Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

What is MBSR?

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a practical training program that teaches a variety of techniques for managing stress and uncovering your own inner resilience.
No matter how overwhelmed, out of control, or helpless you may feel, you always have control over your attitude. MBSR nurtures the skills necessary to use our attitude to discover balance, vitality, and joy.
The MBSR program has been helping people uncover their inner resilience for over 30 years. It has been clinically proven to alleviate suffering from stress, chronic illness, physical and emotional pain, anxiety, and a wide range of other conditions. Today, the MBSR program is taught at hundreds of sites in 30 countries. It is offered in leading health care centers and at major corporations, such as the National Institute for Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, and General Mills, Inc.

Stress Reduction Program

An invitation to move toward greater balance, control and participation in your life...

World wide, tens of thousands of people have accepted this invitation. They are a lot like you, and they’ve learned to integrate the methods we’ve developed here at UMass into their everyday lives. Two decades of published research indicates that the majority of people who complete the course report:

• Lasting decreases in physical and psychological symptoms
• An increased ability to relax
• Reductions in pain levels and an enhanced ability to cope with pain that may not go away
• Greater energy and enthusiasm for life
• Improved self-esteem
• An ability to cope more effectively with both short and long-term stressful situations.

We call our approach mindfulness-based stress reduction or MBSR...

Mindfulness is a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life, a way of taking charge of your life, a way of doing something for yourself that no one else can do for you — consciously and systematically working with your own stress, pain, illness, and the challenges and demands of everyday life.
In contrast, you’ve probably encountered moments of “mindlessness” — a loss of awareness resulting in forgetfulness, separation from self, and a sense of living mechanically. Restoring within yourself a balanced sense of health and well being requires increased awareness of all aspects of self, including body and mind, heart and soul. Mindfulness-based stress reduction is intended to ignite this inner capacity and infuse your life with awareness.

Reawakening to what you already are...

Fortunately, mindfulness is not something that you have to “get” or acquire. It is already within you — a deep internal resource available and patiently waiting to be released and used in the service of learning, growing, and healing.
People participate for reasons as diverse as... 

• Stress — job, family or financial
• Chronic pain and illness
• Anxiety and panic
• GI distress
• Sleep disturbances
• Fatigue
• High blood pressure
• Headaches

They are sent by their doctor

A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has changed the way thousands of people live their lives.

In A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, you will learn how to change your relationship to stress, pain, and illness and move in the direction of greater calm, balance, and peace.