Over the last decade, an increasing number of parents, children, educators, clinicians and researchers have studied and experienced the wide-ranging benefits of bringing mindfulness practice to youth in educational, clinical, and community settings. To help develop best practices within this growing movement, the University of California San Diego’s School of Medicine and Center for Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens, developed the Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, which took place in February 2012.
The first-of-its-kind conference was designed to engage professionals in the ongoing discussion of the field as well as to assist their professional growth, all within the context of a thought-provoking, collegial and collaborative environment.
“We are excited about sharing the conference audio and videos of this dynamic gathering to those who weren’t able to attend, and thereby extend the discussion across the globe to people interested in this work in all its forms,” said Steven D. Hickman, PsyD, Director, UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. “Our deepest hope is that our efforts will support and deepen the important work being done, and foster even more profound impact in years to come.”
Publisher More Than Sound recorded over 20 hours of presentations and workshops with thought leaders from various disciplines (clinicians, educators and researchers), including the following keynote addresses:
Rick Hanson, PhD
Neuropsychologist and Author Managing the Caveman Brain in the 21st Century
Susan Kaiser-Greenland, JD
Author, Educator, Co-Founder, Inner Kids The Mindful Child: Teaching the New ABCs of Attention, Balance and Compassion
Amishi Jha, PhD Psychologist and Researcher
University of Miami From Dazed and Distracted to Attentive and Calm: What the Neuroscience of Mindfulness Reveals
Pamela Seigle, MS
Executive Director, Courage & Renewal NE
Courage in Schools: Connecting Hearts and Minds in the Adult Community
The following workshops and breakout sessions are also available:
Gina M. Biegel, MA, LMFT
Psychotherapist and Author, Founder, Stressed Teens Program Mindfulness for Professionals Working with Adolescents: A Training in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program for Teens (MBSR-T)
Randye Semple, PhD
Clinical Psychologist and Author Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Anxious Children
Introduction to Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Children (MBCT-C)
Megan Cowan Co-Founder and Executive Director of Programs, Mindful Schools Integrating Mindfulness into the K5 Classroom: Lessons Learned From Teaching Over 13,000 Students
Gina M. Biegel, MA, LMFT Race to Right Here Right Now: An Introduction for Utilizing and Disseminating Mindfulness with Adolescents
M. Lee Freedman, MD
Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Co-Founder, Mindfulness Toronto, Founder, Mindful Families and School Mindful Parents: Resilient Children: Teaching Mindful Parenting Practice through Group and Individual Psychotherapy
Joe Klein, LPC, CSAC
Founder and President Inward Bound Mindfulness Education Sex, Drugs, Facebook and Ice Cream
Sam Himelstein, PhD
Psychotherapist, Researcher, and Mindfulness Teacher
and
Chris McKenna
Mindfulness Teacher & Executive Director, Mind Body Awareness Project Teaching Mindfulness to Urban & At-Risk Adolescents
Amy Saltzman, MD
Mindfulness Teacher & Holistic Physician, Creator and Director: Still Quiet Place, Co-founder and Director: Association for Mindfulness in Education Still Quiet Place: Proven Practices for Teaching Children and Teens the Skills for Peace and Happiness
Amy Garrett, PhD
Research Scientist Stanford University Brain Abnormalities Associated with Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Adolescents
Nimrod Sheinman, ND
Naturopathic physician and mind-body expert, Founder, Israel Center for Mind-Body Medicine, Founder, The Mindful Language Project Bringing the Soul Back to School: Lessons Learned from over 15 Years of Teaching Mindfulness and Mind-Body Health in Israeli Schools
The audio recordings and videos are a useful resource for psychologists, counselors, educators, health professionals and parents who are working with children and teens. To purchase the audio or streaming conference videos of individual talks or the full conference, and to learn more about each talk, visit More Than Sound. Presenter biographies are available here. Sample video clips are available on More Than Sound’s YouTube channel.
