Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
by Alex Hutchins
MBSR is a structured complementary medicine program that uses mindfulness in an approach that focuses on alleviating pain and on improving physical and emotional well-being for individuals suffering from a variety of diseases and disorders. The program was established by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
While mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist teachings, Jon Kabat-Zinn has said that his program is not spiritually based, and is therefore open to everyone no matter what life circumstances they are in. MBSR is practiced by those old and young, sick and healthy, professionals and monks alike. Jon Kabat-Zinn has also said that the psychological principles of mindfulness, on which MBSR is based, have been most clearly articulated by those in Buddhist traditions. Today mindfulness has gained widespread practice in the medical community, and has many modern applications in health science.
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| Jon Kabat-Zinn |
JON KABAT-ZINN, PH.D., is founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the founding director of its renowned Stress Reduction Clinic and Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He teaches mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in various venues around the world. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT in 1971 in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate, Salvador Luria.
His major research interests have focused on mind/body interactions for healing, clinical applications of mindfulness meditation training, the effects of MBSR on the brain, on the immune system, and on healthy emotional expression while under stress; on healing (skin clearing rates) in people with psoriasis; on patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation; with prison inmates and staff; in multicultural settings; and on stress in various corporate settings and work environments.
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| Stress free . . . . . . . . . . |
He has trained groups of CEOs, judges, members of the clergy, and Olympic athletes (the 1984 Olympic Men’s Rowing Team) and congressional staff in mindfulness. The Stress Reduction Clinic has served as the model for mindfulness-based clinical intervention programs at over 200 medical centers and clinics nation-wide and abroad.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction brings together mindfulness meditation and yoga. Although MBSR is a training with potential benefits for all types of participants, historically, students have suffered from a wide range of chronic disorders and diseases. MBSR is an 8-week intensive training in mindfulness meditation, based on ancient healing practices, which meets on a weekly basis. Mindfulness practice is ideal for cultivating greater awareness of the unity of mind and body, as well as of the ways the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can undermine emotional, physical, and spiritual health.
The mind is known to be a factor in stress and stress-related disorders, and meditation has been shown to positively effect a range of autonomic physiological processes, such as lowering blood pressure and reducing overall arousal and emotional reactivity. In addition to mindfulness practices, MBSR uses martial arts to help reverse the prevalence of disuse atrophy from our culture's largely sedentary lifestyle, especially for those with pain and chronic illnesses. The program brings meditation and yoga together so that the virtues of both can be experienced simultaneously .
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is a form of MBSR that includes information about depression as well as cognitive therapy-based exercises linking thinking and its resulting impact on feeling. MBCT demonstrates how participants can best work with these thoughts and feelings when depression threatens to overwhelm them and how to recognize depressive moods that can bring on negative thought patterns .
Mindfulness is a lifetime engagement--not to get somewhere else, but to be where and as we actually are in this very moment, whether the experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Other Resource Links:
Center for Mindfulness A history of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program Studies
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