Vidyamala Burch is the co-founder of The Breathworks Foundation - an international  mindfulness and compassion charity.

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Vidyamala began teaching her mindfulness approach for managing pain and illness following her own personal experience living with health challenges following spinal injuries and surgeries in her teens. She began to explore mindfulness, compassion and meditation as a way to manage her pain and found the results to be life changing and transformative.

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In 2001, she developed the Mindfulness-based Pain Management (MBPM) programme, and there are now over 700 teachers based in over 40 countries who have trained in her approach to managing pain and long-term health conditions.

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Vidyamala’s was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2022 for services to Wellbeing and Pain Management. She was made an honorary member of The British Pain Society for her outstanding work for the alleviation of pain, as well as being named on the Shaw Trust Power 100 List of the UK’s most influential disabled people for four years running.

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She is the author of Living Well with Pain and Illness (2008), Mindfulness for Health (2013), and Mindfulness for Women (2016).