Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Who is it for?
Mindfulness training is useful for a broad range of people with diverse backgrounds, ages, interests and levels of well-being. People self-refer or sometimes people are sent by their doctors or psychologists because of physical and emotional stressors in their lives. Many enroll because, although they are feeling well physically, they say the pace of their lives is "out of control" or they're "just not feeling quite right" and want more ease and peace.
Mindfulness training can enhance learning, concentration, creativity, personal resilience and professional effectiveness.
For people with job, relationship and family pressures, it can help with all kinds of day-to-day stress symptoms including headaches, irritability, high-blood pressure, fatigue and sleep disturbances.
It can reduce suffering even for those with serious conditions including mild depression, anxiety and panic disorders, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and chronic pain.
What does the course involve?
- a 2.5 hour class once a week for eight weeks plus one full day
- mindfulness meditation training- yoga and body awareness training
- exploration of patterns of thinking, feeling and action
- brief lectures and discussions
- individual feedback and support
- scientific rationale for the practice
- commitment to daily homework practice using CDs and course book
You will be offered a systematic training in mindfulness - learning how to cultivate an observant, accepting and compassionate stance towards your thoughts, emotional states, body sensations and impulses. Specific information about stress physiology, cognitive behavioural strategies, interpersonal communication and implementing self-care will be given.
How does it work?
Over the eight-week program, you will be learning a number of key skills that allow you to tune into and become aware of your experience in the moment.
Firstly, you will be establishing a routine of spending some time each day by yourself formally practicing mindfulness meditation. By choosing to engage in this practice you will be learning how to cultivate deep states of relaxation and well-being. You will also be learning how to bring a moment-to-moment awareness to your experience, and then apply this awareness so you can respond - rather than react in habitual ways - to everyday life situations. This becomes much easier to do when you are regularly practicing the formal meditation each day.
The course will provide an opportunity for you to examine and reflect on the patterns of your own mind, feelings and actions, and to gently interrupt patterns of self-criticism and unhelpful actions.
We will be learning how to accept and embrace the full range of experience that life inevitably brings - pleasurable, joyful and expansive experience as well as painful conditions in their various forms - worry, anxiety, tension, impatience, anger, grief, sadness and even despair.
Moving towards these conditions with an enquiring attitude, rather than trying to hold on to them, or to escape or avoid them, can bring some surprising and refreshing results.
Letting go is powerful
It can seem like a paradox - that to practice a patient and accepting curiosity towards even our painful experience - can be powerful.
Some people worry that if they practice acceptance and letting go of their experience that this will mean that they are not acting powerfully to change situations in their lives that need changing. From the evidence, the opposite seems to be true.
This kind of practice means giving ourselves time and space to really know ourselves, to calm down and reflect, so that our actions can be more in line with what is beneficial and helpful to ourselves and those around us.
The importance of practice
As we will be working to change patterns which have probably been around for a while, many experiences of mindfulness and letting go will be required. The skills and knowledge you will be developing can only be learned through direct experience over time. Your willingness to engage in the practice – up to one hour a day where possible - is central to experiencing the sense of peace and resilience that the program can offer.
You will be well-supported by the instructor and the structure of the course to engage in the home practice daily.
Special considerations
If you have been grappling with drug dependency, psychiatric issues or intense trauma experience, please speak with the Co-ordinator. She will be able to explore with you whether the course is right for you at this time or what other supports you may require in order to get the most out of the program
Every person enrolling in the program will also have the opportunity for a phone interview with the teacher in which you can raise any issues or special needs regarding attendance at the course or the home practice.
