic offerings include an element of poetry; poems I have written myself or the words of somebody else. We all have so much to learn from one another.
I also live with breast cancer. I have lived with secondary breast cancer, the incurable form of the disease, since December 2007. My experience of coming to terms with a diagnosis of a life-limiting disease and the impact of facing my mortality daily has taught me, that all any of us have, is the present moment. We can spend so much of our precious time locked in debilitating cycles of worry and rumination that prevent us from fully enjoying our time. I know because I spent many years living in that way.
Mindfulness and meditation have helped me to live my life well. It has dramatically improved my mental wellbeing, helping me to experience reduced levels of anxiety, and depression. It has helped me to practice self-kindness during days that feel extremely challenging.
Our moment-to-moment experience can be transformed when we develop our ability to focus our attention and awareness in a way that means we miss much less of what is going on around us as we gently disentangle ourselves from unhelpful thought processes. We can support ourselves to experience much more of the now; much more of this moment, always with a gentle attitude of kindness for ourselves.
My mission is simple: to provide therapeutic mindfulness and mindfulness meditation support to help individuals feel better equipped to manage the complexities of their thoughts, feelings, and emotions at whichever stage of life they are in. My clients currently range in age from late teens to late eighties; age doesn’t stop us from experiencing feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, sleep problems, and a whole range of other issues that affect our wellbeing. Mindfulness helps us to navigate them with kindness for ourselves at its core.
My voluntary campaigning work is also hugely important to me. I am a Cancer Research UK Cancer Campaigns Ambassador, an advocate for METUPUK, and a member of the admin team for the Building Resilience in Breast Cancer Centre. I am also the Patron of The Trinity Holistic Centre at The James Cook University Hospital.
Over the last 13 years I have been an active cancer campaigner. I have been involved in a number of awareness-raising campaigns for secondary breast cancer and lobbied government as part of my CRUK Ambassador role. I am immensely proud to have helped play a small part in bringing about changes to legislation that will help improve the outcomes for cancer patients in the UK.
It was an honour to be awarded the Prime Minister’s Points of Light Award in November 2022 for campaigning work to improve standards of care for people living with secondary breast cancer in the UK.
As a three-time survivor of breast cancer, mindfulness and mindfulness meditation have helped me to live presently, developing moment-to-moment awareness of each day.
Images by Dawn McNamara
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