| What is
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction?
 Dr.
Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Since its inception, MBSR has evolved
into a common form of complementary medicine addressing a variety
of health problems. The National Institutes of Health's National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has provided a
number of grants to research the efficacy of the MBSR program in promoting
healing (see "Studies" below for information on this research).
Completed studies have found that pain-related drug utilization
was decreased, and activity levels and feelings of self esteem increased,
for a majority of participants. More information on these studies
can be found on the University of Massachusetts Medical School website: Center
for Mindfulness.
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 .
The MBSR program started in the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University
of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979 and is now offered in over
200 medical centers, hospitals, and clinics around the world, including
some of the leading integrative medical centers such as the Scripps
Center for Integrative Medicine, the Duke Center for Integrative
Medicine, and the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine.
Many of the MBSR classes are taught by physicians, nurses, social
workers, and psychologists, as well as other health professionals
who are seeking to reclaim and deepen some of the sacred reciprocity
inherent in the doctor-caregiver/patient-client relationship. Their
work is based on a need for an active partnership in a participatory
medicine, one in which patient/clients take on significant responsibility
for doing a certain kind of interior work in order to tap into their
own deepest inner resources for learning, growing, healing, and
transformation.
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
Studies
Staying
Well: A Clinical Trial of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and
Education Groups for HIV
A
Mindfulness Based Approach to HIV Treatment Side Effects
Massage,
Meditation, and Tai Chi for Chronic Lower Back Pain
Meditation-Based
Stress Reduction in Rheumatoid Arthritis
Mindfulness-Based
Art Therapy for Cancer Patients
Mindfulness
Based Stress Reduction for Hot Flashes
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