Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

WHY MBSR?

Are you interested in mindfulness and its potential for enhancing health and well-being? Are you under stress? Are you struggling with chronic conditions such as chronic pain, depression, and anxiety? Are you feeling as if life is too much? Or do you simply want to live a fuller life with greater balance?

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course is a great place to start, or continue, your journey into mindfulness. MBSR helps you learn what mindfulness is with enough time and practice to allow you to integrate it into your life with hands-on practices that help you make mindfulness your own.

WHAT TO EXPECT

This 8-week course includes:

• Learning about stress reactivity and how mindfulness helps with stress
• Learning how to apply mindfulness to everyday situations like communication
• Guided instruction in mindfulness meditation practices
• Body awareness practices including the body scan and gentle mindful movement
• Group dialogue and small group exercises
• A 70-page workbook with short readings, a guide to the course, and resources to support your ongoing investigation of mindfulness
• Eight 2.5 hour classroom sessions plus a 7-hour weekend retreat.

NOTE: at the venue’s request, all participants must wear facemasks for the duration of this event.

The eight class sessions include lessons on what mindfulness is and how to apply it to real life situations, sitting and walking meditation, small and whole group discussions, gentle yoga-based movement, and other practices. In between classes, home practice and explorations support the growth of mindfulness in your life. And there’s an additional retreat session on the weekend to deepen your practice.

To learn more about whether the time is right for you to register for this course, please see What Are Our Classes Like? in the FAQs, from Executive Director Tim Burnett.

ABOUT MBSR

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is the “gold standard” course for learning mindfulness and how to apply it to your daily life. It was designed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and the Center for Mindfulness at the UMass Medical Center in the late 1970’s. Please see our MBSR page for full details about this well-researched class.

Decades of research show that MBSR reduces chronic pain and boosts the immune system; addresses painful mental states like depression and anxiety; minimizes emotional reactivity and promotes well-being; increases flexible attention and sharpens mental focus; and actually thickens grey matter in the areas of empathy and problem-solving. Happiness can be a delightful by-product.