For many of us, it is in our most significant relations that the quality of mindful presence dissipates. Our formal meditation practice, challenging as it can sometimes be, is often a “cake walk” in comparison to the challenges of mindful relations. Our families and partner relations offer an extraordinarily fertile field for our mindful heart’s awakening.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, the esteemed creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program entitled his seminal book on MBSR “Full Catastrophe Living”. Referring to the “full catastrophe” of family living, Zinn’s work encourages us to bring our mindfulness skills into the beautiful and volatile arena of our everyday relationships.
It is often in our most significant relations that we are more inclined to react defensively than to respond mindfully. This may be because we are much more vulnerable with the persons that we care about most deeply. Our history with our families of origin, nuclear families and partners often make it very difficult to remain present with an open heart. We tend to project unto them (and they unto us) ideals and the fulfillment of expectations that are completely impossible for even the most enlightened persons in history to fulfill. Mindfulness practices can help us recognize these projections. By bringing us back to the present moment, mindfulness allows us to relate to each other, as we truly are, imperfect and indescribably precious.
My hope for this class is that compassion and connectedness which are integral elements of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction can be accentuated. Straight up what most fuels my draw towards mindfulness practice is the awakening of love.
Demanding and critical as we are often in our expectations of others, we tend to be even more brutal critics of ourselves. At a meeting the Dalai Lama had with western teachers, he wept, when he heard the westerners describe the enormous suffering their students and themselves experienced due to their harsh inner critics. The Dalai Lama said that this was from his eastern perspective a new form of suffering with which he was not familiar.
Mindful relating begins with a compassionate relation to oneself. By learning to relate to our own “Inner Lover”, the “Inner Critic’s” power over one begins to decrease. We are then more able to approach our relations with others with fewer judgments, more assuredness and joy.
Mindful relating can help us identify “triggers” in the present moment as soon as we begin to experience fears, judgments, and divisive separateness. Before we become fully “hooked” into a habitual negative pattern of reaction, we can learn new ways of responding skillfully. In situations when we start to feel engulfed by anxiety, anger, or emotional paralysis we can practice bringing compassionate attention to the bodily experiences that are occurring. By “unhooking” our emotions from the “stories” our anxious thoughts are creating, we can recuperate sooner our sense of calmer connection.
In the Your Mindful Heartcourse, participants will be introduced to mindfulness skills that may help strengthen our relational bridges. Mindful awareness releases a greater clarity and strength from which we can make more informed and safer decisions. Mindful relating points us to the liberating realization that our true nature is already imbedded in a wise love that is both protective of our own value and capable of great love.
The UCSD Center for Mindfulness offers a spectrum of courses that can make the inevitable difficulties of relating less stressful and more grounded in a joyous life with others. The Mindful Heart course is just one small aspect of this much larger program. It is simply another compassionate attempt to “sell you a little water” in the already free flowing rivers of your hearts.
Luis points out that “When I am feeling relatively happy I am totally convinced that love is our true nature and that I am in exactly the right relationships to become fully alive. When I am feeling physical or strong emotional pain my convictions and sense of connectedness quickly fade. My appreciation for my wife, family of origin, everybody, especially my-self goes down the drain. All I can do is try to be awake compassionately to the experience of the inner yelp for help. Help seems to come a little more quickly when I struggle to stay mindfully with these difficult moments with a seed of compassionate hope. My intention in this class is to together share a few skillful means to help us stay a little more connected to others and ourselves when the waters of the relational psyche are stormy.”
Although couples are most welcome, this class is not primarily a mindful couples workshop. It is intended rather as an opportunity to learn from each other what may strengthen a little our mindful hearts capacity to imperfectly love our lives with others.
Jan and I see mindfulness as the base from which we work- the heart of the work. We recognize that many professionals have extensive skills in some areas but need help with mindful eating skills, so Jan and I created this training based on Jan’s book, Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food. We have uniquely brought Jan’s deep understanding of mindfulness and meditation, her extensive work with distressed eating, and her medical background together with my individual and group therapeutic experience working with people with distressed eating patterns, MBSR and MBCT training, and meditation practice.
