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MBSR is an 8-week program that helps people learn to deal effectively with stressful situations and circumstances in their lives. It was originally developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, at the University of Massachusetts (the Center For Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society), nearly 30 years ago. Dr. Kabat-Zinn developed a way to teach his participants to use mindfulness (meditation) techniques to help them reduce their levels of internal conflict and struggle in their lives, and to begin living more fully, even in the midst of serious difficulties.
More than 17,000 people have completed the MBSR program at the Universitiy of Massachusetts. They have included individuals with chronic pain, serious illness, anxiety and panic, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stressful situations at home or at work. Research has thoroughly demonstrated the effectiveness of this program.
Here is an excerpt from an article called "Doctor's Orders," originally published in the LA Times (no longer available free online; it was excerpted on the Sharpbrains blog, here):
"It appears to work. In a new study, published in October in the journal Pain, Natalia Morone, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, tracked the effect of mindfulness meditation on chronic lower back pain in adults 65 and older. The randomized, controlled clinical trial found that the 37 people who participated in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program had significantly greater pain acceptance and physical function than a similar size control group. Subsequently, the control group took the same eight-week program and had similar results.
[One participant said]: 'As a meditator, I learned the value of being present and how that allows clarity in processing our daily lives. [Our] clinical team sees children with chronic pain who are very difficult to treat and have been to many other specialists and feel discouraged by the time they come to us. I felt that learning to meditate would help the team feel a sense of balance and equanimity in the face of the anxiety and distress brought to them by these patients and their families.'
SCIENTISTS have studied the effects of meditation on pain for nearly three decades, ever since 1979, when MIT-trained microbiologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus and founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, used mindfulness meditation in a 10-week program to teach chronic pain patients how to cope. Kabat-Zinn's 1990 bestseller, "Full Catastrophe Living," described the technique he used --- mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR."
Here is the brochure (click here) from the Center For Mindfulness (CFM), describing the MBSR program. The program at KC Mindfulness follows the same format.
And here is another informative website (click here) from a practice in California (Steve Flowers' Mindful Living Programs) that offers MBSR.
Wow! That's very interesting. The benefits are obviously many. I will have to check out the MBSR program. Thanks!
Posted by: Rhonda Olsen | August 09, 2009 at 07:59 PM
It’s a great post,I’m so glad someone like you have the time, efforts and dedication writing, for topic like stress, MBSR program will help is a reorganization and control the stress prior to its bad effects.
Very nice post!
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