Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

The MBSR Program for Enhancing Health and Vitality

Linda Lehrhaupt, Petra Meibert

• Publisher: New World Library
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781608684809
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Médecine alternative et complémentaire

Practicing mindfulness helps us meet life's challenges with gentleness and clarity. By fully engaging in the present moment as best we can, we nurture our capacity to approach difficulties with less judgment and water the seeds of wisdom and openheartedness in ourselves. This book offers a concise and thorough immersion in the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course developed by Dr. Jon Kabat­-Zinn. It features straightforward instruction in the main exercises of MBSR — sitting meditation, walking meditation, eating meditation, yoga, body scan, and informal, everyday practices. MBSR has been shown to help alleviate symptoms associated with chronic illness, anxiety, pain, burnout, cancer, and other stress-related conditions.

The authors, two leading MBSR teacher trainers, provide step-by-step instructions as well as illustrative real-life examples. Readers embarking on a course in MBSR will find clear guidance, trainers will gain a valuable tool for their teaching, and anyone experiencing or receiving treatment for challenges of mind, body, or spirit will find practical, inspirational help.

PART

1

Getting Started in MBSR

Background Basics

1

What Is MBSR and Who Can Benefit from It?

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is taught as an eight-week course of usually two-and-a-half- to three-hour sessions, with a full day of silent mindfulness practice between the sixth and seventh meeting. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed MBSR at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. Inspired by his own experiences with Vipassana and Zen meditation, as well as yoga, Kabat-Zinn taught the first MBSR course in 1979. MBSR was part of the then-emerging field known today as mind-body, or integrative, medicine.

At its core, MBSR is an intensive training in mindfulness, which Kabat-Zinn has defined as “the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.”¹ The most detailed training and study of mindfulness occur in Buddhist traditions, particularly Vipassana, but mindfulness is expressed in other contemplative traditions as well. Since the 1970s it has been integrated into Western health care, education, and other fields and is seen as a nondenominational, nonreligious training available to everyone, whatever their belief. As Kabat-Zinn notes, mindfulness

is a way of looking deeply into oneself in the spirit of self-inquiry and self-understanding. For this reason it can be learned and practiced, as is done in mindfulness-based programs throughout the world, without appealing to Asian culture or Buddhist authority to enrich it or authenticate it. Mindfulness stands on its own as a powerful vehicle for self-understanding and healing. In fact, one of the major strengths of MBSR and of all other specialized mindfulness-based programs such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is that they are not dependent on any belief system or ideology.²

Shortly after Kabat-Zinn began teaching MBSR, the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center opened with MBSR as its flagship program. During a one-year trial phase, the clinic held stress-reduction courses with up to thirty participants in each class, many of them chronic-pain patients. The course proved effective in that participants learned to handle their pain in a better way. Their personal suffering diminished, and in some cases their pain levels were reduced in intensity.

From the outset, Kabat-Zinn and his coworkers did research studies.³ MBSR has been shown to be helpful in reducing symptoms and improving the quality of life for people experiencing a wide range of conditions.

MBSR was the first of what are now known as mindfulness-based interventions or approaches. Programs whose formats (including course length and emphasis on practice at home) are modeled on MBSR include, among others, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT), Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP), and Mindfulness-Based Cancer Care. The main difference between MBSR and these more specialized programs is that the latter generally target people with a specific condition — for example, chronic pain, multiple relapses of depression, substance abuse, cancer, and so on. MBSR courses address participants who have an array of conditions but who are not separated according to their diagnosis or situation.

MBSR is being taught throughout the world by a wide range of professionals, including physicians, psychologists, psychotherapists, schoolteachers, social workers, coaches, physiotherapists, nurses, occupational therapists, chaplains, yoga teachers, and many more people in a wide variety of environments and institutions, including hospitals, psychiatric clinics, universities, private practices, schools, hospices, adult-education institutes, corporations, prisons, counseling centers, medical schools, the armed forces, and many other settings.⁴

MBSR is suitable for people who want to learn to cope with stress using their own resources to improve the quality of their lives. A key element of the course is seeing that it is possible to shift the way we view events or conditions in our lives. In the MBSR course, participants learn that practicing mindfulness can help alleviate their symptoms by creating a wider context for their condition. Rather than focusing on the situation itself, we learn to observe the way we relate to it on emotional, intellectual, and behavioral levels. In the case of relating to pain, for example, some clients in our classes report that the emotional pain (anger, blaming, resignation, a sense of helplessness) they experienced before the course no longer dominates their waking moments. While participating in the course they have practiced being aware of thoughts as thoughts rather than facts, enabling them to create some distance rather than be carried away by them. By practicing the formal MBSR exercises, and particularly the body scan, pain patients can begin to shift their relationship to pain from “I am my pain” to “My body is experiencing pain, but it is not all of me.” They may still experience physical pain, but it does not narrow their life choices or dominate their thoughts as much as it did before.