The professional training we offer is clearly based in a mindfulness approach that addresses thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and behaviors associated with distressed eating, and provides practical, doable exercises and simple meditations that you can weave into your individual work or into a group program. In our training we don’t teach about calories or how to lose weight, nor do we talk about dietary plans. This is different from most trainings. We do talk about quality of food, types of food the body must have, hunger and fullness, and many other related issues. We are focused on helping people change their relationship to food, eating and their bodies. We provide you with a six-session sample curriculum, yours to adapt to your needs, and CDs that contain meditations and exercises.
MB-EAT, Jean Kristeller’s research initiative, has illuminated some important points with a focus on weight loss, one of the techniques used being mindfulness. For some professionals difficulties arose in teaching a mindfulness approach while instructing patients to reduce calories, use pedometers and assess weight loss. Professionals got confused, and patients get confused. For some people this is not a problem. The MB-EAT program is a very structured program for groups, and many clinicians told me that they were working one-on-one and wanted the flexibility to bring mindful eating to their individual patients. This is simply a different approach and very valuable for some populations.
Jan and I feel that your own personal experience of going through this hands-on training, doing the eating and mindfulness exercises, hearing your colleagues’ responses and questions, practicing meditation, and being in a supportive community will not only enhance your learning but give you confidence to teach mindful eating to your clients. In teaching mindful eating skills you will provide patients with skills for a lifetime which they can begin again and again if need be, without the “side effects” of yoyo dieting. Additionally, in becoming mindful it spills into all aspects of their life- it becomes a way of being, rather than constantly doing or trying another fad or diet.
I hope this is helpful and will help you choose the program that is best suited to you and the population you serve
Char Wilkins, LCSW is a mindfulness-based psychotherapist who specializes in working with women who have experienced childhood abuse and trauma, and those who suffer with depression, anxiety and disordered eating. She trains professionals in the application of mindfulness in psychotherapy, advanced MBCT skills, mindful eating, and was awarded teacher certification in MBSR by the Center for Mindfulness, UMass Medical School, Worcester, MA. Char serves on the Board of Directors for The Center for Mindful Eating and is the owner/director of the Center for Mindful Living, LLC in Connecticut.
It is our pleasure to be highlighting our dear colleague Steve Flowers MBSR Online Program. Steve is the founder and director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic at the Enloe Medical Center in Chico, California. Steve provides training in mindfulness-based psychotherapy for mental health professionals in workshops, seminars and retreat settings with his dear friend and partner Bob Stahl, Ph.D. through Mindful Living Programs, and provides fully accredited mindfulness retreats for physicians and other health professionals.
The MBSR online program provides a means for all English speaking people in the world to participate in an MBSR program. This program was created for those people who do not have access to a ‘brick and mortar” resource for MBSR but do have access to high speed internet. The 8-week series is identical to those offered in medical centers around the world but is provided via encrypted video conferencing software that enables teachers and students to see and hear each other and interact together in small groups, or in a large group. The classroom resources also enable us to view posted documents, watch videos or write to one another via white board and chat features. The program is only offered in real time but each class is recorded for participants who may for some reason miss a class and want to catch up.
The MBSR online has served participants from every corner of the world since 1989 bringing together unlikely groups such as Muslim’s from Algiers with Jew’s from Israel, Catholics from Italy, Southern Baptists from Alabama, Buddhists from Viet Nam and Protestant’s from England. Though each participant is in the class at the same time and same place (here and now) and engaged in the same meditation practice, one has joined at 3:00 PM in their time zone while another may be participating from 11:00 PM the previous day.
In addition to our regular MBSR program, over the last year and for the remainder of this year we are providing the intervention for a study investigating the value of MBSR for persons engaged in cancer treatment. These patients are participating in the online program from their homes in or near Alberta Canada and are reporting some extraordinary benefits from their work thus far which will be published late this year or 2013. By coincidence as I am writing this introduction to MBSR online and wondering what I might say about it, I received this note a few minutes ago from a woman who just completed her 8-week program last week: “I’m writing to thank you. I got so much out of [our class] and am amazed at how one small thing can change your life. For me it was “thoughts are just thoughts”. I got really good at telling myself stories and they really do start being real. I am much more aware now and stop, smile to myself and say, there you go again, it’s is not real.”
