Project Manager/Trainer: A little bit about Bill
Dr Bill Paterson’s (PhD Philosophy) career illustrates a commitment to work with people of all ages and ability so that they might realise their unique potential. His breadth and depth of experience have taught him the simplicity and complexity of the human condition. This has enabled Bill to develop an approach to working and living that is based on compassion, integrity, simplicity and grace. It is because he embodies this approach, evaluations of his work consistently express that he is both empowering and inspiring.
Bill has been teaching mindfulness for over 5 years in Fife. He has worked at the front line of mental health, teaching Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) to adults with anxiety and depression. Bill is a Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) accredited teacher, and has taught in both schools and at the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) during a two-year secondment.
He has completed a four-year mindfulness training programme and a two year teacher training programme with the Mindfulness Association (MA). He is recognised as a qualified mindfulness teacher by both the MA and the UK Listing of Mindfulness Teachers. He regularly teaches both the MA’s Mindfulness Based Living Course and the Compassion Based Living Course to the general public; teaches as an MA tutor and provides supervision to mindfulness teachers for the MA. Bill’s key interests are teaching mindfulness to teachers, NHS staff, paramedics, and police. At Edinburgh and Stirling University, Bill has delivered mindfulness and writing workshops to Honours and MA students. He regularly organises and facilitates one day and weekend mindfulness retreats.
Why I love what I do
Bill loves people. Family, friends and human interaction have always been important to him. His career path is unique, and it enabled Bill to experience working with young and old from nearly every walk of life.
Inspired by the questions (why do we live like this?) he became a mature student at university where reading Antonio Gramsci and Eric Fromm caused him see himself and the human condition in a new way. Not least his realization that all human beings have significant and multiple potentials but our conditioning and life circumstance often prevent us from seeing and feeling capable of realizing this potentiality.
Bill concurs with Fromm that being able to realize our potential requires us also to open ourselves. To be open is to get beyond the identity and potential we have been conditioned to see. Studying with the Mindfulness Association for many years confirmed that to see ourselves as we really are requires courage, and learning to practice mindfulness and self-compassion.
Eight years of study, practice and teaching mindfulness has enabled Bill to not only realise more of his own potential and compassion, but to help others do the same. When working in mental health in 2014 he decided that he witnessed the impact of mindfulness in the healing process. Since then Bill has wanted to teach mindfulness to alleviate suffering and empower people to realise their potential through learning to love themself and to love life.
