I am very happy to provide a testimonial for Anna Morrone and the mindfulness / yoga sessions that she has provided for our Year Six children to enable them to deal with the stress of SATs and for our teaching staff. Anna has now provided several sessions for our staff and these are always received very positively by staff of all physical abilities. We dedicate a training day a year to well-being and Anna has played a great part in that most recently in the day at Whitemore Lakes. She is an extremely sensitive, responsive and skilled yoga coach who set the day off very well. Several of the staff have taken to attending her out of school sessions themselves and she is very much respected for the quality of the sessions that she provides. I would heartily recommend her to any school as being able to provide a really worthwhile well-being solution to stressed, over worked staff.
N Jinks – Head Teacher – Holy Rosary Primary, Burton on Trent
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“Anna led our staff team in a fantastic Yoga-based mindfulness session that left everyone feeling completely relaxed and rejuvenated and most importantly gave us skills to deal with everyday stress that we can continue to use! It really added something extra to our Staff Wellbeing Week.”
Charlotte Hopkins
Head Teacher Anglesey Primary Academy
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“Ageing Well Event”
“Burton Albion Community Trust have found working with Anna Morrone a real breath of fresh air she is approachable, easy to work with and her teaching style and methods can be adapted to suit the need of the group she is working with.
John Widdowson, Health and Inclusion Manager
Burton Albion Community Trust.
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When I started having anxiety and panic attacks on a regular basis I started searching for answers that did not involve taking medication. I had already started attending some yoga classes at Hoar Cross but thought I would attend one of yours to try it out because I was told you were going to focus on mental health and anxiety. The class I attended that Monday night changed everything for me. I finally got it and started using the breathing techniques you taught and can genuinely say that this one ‘tool’ has transformed my entire attitude towards my anxiety which I can now see as separate to me….whenever I start to feel anxious, overwhelmed or just unsure about what to do I say to myself “It’s ok I have my breath.” My anxiety subsides as soon as I breathe and say those words and I can focus on my breath. I will be eternally grateful to you. I know how passionate you are about helping people of all walks of life and I cannot thank you enough for passing on your knowledge and passion to me. I now have the most amazing tool that is free, healthy and joyful to use wherever I am. Without you I may not have made this discovery. I want to thank you with all my heart.
Karen
Member, Hoar Cross Hall, Staffs
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“Anna delivered a session on Yoga based Mindfulness techniques as part of a programme of workshops for Line Managers from across the business. It was amazing to see the way she held their attention and brought them all in to the discussion through a mixture of science, facts, humour and her enthusiasm. After we had practiced the techniques shown at the session you could feel a total different energy in the room, calm and relaxed, and everyone agreed that the simple techniques shown could easily be incorporated in to their everyday life. Big Thanks Anna”
Annette Grigg HR Business Partner
UK & Germany Manfrotto UK Limited
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Anna Morrone is an Awareness Champion for the SSNMH, an independent charity encouraging the participation of people with experience of mental illness in the services they may use. A key element of our service is our Volunteer Programme accredited by Investing in Volunteers; with a key platform for support and communication being our Network Meetings.
At the Network Meeting 16 July 2015, Anna was kind enough to provide a twenty minute Mindfulness session for 3 members of staff and 4 volunteers, many of whom experience mental illness regularly.
Anna ran through key breathing and relaxing techniques whilst highlighting the uses and importance of Mindfulness as a concept and as meaningful practice.
All 7 participants expressed being relaxed and having positive outcomes from the session.
“I found it relaxing and very helpful. I was not aware about breathing techniques before. I have tried using those techniques since to calm me down.” – Volunteer participant.
Testimonial from South Staffordshire Network for Mental Health
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Burton Albion Community Trust are pleased to be associated with Anna Morrone’s Yoga based Mindfulness activities, and over the past months we have enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Anna. This was particularly beneficial to us when Anna delivered two excellent ‘Mindfulness in the Workplace’ sessions at our Employee Well Being Campaign launch, held at the Pirelli Stadium. The two sessions were delivered in a professional, safe and encouraging environment that encouraged attendees at the event, which included Company Directors, HR Managers and those responsible for the management of staff, to use Yoga and breathing techniques to clear the mind and add focus. We will continue to work with and support Anna to widen the work she does within East Staffordshire and thank her for her support and efforts to date….(9th September 2015)
John Widdowson, Health and Inclusion Manager Burton Albion Community Trust.
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As ADS and since July 2014 as One Recovery, Anna attended our Service initially at Burton Caribbean Association (BCA) and more recently at The Manor to deliver mindfulness and Yoga sessions to our clients on a weekly basis from 2014-2015.
Our services at the BCA and more recently The Manor are intended to offer structured support in the form of groups and group-based activity for people recovering from substance misuse issues who are seeking to achieve abstinence and maintain ongoing recovery. A key coping strategy and wellness tool for our client group is learning skills for relaxation and reducing anxiety, as underlying the physical aspect of addiction is often a high degree of anxiety and emotional imbalance. By initially coming in for the last ten minutes of our peer support groups to offer a guided mindfulness relaxation session Anna was able to introduce to concept to our client group, many of whom were initially sceptical that it could benefit them. As someone who also sat in for many of these sessions I can attest to their effectiveness as Anna has a professional but soothing manner of delivery. Numerous clients self-reported that they took away the strategies suggested by Anna and incorporated them into their own lives at times of stress or disharmony and that this helped them maintain their abstinence from problematic substance use. Likewise with the Yoga sessions Anna has delivered, primarily at our new Hub at The Manor in Burton town centre, an initial scepticism amongst our client group gave way to be replaced by having a number of regular attendees who were reluctant to take other forms of exercise and were turned off by the gym etc. The benefits of Yoga and mindfulness for creating a centred, balanced self and reducing anxiety are well evidenced by research in journals and recovery circles and we look forward to continuing to offer mindfulness an Yoga to our clients across East Staffordshire with the valued input and expertise offered by Anna.
Testimonial from Richard Glandfield – One Recovery Volunteer Coordinator
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I am happy to provide a reference for Anna Morrone who provided some whole class support for our year 6 children prior to their SATs in the Summer of 2015. Mrs Morrone clearly knows her craft very well and related very appropriately to the children. They thoroughly enjoyed the session and brought the lessons from it into their examination week. As their class teacher, I can say that the children did relax well and I am sure that it further helped them to concentrate better when they most needed to. I was most impressed with the results and have begun to take up yoga myself subsequently. My school has just gained a place on an International schools project and as part of this we shall be providing curriculum materials and exercises to support children’s well-being which will be disseminated throughout the EU. Miss Morrone will be asked, as a result of her work in the school, to provide a significant contribution to this activity.
Testimonial from Mr Jinks, Headteacher at Holy Rosary Primary School
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I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the yoga Anna delivered in the Spring term. Anna built up the complexity of the yoga moves throughout the Term gradually meaning I could see the improvement in myself and yet wasn’t pushed out of my comfort zone. After each session I was left feeling relaxed and more able to concentrate on my school work.
Emma, Sixth Form Student Burton on Trent
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Mindfulness Yoga in Burton 