Perhaps another story can help illustrate some of the benefits online students take. Last year a 40 year old mother of two in our class for cancer patients was informed that her treatment was being suspended and she had but a few months to live. Up to this point Kara (a pseudonym) believed treatment had been successful but learned a few days before that there was nothing more they could do for her. The wisdom she shared that evening is not only a gift for those who learn they are dying but for all of us that face the uncertainties and perils of life every day:
“I’m finding mountain meditation to be very, very helpful. I just imagine I am my own mountain and I’m watching everything swirl around me and not getting bothered by it. You can really find places of choiceless awareness during mountain practice. When I first started hearing about how the idea of attachment and suffering I thought, well, but how can you not be attached to things and people? But as I’m learning more about it I don’t know if it’s about attachment as much, or as you say our expectations for desired outcomes – what we want from this attachment or this thing or this person – rather than just enjoying it right in that moment that it is. I am relating to this ever more so.
How does that apply to your recent diagnosis?
I don’t seem to be as upset about it as other people around me. They are attached to me and my outcomes but I want to go around and spread the word, “What are we doing today – right now in this moment?” That’s where the focus is and you know – it’s a lot easier to live with that. You don’t expend, waste so much energy trying to figure out, “what am I going to do if this happens or if this happens?” You know?
There is a place for hoping even in the present moment – do you have hope?
Not really – no. I just go with the facts that I have in the context that I know them and how am I feeling today. But I do have hope for what I do today. I hope to be alive as I can in this minute and the next minute.(Laughter) I hope for the little things – like, I hope to get my son moved out of the house, things like that. I have small hopes. I don’t hope for miracles, I don’t hope for a cure. I have friends that keep telling me, “Don’t give up hope”. But, I’m not going to waste energy on things that don’t look like they are going to pan out. I hope to get my pain under control, to do what I can on a daily basis to make that happen – like try different positions and manage my pain medications, see how I can use distractions.
I hope to finish more art work, that’s one of the lessons I’ve learned in regards to the story I have going about myself. . . don’t believe what other people are telling you. I grew up thinking that my older sister was the artistic one in the family and I was the logical one. And it’s nice to break through those barriers and explain to the family that we can be whoever we ant to be – and that doesn’t depend on what we have done in our past.
I remember from the beginning of our class that you have had a long term relationship with an internal critic. How is that relationship these days?
She’s still hanging around though she’s becoming quieter. You know, when we were dong loving kindness meditation and sending out kindness to persons we don’t like very much – I could think of a few ex’s – but I realized, we all suffer – I’m seeing where these people have suffered in their lives and how that accounts for their behavior. And it makes it easier to say, “I feel bad that you have suffered and that’s why this behavior has come about and I hope that you can get over that suffering. . . it’s almost like forgiveness, almost, but not quite!” Laughter.
But maybe it’s none the less enough to allow you to reconcile with your side of the relationship – to liberate you from the blame and hatred, and condemnation.
Yes, and also of the critic inside me about me, that says, “Why did you put up with this, why did you let them treat you like this? It helps to silence that when I remind myself that we are all doing the best that we can. That’s what I can remind myself – that we are all just trying to get along in this world and doing the best we can.
I’m appreciating how you are using your loving kindness practice. It is a way of reconciliation.
And a way out of that reactionary mode. I was sitting at a stop light a few weeks ago and waiting in the turn lane, and it’s dual turns, and this motorcyclist comes in between the two cars , going through the red light turning – and my initial response was scared, you know, because, there isn’t supposed to be a motorcycle between the two cars, it startled me and the initial adrenaline got going and I was mad thinking he broke the law and now the rest of us are stuck here at the light – you know it’s just a second it takes to have these thoughts – then I thought, “I have no idea what’s going on in this person life. For all I know his wife is having a baby in the middle of their house or something he could be rushing home! Who knows? So, all I could do is send safety, and good thoughts with him – that he’s safe, the rest of the cars on the road are safe and he gets safely to where he thinks he needs to be going. Then my next thought was, “Hey, I did it!” laughter. I had an initial response and I was able to reframe it. Hey, I’m not upset anymore – this doesn’t bother me. And at the same it makes that whole idea about giving and receiving and the expectation that there’s a balance in the system but you can see there is no system, there is no fairness.
