MBSR is an eight-week structured program where you learn through direct experience how to work with your mind, your emotions, and your body in ways that create more ease and effectiveness in your life.

The program originated in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and has since become the most researched and widely used mindfulness training in healthcare settings worldwide. More than 45 years of medical research supports its effectiveness for both mental and physical health challenges.

Over eight weeks, you’ll learn specific practices that help you meet stress, pain, anxiety or pressure with more steadiness and less struggle. And you’ll also learn so much about your own mind – which is empowering and interesting too.

We know! Almost everyone has this experience. Our way of teaching meditation means you can’t not be able to “do it”. Meditation is about noticing what is happening right now, and for most of us when we start, what we get is the “monkey mind” and we feel our stress and judging mind more acutely. This is the perfect (and only) place to start. Quite quickly you will find more traction and satisfaction in the practice and in yourself, if you give it a good go over eight weeks.

These mindfulness programs were created to help with exactly those kinds of problems. We can’t control what has happened in our lives in the past, but through this way of paying attention, we can have such a better relationship with our own minds going forward. The practice becomes a way of working with anxiety or the results of trauma so that we digest and release old ways of feeling and relating. Timing matters. You will have an opportunity to speak with your teacher before the course starts about any fears you have and to see if the course is right for you at this time.

Is MBSR right for me?

Each session involves a particular theme relevant to being a happy and thriving human and includes some didactic teaching and information on the theme, lots of experiential meditation exercises, discussion about your experience and practical applications to life.

What to expect in MBSR

There are lots of different courses out there, so it can be hard to compare. The main difference may be the care your teacher will take to get to know you and make this course relevant to your immediate challenges and interests. Even though it is a structured group program, the teacher is interested in meeting you where you are and helping you find your way with the material. Another difference might be that our courses are all trauma-informed, and evidence-based. Also, the way we structure the group process is very collaborative so people report that they learn so much from fellow-participants – not something they were expecting!