Book a Free Q & A Session to find out!The foundation of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the moment-to-moment experience of our thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, with acceptance and curiosity. Mindfulness can improve our emotional resilience and strengthen our capacity to respond skillfully to life’s challenges.
Stress is everywhere in our modern lives. We often feel overwhelmed by work, family, relationships, technology, and political and social unrest. Stress leads us to feel anger, anxiety, and depression. It can lead us to experience sleeplessness, loss of appetite, breathlessness, and chest pains. Long-term stress can have a major impact on physical and mental health. When we are repeatedly overwhelmed by stress, then our health, well-being, and social relationships suffer. But, while we can’t control what happens around us, we can control how we respond to stress in our lives.
The MBSR program is intended to ignite our inner capacity to respond to stress and to infuse our lives with greater awareness, enthusiasm, and joy. It helps us work with our own stress, pain, and illness to meet the challenges and demands of everyday life. It helps us restore a more balanced sense of well-being in our body and mind.
The curriculum is based on the field of Mind-Body Medicine. Through intensive training in a combination of mindfulness, cognitive behavioral and self-regulation skills, participants learn to mobilize their deep inner resources to facilitate learning, growth, healing, develop stress management techniques, enhance self-care, and make positive shifts in attitudes, behaviors, and relationships. This is the official MBSR course, taught online and in an interactive group setting, that is considered the “gold standard” of mindfulness courses.
MBSR classes meet for 2-1/2 hours online, once per week, for eight weeks plus a day-long silent retreat. The program provides tools to help cultivate greater mindfulness in day-to-day life. Each week’s training is highly participatory and encompasses a wide array of mindfulness practices and experiential exercises. The course combines guided meditation, group discussion, structured lessons, as well as home assignments.
The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program was developed in 1979 by Jon Kabat Zinn, Ph.D., a scientist, author, and meditation teacher. He is currently Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he also founded the Stress Reduction Clinic, and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.
The MBSR program was originally designed for people experiencing chronic pain.
Since its inception in 1979, the program has helped thousands of people increase their self-esteem, build resilience to setbacks, change stress into enthusiasm, and even decrease pain levels from chronic conditions.
MBSR is the “gold standard” for learning mindfulness and its application to daily life. This eight-week course offers the core curriculum and methodology of MBSR as taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Today MBSR is offered worldwide. Since its inception in the medical community, the program has made its way into mainstream culture. It has gained prominence worldwide as an effective, systematic approach to the problem of stress management in a broad range of areas in daily life, including work, family, and social relationships.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a program consisting of eight 2-1/2- hour weekly classes plus a full-day silent retreat.
It teaches mindfulness practices in the form of sitting meditation, walking meditation, experiential exercises, body awareness, and mindful movement. It is highly participatory and includes didactic instruction on stress-related topics, discussion in pairs and groups, and self-reflection exercises to help develop a more balanced relation with our bodies and minds.
MBSR can help us learn to take better care of ourselves through the interplay of mind and body. It helps us mobilize our own inner resources for coping, learning, growing, and healing. The program rests on a strong scientific evidence base that addresses a variety of physical and mental conditions, including chronic pain, insomnia, hypertension, fatigue, anxious and depression.
Extensive research documents the effects of participating in an MBSR program, including decreased stress, depression, pain, and distress, and increased attention, concentration, coping skills, and quality of life.
MBSR meets online for 2-1/2 hours, once per week for 8-weeks (plus a day-long silent retreat on a weekend between the 5th and 6th sessions). Participants will be guided through formal mindfulness practices, small group discussion and talks, and practices and exercises related to that week’s topics. Topics include the role of perception on stress reactivity, the physiology of stress, stress management techniques, the differences and benefits of responding vs reacting, and bringing mindfulness into interpersonal relationships. This transformative course is suitable for beginning meditators or experienced meditators.
Training consists of formal/informal practices and instruction including:
MBSR is an internationally acclaimed program with a growing body of research supporting its potential benefits for a variety of populations. The scientific literature reports numerous physical and psychological health benefits including:
Scientific research at medical and research centers worldwide suggests that MBSR can positively affect participants’ lives. Extensive research confirms that participation in MBSR reduces stress and chronic pain; addresses painful mental states like depression and anxiety; minimizes emotional reactivity and promotes well-being; increases flexible attention and sharpens mental focus. Developments in the field of neuroscience show that regular mindfulness practice produces positive changes in the structure and functioning of the brain, including enhancing grey matter in the brain in the regions for empathy and problem-solving.
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For information on the next classes in MB-EAT and MBSR, please contact Kelly Weisberg at: kelly_weisberg@yahoo.com or use this form to reach out.
*Disclaimer: MB-EAT and MBSR are educational programs and not therapy. Participation in an MBSR program may not be indicated for those with histories of addiction, suicidal ideation, trauma or psychosis.
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