And I’ve had those thoughts with my kids as well, that they need me – that they are not going to be able to grow up to be the people I want them to be. But, as I look at my 19 year old and realize he’s had me around all his life and still he’s growing up to be the person he’s going to be. And it’s the same with my daughter. If she has me for 8 years or 18 years she’s still going to grow up to be the person she’s going to be. And there’s that challenge with wanting – I want to be with her, I want to mother her for as long as I can – it’s the wants, you know, that cause all the suffering. She doesn’t need me, she needs food, she needs shelter she needs clothing. She wants me, but the needs are pretty basic.”
Kara died a couple of months after this conversation and up till now these words and teachings, which seem to me as offered from the very heart of wisdom, have only been for the ears of a few. Now, I guess they may reach many others. May they be as much a gift to you as they have been to me and her classmates.
August 4-9, 2012 • Chapin Mill Retreat Center, New York
Led by experienced clinicians,
mindfulness teachers and retreat leaders,
Jan Chozen Bays, MD and Char Wilkins, LCSW
The training emphasizes experiential engagement in mindfulness meditation practices and mindful eating awareness exercises, so that the participant will be able to pass the benefit of these exercises on to clients and patients in a variety of settings. These practices and exercises are integral components of the six-session Mindful Eating program, designed by Bays and Wilkins, which provides the organizing structure for this training.
Relationships to food are complex and multi-dimensional. On the simple level, we all eat to survive. But for many individuals, families, and cultures, food is much more than simply a necessity. Food can be a key component of culture, heritage, and identity. What food and how much, for some people, is the hinge on which their self-esteem or health problems turn. Food, from ethnicity of dish to where the ingredients come from to what memories and meanings we attach to it, is a very personal topic.
The intersection of mindfulness, eating and our relationship to food is the focus of this professional training. Inherent within that juncture are the thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that impact how we relate to food and our body in skillful and unskillful ways. By bringing awareness to and through the senses we can become more mindful of how, when, where, what, and why we eat. Participants will explore the joys and sorrows held in eating and food, the disconnects and communions, and the aversions and desires – all of which can be opportunities that facilitate moving toward a healthier relationship with food, emotions and the physical body.
This 5-day training is steeped in mindfulness practice: sitting meditation, mindful movement, mindful walking, body meditations, times of silence, and a half-day retreat. Far from single mindedness, the 5-day experience offers a multi-faceted approach to mindful eating. The program draws from Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), current research, and the combined 26 years of experience of Jan Chozen Bays, MD and Char Wilkins, LCSW, in working with a wide range of people with distressed eating patterns. The six-session Mindful Eating program, designed by Bays and Wilkins, provides the organizing structure for MECL.
Participants will learn to engage in and deliver a number of eating awareness practices as well as deepen their own mindfulness meditation and mindful eating practices and understand the impact and importance of these personal practices in the successful delivery of the curriculum. Participants will walk away with a deeper understanding of themselves and their patterns and the tangible skills to bring the self-reflection and meditations they themselves experiences to their clients. After completing the training attendees will be equipped to facilitate the Mindful Eating program, as well as adapt the program curriculum to the needs of their population. Attendees will receive a copy of Jan Chozen Bays’ book, Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food; two CDs with meditations and mindful eating exercises, the Mindful Eating curriculum, and relevant handouts.
This intensive, experiential program is intended for clinicians in mental health or healthcare fields and clinicians-in-training in these fields wishing to incorporate mindful eating and mindfulness-related practices into their clinical practice and/or into group work in which eating, food, and body are components. Therapists and counselors who do not specialize in eating-related disorders will also find this training useful as a way to understand, through the lens of mindfulness, the unique opportunity that eating and food provide as gateways to self-awareness and understanding for those who experience anxiety, depression, abuse, stress, and/or illness.
