MINDFULNESS-BASED STRESS REDUCTION

“Fearlessness is the first prerequisite of a spiritual life.”
~ Gandhi

What is mindfulness-based stress reduction?

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is based on a form of meditation known as mindfulness. Mindfulness is a basic human quality, a way of learning to pay wise attention to whatever is happening in your life that allows you a greater sense of connection to your life inwardly and outwardly.

Mindfulness is also a practice, a systematic method, aimed at cultivating clarity, insight, and understanding.

In the context of your health, mindfulness is a way for you to experientially learn to take
better care of yourself by exploring and understanding the interplay of mind and body
and mobilizing your own inner resources for coping, growing and healing.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is the cultivation of present moment awareness.

Through mindfulness meditation, one can focus on moment to moment without the disruption of future or past events. It’s a grounding and centering meditation that can assist with remembering the breath and being present.

The Center for Mindfulness, established in 1995 by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, is an outgrowth of the acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic at UMASS Medical Center, the oldest and largest academic medical center-based stress reduction program in the world. The Stress Reduction Program is the subject of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s best-selling book, Full Catastrophe Living.

Over three decades of research suggest that training in mindfulness and MBSR can positively and often profoundly affect participants’ ability to reduce medical symptoms and psychological distress while learning to live life more fully.

Mindfulness Meditation is about learning to experience life fully as it unfolds – moment by moment. One popular misconception about meditation is that it is a way to make your mind blank, so you can escape what you are feeling.

However, Dr. Kabat-Zinn wants you to understand that meditation is a way to wake up, experience the fulness of your life, and transform your relationship with your problems, your fears, and any pain and stress in your life, so they don’t control you and erode the quality of your life and your creativity. It’s not about running away or manipulating mental states.

Through the practice of mindfulness, you can learn to develop greater calmness, clarity and insight in facing and embracing all your life experiences, even life’s trials, and turning them into occasions for learning, growing and deepening your own strength and wisdom.

How do you use Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a basic human quality, a way of learning to pay wise attention to whatever is happening in your life that allows you a greater sense of connection to your inward and outward life.

Mindfulness is also a practice, a systematic method aimed at cultivating clarity, insight and understanding. With so much uncertainty in our world today, we need mindfulness in our lives more than ever. The more we can stay present and cultivate present moment awareness, the more calm and aware we will be.

Please contact me at (970) 376-4163 for individual sessions on mindfulness practices.