Almost 30 years ago Jon Kabat-Zinn began offering a program of stress reduction for patients and physicians at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. The program aimed to help them find a way to face the pain, illness and stress in their lives so as to live life as fully as possible. Students included those with cancer, heart disease, fatigue, chronic pain, emotional stress and many other challenges. Their physicians referred them when medical treatment could offer them nothing more to help with their suffering. The program combined stress medicine and psychology with meditation, gentle yoga, experiential education, and group dynamic exercises. The 8-week 30 hour program is known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Training or MBSR. The program is described in detail in Jon’s landmark book Full Catastrophe Living.

Since that first program tens of thousands of people around the world have taken the program. Many years of published research shows that the majority of those who have taken the program report benefits like reduction in pain levels, lasting ability to cope with stress, lasting decreases in physical and psychological symptoms, greater ability to relax, and greater energy. Students with a variety of challenges are helped with MBSR including those with chronic pain or illness, chronic anxiety or panic, gastrointestinal distress, high blood pressure, headaches, stress, fatigue, and more.

So how does this work? Through the techniques learned and practiced in the MBSR program students begin to work directly with the particular challenges in their personal lives. One technique, mindfulness meditation, helps cultivate continuous nonjudgmental awareness so that pain or stress is experienced in the context of the full fabric of life. One student arrived at an MBSR program in a wheelchair with so much pain in his feet that he couldn’t walk. After a few weeks he came to class using a cane explaining that he still had the pain but now he experienced it in the context of his whole life and it troubled him less. The program also includes gentle yoga, exercises to help cultivate awareness in daily living, group dialogue, and daily homework. Each aspect of the program is designed to help students face what is going on in their lives and learn to work skillfully to experience these challenges as a potential for growth and as part of a full life.

An MBSR program is very challenging. In contrast to many medical and therapeutic treatments where patients receive a treatment and expect a cure, MBSR is a practice that asks each participant to take personal responsibility for their experience. Students are given daily homework assignments and the techniques are learned so students are ultimately in charge of how they practice and what they learn. In this way students learn to uncover their inherent wisdom to deal with the catastrophes of life while living in a full and open way.

By Brant Rogers, MS, RYT of Yoga Hillsboro & The Stress Reduction Clinic

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