In summing up the relationship between scientific studies and the way we see ourselves, Kabat-Zinn points to the health-enhancing qualities that mindfulness of thoughts and emotions can support:

If we can be aware — especially in our own personal experience, as well as from the evidence from scientific studies — that certain attitudes and ways of seeing ourselves and others are health-enhancing: — that affiliative trust, compassion, kindness, and seeing the basic goodness in others and in ourselves has intrinsic healing power, as does seeing crises and even threats as challenges and opportunities, then we can work mindfully to consciously develop these qualities in ourselves from moment to moment and from day to day. They become new options for us to cultivate. They become new and profoundly satisfying ways of seeing and being in the world.⁵

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Who Can Benefit from an MBSR Course?

People enroll in MBSR courses for a variety of reasons. Here are a few typical statements from participants in our classes:

• “When I get stressed, I tend to be dominated by negative thoughts that influence my mood to such an extent that I am no longer capable of being productive. I want to learn to deal with challenges in a calmer and more tranquil way.”

• “I would like to develop a better relationship with my body.”

• “I want to learn a different approach for coping with stress than the one I’ve used until now — namely, feeling helpless and paralyzed and blaming others.”

• “I take medicine for my illness, and I do what the doctor tells me. But I want to take care of all of me, not just the parts that don’t work.”

• “I want to get a better sense of my limits and stay in tune with myself. Even when I find it difficult emotionally, I want to be more aware of myself.”

• “I want to be aware earlier when stress is building in me and to have the tools to work with it.”

• “I want to learn how to stay relaxed even when I’m in stressful situations.”

• “What appeals to me about MBSR is that I can learn to take time for myself on a daily basis and to appreciate myself once again.”

• “I am looking for something to counterbalance my hectic work life, and I want to learn how to relax again.”

• “I want to find better ways of dealing with the minor emergencies of everyday life.”

• “I am restricted by chronic pain to such an extent that it’s the only thing on my mind. I want to find a better way of coping with pain.”

• “Until recently I had no problems with stress; in fact, it was almost as if I needed stress to make me feel good. But now this doesn’t seem to work anymore, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I seem to be increasingly restless and nervous, and my family says I am very irritable lately.”

• “I work about ten hours a day, and I enjoy it. But I find it hard to wind down in the evenings. I’m constantly on the go, and I have the feeling that’s not good in the long run. I want to find a better way to switch off.”

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Alleviating symptoms of illness and stress is an important aspect of an MBSR course and an understandable motivation for many to join, but practicing mindfulness and making it part of our daily lives goes far beyond reducing the symptoms of an illness. Mindfulness is more than a problem-solving technique. It is a fundamental shift in attitude toward ourselves and whatever our condition might be. It helps us tap into our inner resources and capacities and access the potential for healing that we all have. This in turn creates the basis for an inner orientation toward a wholesome way of life. In this sense, mindfulness is a fundamental attitude and way of living.

Developing a kind and compassionate attitude toward ourselves is a key factor in the healing power of mindfulness. By healing, we do not mean curing an illness or getting rid of debilitating symptoms. Healing in this context is related to experiencing wholeness, and we can experience a sense of wholeness, even in the midst of serious illness.

Karin, an MBSR course participant who has multiple sclerosis (MS), speaks of this. She regularly attends MBSR follow-up days offered for former students. She expressed the value of mindfulness practice for her life in the following way: “It’s becoming increasingly clear what the MBSR course did for me in terms of the way I deal with MS. At the beginning of the mindfulness journey, I saw myself as someone who ‘suffered’ from MS. Thanks to the training I now say: ‘I live with MS.’ Perhaps this new attitude, and the ability to experience the difference, is the point of mindfulness practice; but for me it is also about the possibility of suffering and living, both at the same time.”

A study at Basel University Hospital in Switzerland supports Karin’s personal experiences of the benefits of MBSR for her. The study shows that MS patients who took part in an MBSR course experienced more vitality and better quality of life and suffered less frequently from depression.⁶

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Which Conditions Does MBSR Help?

In addition to MBSR’s preventive and supportive role in helping us cope with everyday stress — at work and at home — scientific studies have shown that it can be helpful in alleviating the symptoms and psychological dist...