Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program

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The MBSR program is designed to guide you in using your innate abilities to more effectively work with stress, pain, and illness. Training in mindfulness helps develop insight into stressful situations that usually inhibit people from responding as successfully as they are capable.

This life-affirming program is for people who have work, family or financial stress, or who experience anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep disturbances, GI distress, high blood pressure, or chronic pain and illness.

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) is an eight-week program that will assist you in managing stress, illness, and pain. Mindfulness, a highly refined, systematic use of attention and concentration – a universal human capacity you can develop further. The mindfulness-based stress reduction program is interactive, engaging you in practical activities to that enable you to bring mindfulness to the stress, pain, or illness in your life.

MBSR was developed at the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979. The program has been successfully completed by over 16,000 people there and is now offered at over some 200 hospitals, clinics, and universities worldwide. MBSR is one of the most effective and widely researched stress management programs available today.

MBSR has been proven effective for managing

Many people are referred to this program by their doctor or decide to participate themselves because they are not feeling well and want to participate more fully in their health.

This life-affirming program includes...

The program, participants, and facilitator create a safe, supportive, and deeply engaging learning environment. For further information about the MBSR program please feel free to call 706-543-0162 or e-mail the class facilitator Mike Healy at mfhealy@bellsouth.net

MBSR Program Details

Mindfulness, in essence, is a highly refined, systematic "attentional" strategy aimed at developing both calmness of mind and body. Mindfulness develops deep insight into an array of mental and physical conditions that inhibit one’s capacity to respond effectively and pro-actively in demanding, highly charged situations, as well as in more commonplace everyday activities. Mindfulness, our innate capacity to flexibly and fluidly pay attention from moment-to-moment, is a universal human capacity. The mindfulness-based stress reduction program is interactive and seeks to engage you in practical activities to enhance learning.

MBSR Program

This program is based on the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program has been successfully utilized with appropriate modifications in a number of other medical centers, as well as non- medical settings such as schools, professional programs, athletic training programs, prisons, and the workplace worldwide.

Founded by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, the Stress Reduction Clinic has been featured in the Bill Moyer’s’ PBS documentary Healing and the Mind, on NBC Dateline, on ABC’s Chronicle and in various national print media and is the subject of Kabat-Zinn’s best-selling book, Full Catastrophe Living and Saki Santorelli’s Heal Thy Self. Since the inception of MBSR, more than 16,000 people have completed the eight-week program at the University of Massachusetts Stress Reduction Clinic, and many others have completed the program at 200 centers worldwide.

Published Research Results

Published research from the Stress Reduction Clinic documents that a majority of participants report a lasting decrease in both physical and psychological symptoms. The majority of participants report an increased ability to relax, greater energy and enthusiasm for life, improved self-esteem, an increased ability to cope more effectively with both short- term and long-term stressful situations, as well as major positive changes in health attitudes and behaviors. Pain levels also improve and people learn to cope better with chronic pain. In addition, the perception of self, self in relationship to others and self in relationship to the larger environment is experienced with more clarity and understanding. These findings are consistent with a larger body of both quantitative and qualitative research on the effects of meditation.

Who Is this Program For?

People participate in this program for a variety of reasons: job, family, or financial stress; anxiety and panic; sleep disturbances; fatigue, GI distress; high blood pressure, chronic pain and illness, and headaches. This is a life-affirming program in conscious living. This highly participatory, practical program includes: guided instruction in mindfulness meditation practices, informal meditation strategies, inquiry activities that enhance awareness in everyday life, individually tailored instruction, group dialogue, and daily home assignments.

Although this program is a relatively short intervention of eight weeks, life-long learning is fostered. This program offers an immediate and deliberate shift in one’s health orientation as well as instructions and references to encourage a continued deepening of understanding of this shift and the techniques explored in this program.

Key Characteristics of the Program

Facilitator/Instructor

Mike Healy, Ed.D. has practiced meditation for 30 years, 21 years of which has been Mindfulness Meditation, and has taught this program for several years at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education and Athens Mind Body Institute.

