Learning through a mind-body course

Before choosing a course, you deserve a clear account of what it offers. During it, you deserve support in understanding what you are trying, how you are experiencing it and what to do with what you learn.

Our proposed Program Observatory would extend the audits into that experience. A portable record would connect the course’s teaching with your participation, symptoms, perceptions and changing choices.

Explore the working audits See an example record Help develop or fund the pilot

The audits are available to explore. The Observatory is a proposal: this page does not enroll participants or collect health information.

From choosing a course to learning through it

01Working audits available
Understand the course
Explore what it asks you to do and believe, its evidence and demands. Consider how it fits your goals, resources and preferences.
What am I being offered?
02Proposed support
Follow your participation
Connect the lessons you encounter with what you understand, actually try and notice in your symptoms, perceptions and daily life.
What is happening for me?
03Proposed support
Review and respond
Return to your own record during the course. Identify questions and what you want to continue, adapt, discuss, pause or reconsider.
What do I want to do next?

Review feeds your next choice. You could revisit an instruction, adapt participation or change direction, and carry your record into another course or a period without one.

Only if you choose to share: selected observations could contribute to research, improve the audits and inform better course design. We aim to make the support freely accessible, without requiring research participation.

A record you can learn from

The aim is to make your experience easier to understand while you are living it. Brief notes and periodic guided reflections would connect what you expected, tried and noticed, with room for your own words and corrections.

You would choose a manageable rhythm for reflection. The record should help you notice changes, prepare questions and review choices without requiring constant symptom checking.

This fictional example illustrates the proposed record. It is not a participant report, a course quotation or guidance to perform an exercise.

One instruction, followed into experience

Teaching encountered: A course suggests redirecting attention when a familiar symptom arises.
My interpretation: “I thought that meant I should stop noticing symptoms altogether.”
What I tried: “I returned my attention to what I was doing. Sometimes I also stayed active longer.”
What I noticed: “I felt less preoccupied at first. Later I was more tired. My sleep and activity varied too.”
My next question: “Can I change how I attend without changing my activity? I want to clarify the instruction and discuss the fatigue.”

The record makes a useful distinction visible: attention and activity changed together. It does not establish what caused the later fatigue.

How shared experience could improve what is offered

With separate consent, participant records could reveal how instructions are understood, what makes participation possible or difficult, and where helpful or unwanted experiences arise. Experiences of adapting, stopping or finding little benefit belong in that picture too.

More informative audits. Add accounts of how a course is received to our assessment of what it teaches. Show the context and uncertainty behind emerging patterns.
Better questions about fit. Investigate which practices, explanations and kinds of support suit different goals, capacities and circumstances.
Courses that can adapt. Longer term, use findings to develop and test changes to course explanations, practices, sequence and support in response to the person, with room to reconsider the approach.

How would we know whether this helps?

A first pilot would follow people from considering a course through participation and follow-up, returning records they can use along the way. We would ask whether this improves understanding and usable choices, and whether it produces more informative assessments.

Health effects need their own evaluation. Symptoms, daily function, disease activity and burden can change differently. Observations can suggest patterns; appropriate comparisons are needed to test what causes them and which adaptations help.

Explore the measurement and study questions →

Help develop and support the Observatory

This follow-on to the audits needs patient input, research and development partners, and funding. Our next milestone is a participant-designed record, a working prototype and a plan for a small pilot.

Help shape the participant experience

People living with chronic illness and advocates can review the page, example record and proposed check-ins. Help us identify what is useful, confusing or burdensome before we build further.

Offer a short design review

Build and evaluate the pilot

Researchers, clinicians, designers and engineers can help connect audited teachings to participant records, develop accessible review tools and design the first evaluation. Start with a defined contribution that fits your expertise.

Propose a collaboration

Support the first pilot

Help fund participant co-design and compensation, prototype development, and independent evaluation of usefulness and burden. The first deliverables would be a usable personal record, a pilot protocol and a plan for returning findings to the audits.

Discuss pilot funding

Each link opens an editable email to Wyatt to discuss a next step. You do not need to share a health history. These are design, collaboration and funding conversations; study enrollment is not open.