Supporting residents to take back their lives

We are delighted to announce that our Take Back Your Life project, developed by Tareshvari Robinson with generous support from Kalayanvaca Fowler, has received 3.5 years’ funding from Tower Hamlets Council! This means that we will be able to offer four FREE courses per year to local residents experiencing long-term illness and chronic pain, enabling many more people to take back their lives and live well with pain and illness.

Take Back Your Life is a simplified version of the multi award-winning: Breathworks “Mindfulness for  Health” 8-week course. It is designed for people with potentially lower income, language and literacy levels. The programme aims to give participants the tools and skills to live well with chronic pain or health conditions. This is pioneering work as mindfulness courses have rarely been adapted for this target group.

The two pilot courses have reached residents from a wide range of backgrounds including Bangladeshi, Caribbean, Tamil, Turkish, Kosovan and white British residents. Participants have reported many positive effects from taking part including reduced pain symptoms, reduced dependency on medication and increase sense of social connection. Some have even spoken about feeling more able to go back to work!

One participant, Bee, has kindly shared her story about living with pain and the impact of taking part in the Take Back Your Life course. We’re excited about being able to support many more people like Bee.About Globe Community Project

Bee’s Story

My problems started long ago – prior to coming to the UK – trauma of war in Kosovo and everything that brings. I dealt with my trauma through my college years with counselling and using martial arts but then lost my mum in 2003.  I’ve been carrying burdens a long time.  I got married, had kids and became super busy. 

Then I dislocated my knee doing martial arts.  I had an operation that went wrong and ended up having 5 operations in total to try and correct the injury.  The knee led to backaches and from this to disc problems. Everything piled up and up and up and I thought: “I can’t do anything about this”.

I had such difficulty.  I felt like a candle lighting everyone else but melting away myself.  I was so stressed. 

My brother in law said to me “you look so stressed all the time. You just have to do something about it.”

Then my sister went to a “Take Back Your Life” taster session at her child’s primary school.  She suggested I go to a taster myself.  I went along and just broke down…..I signed up for the course but still didn’t believe it would help.

But week after week I was seeing a difference.  I started seeing things differently.

I still have some pain.  I can feel it now but I literally made friends with that pain.  How nice it would be if the pain left but it’s there and I can manage it now.  I think it’s changed my life.  I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.  I know how to meditate and to use my breath and to think of myself for a change – to take rest and pace myself.

I think my children feel happier around me.  Every time I complained about my neck before, my 8 year old daughter complained about her neck too.  My negativity was rubbing over them.

My daughter hasn’t heard me complain about my neck for a while now.  The tension and pain in my neck is gone.  When I start to feel pain, I meditate.

I used to have acupuncture and the pain would go for a while but then I went right back to what I was doing and the pain came straight back.  BUT with positivity, meditation, breathing, relaxation, and pacing things have changed dramatically.  Everything has improved.  I used to take ibuprofen all the time.  I’ve reduced ibuprofen.

Now I can manage the pain in my neck, I’ve decided to go back to college and get my GCSE’s so I can become a classroom assistant.