In honor of the significant contributions made by dietitians in sharing the work of mindfulness and mindful eating, the UCSD Center for Mindfulness is pleased to offer two $250 scholarships to attend the Mindful Eating, Conscious Living 5-Day Professional Training on August 4-9, 2012. The scholarships are available to dietitians and dietitians-in-training who need financial assistance in order to attend.
Continuing education credits:
AMA: This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.
APA: (Full attendance is required) The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
BBS: Course meets the qualifications for 29.0 hours of continuing education credit for MFTs and/or LCSWs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (UC San Diego Provider Number PCE 683)
CDR: Commission of Dietetic Registration (Registered Dieticians)
Early-Bird Registration Fee: $895 + Room & Board
Please click here for information on our next local 4-week San Diego Group Mindful Eating Conscious Living Program starting April 12, 2012 6-7:30 PM.
Have you ever found yourself thinking “Why did I eat that?” Have you ever told yourself “You shouldn’t take that piece of candy” or “You should eat more carrots”? What about “I just meant to have a handful- but I ate the entire bag of chips!” or “I know I shouldn’t eat this but it’s a holiday and everyone else is…” What would your life be like if these questions and judgments just evaporated into (no pun intended…) thin air?
Ask someone who is a Mindful Eater.
Mindfulness principles are as old as the hills. In the olden days you planted your vegetables, you picked your fruit and you ate to live. Nowadays you buy your frozen dinners, you decide if you want fries with that and you eat to feel better. How did this happen? How did we get here? More importantly how do we fix it? How do we not buy the chocolate Easter candy that only comes out once a year? Or if we do buy the chocolate Easter candy because it only comes out once a year how do we eat only one a day… and not eat the entire box and feel guilty afterwards?
Ask someone who is a Mindful Eater
As a Mindful Eating coach I have seen many people transform their relationship with food into one of nourishment and fulfillment and free from the perils of judgment. As a person who practices mindful eating myself I have been able to change the way I look at food and helped people to do the same.
Just for a moment- given whatever your personal situation is … think about what it might be like to live a day in your life where the food you eat is experienced as fulfilling. A day in your life where you eat because you’re hungry, not because you’ve had a rough day or its “time to eat”.
Changing habits isn’t easy… but it can be done. The Mindful Eating class at UCSD is designed to help us look at food differently. It helps you move from the diets that never work to the lifestyle that does. It helps you move from why did I do that to I can do this.
We all have it within us to change. We just need the right tools and someone to help us along this path. The Mindful Eating Conscious Living Program could be your first step.
Cherylynn Glaser, M.A. Mindful Eating Teacher
Cherylynn earned her Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego and is currently working on obtaining her PhD. Her primary interests include eating disorders, mindful eating, bariatric surgery and obesity. She spent last summer working as a behavioral coach at a weight loss and wellness camp for children and adults where she taught mindful eating principals as well as provided individual and group therapy. She has also worked with patients who have had weight loss surgery and has co-lead post surgical therapy groups where she taught mindfulness methods. Cherylynn believes that the key components to living a healthy life include the acknowledgement, acceptance, and cultivation of the mind body connection and that mindfulness is a medium through which one can learn to nurture these.
Austin began using drugs as a teenager. His addiction progressed for several years until he wound up in rehab in the U.S. Afterward he substituted alcohol for drugs. at New Life Foundation in Thailand, mindfulness, meditation, and yoga helped him discover the root of his problems. Today he is clean sober and starting a new career.
If you are a professional working in the field of recovery from drug addiction there is still time to register for our UCSD Center for Mindfulness Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention Retreat (MBRP), April 1-6, 2012, being hosted at the beautiful EarthRise Retreat Center, in Petaluma, CA.
With this post we begin an initiative on our UCSD CFM Blog of offering information about how some of our international colleagues are working in the field of mindfulness.
In September 2011, the Faculty of Communication and Journalism at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht embarked on an experiment in interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional education through launching their Mindful Communication minor. While many of our blog posts recently have focused on children and teens, 18 third and fourth-year BA students comprised this group.
