Matthew’s Friends are the leading medical Ketogenic Dietary Therapies charity in the UK. They commissioned two bespoke ‘Mindfulness for Anxiety’ courses during the Covid-19 pandemic and kindly published some of the course participants’ feedback in their April 2021 newsletter:

“Thank you! This course has been absolutely wonderful. Katie is a brilliant teacher and person, and she made mindfulness very simple. I have tried to do mindfulness in the past and I could never quite ‘get it’ if you know what I mean! Katie made it very easy, and explained it so well!”

“The fact that she tailored it to our needs – as mums with children who have epilepsy /complex needs – was really helpful. It felt like she really understood the stresses and struggles we face.”

“I shall miss her sessions on a Tuesday morning, but she told us where to find her if we want to ‘drop in’ to the sessions she does. I would highly recommend her!”

“Thanks also for funding these sessions, I am very grateful to you and to Matthew’s Friends.“

“I really enjoyed the course ~ it was like group therapy, with mindfulness as the focus. Always felt more positive on Thursdays. Great to meet everyone! I found it beneficial and relevant to my situation and there are things I have taken away from it giving my husband little titbits and advice! Katie was so nice and kind. I would definitely recommend for others.”

“Thank you for your email with the last meditation. I found the course extremely useful and thanks to Katie’s knowledge and experience, I am able to use many of the tools she provided us with in my daily life. She in herself makes me feel more relaxed and her voice in the meditations is a pleasure to listen to.”

“I hope we can enjoy another course some time in the future. Take care and thank you!”

“I can’t thank you and the charity enough for the opportunity to join the mindfulness course. It was a great opportunity for me to explore my anxiety and trigger points. Always grateful for your care and support you show us.”

Matthew’s Friends support patients, families and professionals by providing information, training, research and grants to develop Ketogenic services and support systems for drug resistant (refractory) epilepsy as well as other neurological and metabolic disorders and emerging cancer types.

Health and Wellbeing is high on our agenda to ensure our people are adequately educated and live long and happy lives. We wanted an external consultant to run a programme for our leadership and advisor population, Katie came highly recommended and certainly lived up to our expectations. We embraced her calming presence and positivity.

In very interesting and ‘penny dropping’ sessions it brought to life that how we look and feel is down to our diet and mindset.  Simple and easy changes are so impactful and nearly 2 years on, the legacy of the sessions is still embedded.  So many colleagues have made small and significant lifestyle changes. We loved the approach of face to face sessions, videos, open days and links/access to great information.

Katie came on board with our programme to help support valve disease patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, a challenging period in many of their lives, and delivered a brilliant mindfulness workshop tailored to suit the specific needs of our patients. In a short space of time she was able to curate an engaging workshop which gave patients of varying abilities practical tools to help manage their own mental wellbeing.

Her workshops not only tell you how to use mindfulness but also explain the mechanics of why it works, giving a rounded understanding of its use to the individual. In addition to this, the resources she has developed on her website offer the mechanisms for continued engagement and support for our patients after the workshop.

Katie is a wonderful person and presenter, and we’re very glad she came on board with our programme.

Heart Valve Voice

Heart Valve Voice is the UK’s dedicated heart valve disease charity. They work with patients and clinicians to help increase the awareness of heart valve disease in the UK and improve diagnosis and treatment.

The charity is a collection of people with real experiences of heart valve disease, including a multi-disciplinary group of experts in the field (cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, GPs), cardiac patient societies and patients.

I mean wow! That first session for the COVID-19 GPs’ support group with not many hours’ notice at all speaks volumes. So then we’ve had so much positive feedback.

My first contact with Katie was a webinar presentation that a charity Heart Valve Voice were going to do to support their community of patients with heart valve disease and their families and relatives and supporters. They were keen to offer something under the heading of mindfulness and wellbeing and introduced me to Katie.

So it was really interesting to meet and be able to go through the technical rehearsal and then sit and host that charity’s webinar, and really enjoy the content that Katie was sharing. In fact even before Katie did her webinar, just from the chat that we had beforehand, I invited her to come on and share a little of the content with the COVID-19 GPs’ support group weekly web meeting that I was putting together.

I’ve really enjoyed the sessions. They’re great because they explain as well as give the experience. So it satisfies my logical rational brain, as well as satisfying me emotionally. It’s very therapeutic. All of the sessions have been very, very flexible and adaptable at tailoring what Katie offers based on the sense she gets of what might be helpful at the time… and that’s a real skill. That’s a real skill.

So Katie, you’ve been very kind, sharing resources such as that Mindfulness Course for Anxiety, and it’s been lovely to be able to share all of those resources out through the Primary Care Support Group and to colleagues.

So I’m hoping that awareness of what you do and what you’re offering will spread, you know, spread the good. But I really appreciate what you’ve given in supporting myself and my colleagues and would thoroughly recommend you to anybody who’s looking for somebody who’s experienced in teaching and training and talking around mindfulness and wellbeing and managing mental wellbeing, especially anxiety.

There’s a lot of authenticity. How you share your difficult journey is inspiring, because that difficult journey has led to the person you are now and all the growth, and the sort of direction that you’re moving in now is obviously in some way quite significantly linked to your life experience. So there’s real authenticity to how you share and teach and bring people into a mindfulness experience. And it’s very worthwhile.

So I fully recommend Katie to anybody. If you’ve got any thoughts, pick up the phone or get on a Zoom meet and have a chat with Katie.