What is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction – MBSR?
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction or MBSR is an 8-week, evidence-based program that offers secular intensive mindfulness training to assist people with a host of stress-related physical, emotional and psychological conditions. Along with ongoing practice throughout the week, this class trains attention and cultivates awareness, providing one with positive coping tools needed to become strong and resilient in both body and mind.
This class is offered Online via Zoom as well as in-person when CDC safety guidelines permit.
MBSR classes includes:
- An Orientation Session (1 hour)
- 8 – MBSR Class Sessions (2 ½ hours ea.)
- Full Day Silent Mindfulness Retreat
- Free Online Guided Meditations
MBSR is a psychoeducational and highly experiential in nature. In addition to didactic teaching, classes are interactive and dynamic, using a combination of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga and the exploration of patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling and action. The MBSR program helps us become aware of our habitual patterns of reacting and the self-agency to interrupt this cycle and create more choice in our life. MBSR offers us the potential to relate to ourselves, our experiences and the world around us with fresh perspectives and in new and more meaningful ways.
MBSR was founded by Jon Kabat Zinn in 1979 out of the University of Massachusetts. Since then, there has been a tremendous amount of research coming out of Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, UW-Madison and other institutions around the world providing insight into, not only how MBSR positively benefits the body and mind, but also how it changes the structure and function of the brain through positive neuroplasticity.
Viktor Frankl, a Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, explains how mindfulness teaches us to pause and bring moment to moment awareness to our thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations in the face of unpleasant stimuli; permitting us to calmly choose to respond thoughtfully instead of simply reacting habitually to life’s inevitable challenges. Most of us, are unaware of this space “between stimulus and response” because we get caught in our habitual patterns of reacting to life.
“Between stimulus and response there’s a space, in that space lies our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor Frankl
What is … Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction for Teens MBSR-T or Stressed Teens?
MBSR-T otherwise known as Stressed Teens is a modified version of the adult Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction MBSR class designed specifically for adolescents. This 8-week class is modelled after the class by Jon Kabat-Zinn and was created by Gina Biegel in 2004 to meet the specific developmental and modern-day stressors of today’s teen. Classes are limited in size and are highly interactive, engaging, educational and experiential. Teens will learn a number of different tools and healthy coping strategies for stress management and emotional regulation. They will be engaged in mindfulness activities, reflections, group discussion and mindfulness practices including mediation, yoga, and other forms of informal practice to integrate into their everyday lives.
This class is offered Online via Zoom as well as in-person when CDC safety guidelines permit.
Classes include:
- 8 – Stressed Teens Classes (1 1/2 hours)
- Stressed Teens Workbook
- Journal
- Materials and Supplies for Group Activities
- Free Online Teen Meditations
