The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) workshop is a structured 8-week workshop teaching a variety of Mindfulness practices and concepts, helping you live in the moment more with increased presence and ease. The workshop teaches how to become more Mindful in daily living and how to regulate your reactions to stress and stressful situations, becoming more resilient and perhaps more compassionate towards yourself and others as a result.

History

There is a common misconception that Mindfulness practice is a ‘new trend’ or a ‘fad’. However, people have been practising meditation for thousands of years. In fact, there is said to be documented evidence in the form of wall art showing people practising meditation as early as 5,000 BC. It may feel like a new ‘trend’ because it has only been in recent years that the NHS has started delivering the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction workshop across the board following significant research evidence demonstrating it’s effectiveness in helping people experiencing common mental health difficulties.

The MBSR workshop was developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Stress Reduction Clinic there in 1979. He originally designed the workshop to treat a clinical population experiencing longstanding chronic pain conditions, realising that a lot of people’s suffering was not necessarily caused by their health condition itself, but by the way they were relating and responding to their health condition.

Course content and structure

The MBSR workshop uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, mindful movement and exploration of patterns of behaviour, thinking, feeling and bodily sensations. The weekly sessions are two hours long in which you will be invited to participate in various mindfulness meditation exercises, learn different concepts and theories, and reflect and share your experiences with the group to whatever degree you feel comfortable with. There is also an expectation that you will commit some time to home practice, with different suggestions of what to focus on being offered at the end of each session.

Each one of the eight weekly sessions is different. You will be taught different ways of how to practise Mindfulness and how to introduce this to your daily living. The course becomes more involved and gets deeper as it goes on. In the latter stages of the course we focus on compassion-based exercises and theories, taking from recent advances in compassion-based research and practice such as the work of Paul Gilbert (Compassion Focused Therapy) and Kristin Neff (Mindful Self-Compassion).

Purpose

Professor Kabat-Zinn defines Mindfulness as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”. He has also described Mindfulness as “a deeply embodied experience of wakefulness”. The intention in practice is often to “fall awake”; becoming more aware of yourself and more attuned with your body, which might then lead to feelings of relaxation, but equally mind not. Relaxation isn’t the goal, nor is becoming ‘Zen’, or having transcendental experiences. In the fact, there is no goal, rather a commitment to ‘presence’. In becoming more aware of the present moment we can help ourselves enjoy the world around us more, understand ourselves better and help our bodies self-regulate more effectively.

Benefits

There are numerous benefits to living more Mindfully. If you’re someone who can be prone to feelings of overwhelm or underwhelm, Mindfulness practice may help you regulate your stress response, feel a sense of increased resilience and capacity to tolerate life’s challenges. You may find that your sleep improves, you are less anxious, less depressed, less irritable and less impulsive. You may find that you become more compassionate and patient with yourself and others, that you increasingly notice the ‘good’ as well as the ‘bad’ in everyday living and that you feel a greater sense of gratitude for what you have in life. You may find that you are better able to manage chronic pain and fatigue conditions, have more tolerance to discomfort and more able to change unwanted habits of behaviour.

Format

I deliver Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction workshops online throughout the year to small groups of people using Microsoft Teams. I invite people to have their cameras switched on, however if this feels too overwhelming for you then it is perfectly acceptable for you to have your camera switched off if I know that you are safe. The workshops are open to everyone, including those who cannot contribute financially. No-one is turned away due to inability to pay. Once signed on to a course you will be sent a link, joining instructions and a very brief screening questionnaire to fill out.