Are you easily ‘stressed out’?
Do you find it difficult to quiet your mind?
Thoughts racing? Lose focus easily?
Struggle with depression or anxiety?
Difficulty sleeping? Too much or too little?
Easily angered with your kids or spouse?
Do you experience panic attacks?
Digestive difficulties?
Do you worry about your health a lot?
Learning to pay attention, using mindfulness, a skill which can be cultivated, will help to reduce stress and diminish many problems associated with a busy lifestyle, stressed out mind and allow you to stop spinning and greet your life with awareness, acceptance and a calm response to whatever comes your way.
The goal of meditation is not to have your mind go blank and feel blissed out, unaware of life around you. Rather it’s a skill to cultivate awareness, noticing everything and choosing what, when and how to respond rather than being swept away in an automatic reaction.
Imagine living with a greater sense of ease, more peace in life, resilience, able to deal with stress effectively and with less anxiety. MBSR is the program that cultivates that skill. Traditionally an eight week program, but this week retreat will include all of the curriculum in a condensed time frame, allowing you to deepen your practice through the week and decide what form of mindfulness suits you best.
Mindfulness is a way of cultivating awareness of whatever is happening in your life and invites you to be present moment to moment. As you become more aware of the subtleties of thoughts, emotions and actions, you naturally become less reactive to emotional situations and better able to respond to events from a place of calm perspective. This MBSR program incorporates an educational component with the experiential learning of mindfulness meditation and yoga, in a way that enables you to apply what you learn to your daily life. There is no goal of having your mind go blank and feel blissed out.
Here are some reasons this week can benefit you:
Reduced anxiety & panic feelings
Increased coping with feelings of depression, anger, or other strong emotions
Improved sleep patterns
Improved immune system
Lower blood pressure
Opening doors to new ways of `seeing’
Increased ability to manage chronic pain
Taking time just for you
Understanding how stress manifests physically and emotionally
MBSR was developed by Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn in 1979. Since then it has been offered at over 200 clinics around the world and has been researched in medical settings with over 40 peer-reviewed articles in scientific literature. Hundreds of doctors refer their patients to this program when medicine is not able to meet all their needs in dealing with life issues such as chronic pain, stress related conditions and emotional turmoil. It can be a complement to modern medicine.