About

What do Kind Mind Ireland & Hilary represent?

  • Compassion

  • Integrity

  • Personal Growth & Development

Kind Mind Ireland has a vision of a radically different approach to caring.

Caring for ourself and caring for those around us.

This enables us to step out of our pain. To be able to respond better to the stress and suffering we witness and feel in our lives.

Kind Mind Ireland’s vision, it its broadest sense, is to enable people to find their way along a path of personal growth.

Compassion

‘Sensitivity to suffering and a desire to help’.

  • To meet your human stress, anxiety or suffering and

  • help you to manage and respond to it in a healthier way by getting to know (and like) yourself a little better.

  • Learning to live more compassionately is about gathering steadiness through turmoil and about rising when we fall.

Integrity

‘First, do no harm’.

  • Courses are evidence-based and trauma-sensitive.

  • I am particularly drawn to help those experiencing serious illness, and Healthcare Staff who provide care.

  • Support for those with financial hardship, sliding scale for course fees & free places offered with a glad heart.

Personal Growth

‘Interdependence and mutual belonging’.

  • Alongside your development and life journey is mine.

  • To provide support and care, all of us learning from modern psychological science and ancient wisdom and teachings.

  • Kind Mind Ireland is not about quick fixes, it’s about sustainable care- being a slow ‘life learner’.

My  logo “Kind Mind Wise Heart” speaks to the values and roots that Kind Mind Ireland is based on, but also to the fundamental elements of compassion -empathy and wisdom.

A strong mind without a kind heart struggles to be truly compassionate; a kind heart suffers without the wise mind to guide it.

About Hilary

 

My background in Caring
and Teaching

I’m Hilary Smyth. I spent over 20 years working Palliative Care in Nursing, Education, Research and Quality.

My Mindfulness Story

‘You cant stop the waves, but you can learn to surf’
– Jon Kabat-Zinn


Caring for those in difficulty invites a contemplative nature and I have had a mindfulness practice for over a decade. I took time out to support my family some years ago, and also began to take better care of myself and my life. I ‘surfed’ a little better.

I trained to teach in mindfulness & compassion:

  • Mindfulness Based-Interventions (Mindful Academy International)

  • Compassion Teacher Training (MSC, MBCL: Centre for Mindful Self-Compassion, USA; Mindfulness Network, UK).

  • Professional Diploma in MBSR/CT (Mindfulness Centre, Dublin)

  • Tara Brach Jack Kornfield Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Programme (2023)

Modern scientific evidence-based learning and teaching is very important to me but also ancient psychology, practice and teachings.  I am a member of secular mindfulness teachers’ groups, psychological associations and special interest groups (such as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Cancer). I also attend regular Buddhist teachings, practice sessions and retreats.

Learning to live compassionately

‘No mud no lotus’

– Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master


The lotus is a strong, beautiful flower that blooms only when grown in mud. It was in the “mud” of a family crisis that I discovered the profound strength of compassion. It is what supports and guides us in difficult circumstances . I learned about self-compassion and ‘fierce’ compassion that we need to protect and motivate ourselves. And I realised that these elements enable us to care compassionately within this world.

Mindfulness Compassion Empathy

Compassion is what sustains us in stress or suffering (‘the mud’), or to be with others who are suffering. Mindfulness teaches to suffer less, neither running from or clinging to what’s here for us now.

Compassion- both soft and ‘fierce’ compassion, requires a wise and strong heart and mind. Empathy (feeling another’s distress) alone- without compassion- cannot sustain us and we burn out as we suffer with those we care about. Caregivers will be fascinated by this 2 minute clip explaining Empathy Burnout.

About Kind Mind Ireland

Kind Mind - Wise Heart

Lough Gur, Co. Limerick

Kind Mind Ireland, near the shores of Lough Gur in Co Limerick, was established by Hilary in 2019. The initial aim was to enable hospice and healthcare staff to access support in their personal and professional lives. Mindfulness and compassion skills are cultivated to strengthen resilience and teamwork through deeper awareness, insight and compassion (as opposed empathy alone) for self and others.

In 2020, responding to requests, I extended support to members of the public in Ireland, the UK and USA online, as the Covid 19 pandemic unfolded.                                            

In 2022 in addition to provision of mindfulness and compassion courses in Milford Centre & in Ballyneety Limerick and other locations, including Lough Gur ‘Hush Hikes’; I began to work with the Mid-West Cancer Support Centre, to offer Self-Care, Mindfulness & Compassion-based courses to those people within the service.

 

Aims & Ethos

· Kind Mind Ireland wishes to improve the health and well-being of community.

· Aims to offer high quality, research-based support to those who wish to deal with the stresses of living and working, alone & together, stresses of caring or of self-criticism.

· To provide a pathway for those who wish to advance their established mindfulness practice. . 

· Aims to add to the existing research evidence by advancing and evaluating the mindfulness & compassion approaches and programmes run.

 

Ethics, Governance & Research

Research

I am committed to providing up to date empirically-based support. Mindfulness, specifically the MBSR course, has 40 years of research underpinning it. Compassion has also been extensively researched particularly since the early 2000's with the pioneering work of Kristen Neff PhD, operationalising 'self-compassion’ and later co-founding and investigating the Mindful Self Compassion(MSC) Course.  

Ancient wisdom has merged with modern science and there is an abundance of high quality research on meditation, thanks to the interest and motivation of neuroscientists, clinical psychologists and leaders of contemplative traditions such as the Dalai Lama.

For more information and research papers, please go to the Resources (Research) page

Ethics and Governance

The quality and safety of Kind Mind's mindfulness-based work is integral to its core values. This includes the training, teaching methods and ongoing practice, personal and professional development of the teacher. To this end, Hilary:

  • Has completed an in-depth, rigorous, recognised mindfulness teacher training over 3 years long.

  • Trained in and teach trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed mindfulness-based interventions, with regular continuous professional development (CPD) as this specialist knowledge advances.

  • Adheres to National & International Professional Standards, Good Practice Guidelines, and Code of Ethics. Professional Standards Ireland International Professional Standards Document

  • Is a member of the Mindfulness Teachers Association of Ireland (MTAI), the professional body governing mindfulness teachers in Ireland. The MTAI upholds rigorous standards in the recognition of training and qualifications of teachers within the Association.

  • Receives regular supervision for her teaching and person practice.

  • Has a strong meditation practice, supported by attendance at regular meditation retreats.

  • Is a member of the BAMBA (British Association of Mindfulness Based Approaches) Special Interest Group for Cancer and life threatening conditions (MBCT-Ca)