Although the study is interesting on many levels, from age of students to results, the topics of the 6 individual courses may well be the aspect that most catches attention and imagination. The four lecturers, Sascha Steinfeldt, Karin Bosveld, Paula Borsboom, and Petra Hubbeling, designed the minor to be 2 blocks of 10 weeks, 7 of which are lesson weeks. MBSR, non-violent communication, and mindful perspectives on sustainability comprised the three courses in the first block. Then followed the second block with business spirituality, business case and coaching & intervision. Within these interdisciplinary and diverse lecture topics, the minor aimed to build competencies such as increased ability to apply knowledge and understanding, integrate multidisciplinary perspectives, and communicate, as well as gain awareness about self and others, increase joy and vitality, and reduce stress.
At the conclusion of the program, all graded the minor 7-10 on a 10 point scale and most said they would recommend the minor to other students. Many students reported increased wisdom and self-knowledge. Students suffering from burnout and rheumatism, and one who reported overwhelming grief over a partner’s death, all reported improvement in health, compassion, and frequency of non-judgmental thoughts. In general, there was an astonishing openness and sense of security and support in the group. Students reported in their reflection reports that they were pleasantly surprised by this openness and the security they felt with both fellow students and lecturers.
All in all, the breadth and results of the program are remarkable and I hope that we will hear more from these educators and researchers in the future.
For more information please contact Karin and / or Sascha under:Karin Bosveld | Lecturer Journalistic Skills and English Proficiency| Institute of Communication | Department of International Communication & Media | Utrecht University of Applied sciences, Padualaan 99 – 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands | P.O box 8611 – 3503 RP Utrecht, The Netherlands | T. +31884813524| F. +31884813040 | karin.bosveld@hu.nl | www.hu.nl or Sascha Steinfeldt, senior mindfulness trainer at The Potential Project & freelance lecturer at University of applied sciences Utrecht Sascha.Steinfeldt@potentialproject.com www.potentialproject.com
Our friend and mindfulness colleague, Dr. Elisha Goldstein’s highly praised new book The Now Effect from Simon and Schuster isn’t scheduled for release until February 21, but we have arranged a special early release so that he can offer it for sale at this weekend’s conference “Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth” in San Diego. Elisha will be onsite at the conference to sign copies and talk about this groundbreaking “smart book” that incorporates “smart tags” linking to videos of him leading people in mindfulness practice (electronic versions of the book will have the videos embedded right in the pages).
Early praise is stacking up for this wonderful new book and we are excited to be the first public venue where it has been offered to the public. Noted mindfulness authorities including Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach and Sharon Salzberg have already noted the book’s powerful message and practical approach. One of the co-developers of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Dr. Zindel Segal, said “Written with a lightness of touch and chock full of practical advice, this book is a broad and generous portal for those interested in bringing the power of present moment awareness more fully into their lives”.
A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook by Bob Stahl and Elisha is the book we use in our MBSR courses because of the clarity and practicality that it affords, and The Now Effect promises even more of that. If you are able to attend the conference this weekend, walk-in registration is still available, and be sure and take a look at The Now Effect at our bookstore (or have him sign a copy of either book).
Save The Date! 2nd Annual Bridging the Hearts & Minds of Youth Conference: February 1-3, 2013 – San Diego, CA
Our intention is for this conference to "highlight the accomplishments in this growing field, as well as provide a significant contribution to it as well, so we have brought together the thought leaders from various disciplines (e.g., clinicians, educators and researchers) to offer a conference that will be unlike any other thus far."
Conference Co-Director
Steven D. Hickman, PsyD Director,
UCSD Center for Mindfulness
Conference Website
Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth: Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Education and Research
“We are excited about sharing the conference audio and videos of this dynamic gathering to those who weren’t able to attend, and thereby extend the discussion across the globe to people interested in this work in all its forms,” said Steven D. Hickman, PsyD, Director, UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. “Our deepest hope is that our efforts will support and deepen the important work being done, and foster even more profound impact in years to come.”
Rick Hanson, PhD
Susan Kaiser-Greenland, JD
Amishi Jha, PhD
Pamela Seigle, MS
stevepsyd
mindfulcoaching
reginahuelsenbeckphd
blairbuckman
Rick Hanson, PhD
mlfreedman
katieferrell82
psychroses
luismc1