Healy has participated in a seven-day professional training program under the direction of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder, and Dr. Saki Santorelli, director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School; has completed the Teacher Development Intensive at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness; and has had additional training attending multi-day mindfulness meditation retreats. Healy completed a doctorate in Adult Education at the University of Georgia, studying the mindfulness meditation transformational learning process.

Resources

Do not believe anything on the mere authority of teachers or priests. Accept as true and as the guide to your life only that which accords with your own reason and experience, after thorough investigation. Accept only that which contributes to the well being of yourself and others."

Eastern Philosopher

References

Joseph Goldstein (1976). "The Experience of Insight: A Natural Unfolding." Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press.

Mike Healy (2001). "The Insight (Vipassana) Meditation Transformational Learning Process: A Phenomenological Study." Ed.D. Dissertation. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia.

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990). "Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness." New York: Dell Publishing.

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994). "Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life." New York: Hyperion.

Jack Kornfield (1993). "A Path With Heart." New York: Bantam Books.

Jack Kornfield (2000). "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry." New York: Bantam Books.

Krishnamurti (1972). "The Flight of the Eagle." New York: Harper & Row Publishers.

Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler (1998). "The Art of Happiness." New York: Penguin Putnam.

Mary Rose O’Reilley (1998). "Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice." Portsmith, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Sharon Salzberg (1995). "LovingKindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness." Boston, Shambhala Publications.

Saki Santorelli (1999). "Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine." New York: Bell Tower.

Research References

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1982). "An out-patient program in behavioral medicine for chronic pain patients based on the practice of mindfulness meditation: Theoretical considerations and preliminary results." General Hospital Psychiatry, 4, 33-47.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1993). "Mindfulness meditation: Health benefits of an ancient Buddhist practice." In D. Goleman & J. Gurin (Eds.), Mind/Body medicine. Yonkers: Consumer Reports Books.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Chapman, A., & Salmon, P. G. (1997). "Relationship of cognitive and somatic components of anxiety to patient preference for different relaxation techniques." Mind/Body Medicine, 2(3), 101-109.

Kabat-Zinn, J., & Chapman-Waldrop, A. (1988). "Compliance with an outpatient stress reduction program: Rates and predictors of completion." Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 11, 333-352.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Lipworth, L., & Burney, R. (1985). "The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for the self-regulation of chronic pain." Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 8(2), 163-189.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Lipworth, L., Burney, R., & Sellers, W. (1986). "Four-year follow-up of a meditation-based program for the self-regulation of chronic pain: Treatment outcomes and compliance." Clinical Journal of Pain, 2, 159-173.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Massion, A., Kristeller, J., Peterson, L. G., Fletcher, K., Pbert, L., Lenderking, W., & Santorelli, S. F. (1992). "Effectiveness of a meditation-based stress reduction program in the treatment of anxiety disorders." American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 936-943.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Massion, A. O., Hebert, J. R., & Rosenbaum, E. (1998). Meditation. In J. C. Holland (Ed.), "Textbook on psycho-oncology" (pp. 767-779). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kabat-Zinn, J., Wheeler, E., Light, T., Skillings, A., Scharf, M., Cropley, T., Hosmer, D., & Bernhard, J. (1998). "Influence of a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction intervention on rates of skin clearing in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis undergoing phototherapy (UVB) and photochemotherapy (PUVA)." Psychosomatic Medicine, 60, 625-632.

Miller, J., Fletcher, K., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (1995). "Three-year follow-up and clinical implications of a mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention in the treatment of anxiety disorders." General Hospital Psychiatry, 17, 192-200.

Salmon, P. G., Santorelli, S. F., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (1998). "Intervention elements promoting adherence to mindfulness-based stress reduction programs in the clinical behavioral medicine setting." In S. A. Shumaker & E. Schron & J. Ockene & W. McBee (Eds.), Handbook of health behavior change (2nd ed., pp. 239-266): Springer.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time.

T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets