MB-EAT or Mindful Eating Conscious Living (MECL) Which Program is Best for You or Your Population?

by Char Wilkins, LCSW

I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking what is the difference between the MB-EAT program and our Mindful Eating, Conscious Living (MECL) 5-day professional training at the Chapin Mill Retreat Center in Rochester, NY, August 4-9, 2012. I have the unique qualification of having taught both the MB-EAT program and the Mindful Eating, Conscious Living training which I co-teach with Jan Chozen Bays, MD, so I feel I can speak to some of the differences which may help you decide if our training is right for you.

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.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Now Offered Online by Steve Flowers

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.

Mindfulness for Children No Fad Either- Response to LA Times Article

Amy Saltzman, MD
Mindfulness Teacher & Holistic Physician
Creator and Director: Still Quiet Place Co-founder and Director: Association for Mindfulness in Education She is recognized by her peers as a visionary and pioneer in the fields of holistic medicine and mindfulness in K-12 education. She has conducted research studies evaluating the benefits of teaching mindfulness to child-parent pairs, and to children in low-income elementary schools.

Amy will be co-presenting, along with Margaret Cullen the workshop entitled SMART in Education: Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance for Educators at the upcoming Bridging the Hearts & Minds of Youth: Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Education and Research conference, February 4-5, 2012 at the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego.

Experts Say, Mindfulness For Children is “No Fad” Either.

The real experts are the children. “Jessica”, a fourth grade student, participated in a Still Quiet Place course, an eight week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course offered at Henry Ford Elementary School. The school serves a low-income population in Redwood City, California. On the last day of class “Jessica” wrote

When I am sad or kind of in a bad mood I take about 10 breaths and I get relaxed. I also forget about my worries. I learned this from Mindfulness. I enjoy coming here because I forget about my troubles and I forget about all the things in my life that is sad. My sadness just fades.

Jessica’s statement, suggests that perhaps Dr. Hoffman’s perception (reported in the January 8th, 2011 LA Times article by Chris Woolston, Mindfulness is No Fad, Experts Say) that children may have trouble understanding or embracing Mindfulness is in error. Not only do children and adolescents understand and embrace Mindfulness, recent cutting-edge research indicates they can reap benefits from practicing Mindfulness, similar to those documented in adults.

As Mr. Woolston’s article highlighted, over 30 years of scientific research with adults has shown that Mindfulness decreases stress, depression, anxiety, and hostility, and enhances compassion, empathy and executive function; executive function is a term that describes the related processes of goal-directed behavior, planning, organized search and impulse control. As a pioneer in the emerging field of offering Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction to children and teens please allow me to share the ground-breaking work indicating that Mindfulness for children is “no fad” either.

Mindfulness is simply paying attention to your life, here and now, with kindness and curiosity. This ability to pay attention is a natural, innate human capacity. Children as young as three can learn to attend to the breath,the five senses, thoughts, and emotions. Slightly older children can attend to impulses and actions, and their effects on others and the world.

For the last decade, colleagues and I have been offering age-adapted Mindfulness-based curricula to at risk youth. (See side bar) Unfortunately, research by Soniya Luthar Ph. D. from Columbia Teachers College shows that many of our youth are at risk. Her data indicate that affluent teens have rates of depression, anxiety and illicit drug similar to their low-income peers.[1] Daily headlines remind us that our children are being diagnosed with depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, cutting, addictions, suicidal tendencies and other self-destructive behaviors at epidemic rates; cruelty, bullying and violence are on the rise. Most, if not all of our children could benefit from learning to focus their attention, to become less reactive, and to be more compassionate with themselves and others. Those of us involved in this emerging field are motivated by a shared commitment to offer children and adolescents life long skills that will enhance their well-being. We are rigorously investigating whether children and adolescents can reap benefits from practicing Mindfulness, similar to those extensively documented in adults.

For the last decade we have been working in clinics and schools to scientifically assess whether Mindfulness training can enhance children’s attention, executive function, learning, compassion, empathy and general well-being. The preliminary data are encouraging; below are summaries of four recent studies that demonstrate the benefits of offering Mindfulness children and adolescents.

In a randomized controlled trial conducted by Maria Napoli, Ph.D., first, second, and third graders participated in a bi-weekly, 12-session integrative program of Mindfulness and relaxation. The students showed significant increases in attention and social skills, and decreases in test anxiety and ADHD behaviors.[2]

Lisa Flook, Ph.D. and her colleagues at the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA studied second and third graders who did Mindfulness Awareness Practices for 30 minutes twice a week for 8 weeks. Children who began the study with poor executive function had gains in behavioral regulation, meta-cognition, and overall global executive control. These results indicate training in Mindfulness benefits children with executive function difficulties (the children most likely to have difficulties and cause disruptions in the classroom) .[3]

In a study with 4th-7th graders and their parents, that I conducted in collaboration with the Department of Psychology at Stanford, the children participated in 75 minutes of Mindfulness training for 8 consecutive weeks. At the conclusion of the study the children demonstrated increased ability to orient their attention, as measured by an objective computerized Attention Network Task, and decreased anxiety. In written narrative the children also reported decreased emotional reactivity, and increased impulse control.[4]

In research on teaching Mindfulness to adolescents conducted by Gina Biegel, MA, MFT, the teens reported reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression and somatic (physical) distress, and increased self-esteem and sleep quality. Independent clinicians documented a higher percentage of diagnostic improvement in the Mindfulness group (vs. the control group). In layperson’s terms, this means that adolescents who were initially diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety were no longer depressed or anxious.[5]

While these studies are preliminary, they reinforce what “Jessica”, in 4th grade, already knows—Mindfulness for Children is “No Passing Fad”. In closing I’ll defer to another expert, a fifth grade girl from Menlo Park, California.

Mindfulness is a great class because you can chill out, and relax. It will cool you down and make you less stressed. You should try it if you are mad or sad or just want to feel better. That’s what I do. Try it!
[1] Luthar, S., The Culture of Affluence; the Psychological Costs of Material Wealth, Child Development, 2003; 74 (6), 1581-1593.

[2] Napoli, M. ”Mindfulness Training for Elementary School Students: The Attention Academy” Journal of Applied School Psychology (2005) Vol. 21(1)

[3] Flook, L. “Effects of Mindful Awareness Practices on Executive Functions in Elementary School Children” Journal of Applied School Psychology (2010) 26: 1, 70 -95

[4] Saltzman, A., (2008) “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for School-Age Children, 139-162. In L. Grecco, Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and Adolescents: A Practitioner’ Guide, Oakland, New Harbinger, 2008,

[5] Biegel, G. “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for the Treatment of Adolescent

Psychiatric Outpatients: A Randomized Clinical Trial” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (2009) Vol. 77, No. 5: 855–866

Opening the Heart at Stanford, Google and Beyond

Margaret Cullen is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher. In 2008 she launched a mindfulness-based emotional balance program for teachers and school administrators in Denver, Boulder, Ann Arbor, and Vancouver, B.C.  Margaret will be co-presenting, along with Amy Saltzman, MD the workshop entitled SMART in Education: Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance for Educators at the upcoming Bridging the Hearts & Minds of Youth: Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Education and Research conference, February 4-5, 2012 at the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego. (This article originally appeared in “Inquiring Mind.”)

Five years ago, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford had a revolutionary idea: open a center dedicated to compassion right in the middle of the university. Today, The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) flourishes within this citadel of academia. Here, it quietly pursues its mission of supporting and conducting rigorous scientific studies of compassion and altruism, developing ways to cultivate compassion and promote altruism within individuals and throughout society.

Thupten Jinpa was enlisted as a visiting research scholar at CCARE, during which time he developed a course of study called the Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). An eight-week program modeled after Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (founded at the University of Massachusetts by renowned meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn), CCT teaches Buddhist meditation practices in a completely secular way. Instead of focusing on mindfulness, though, this training emphasizes practices of the heart.

Beginning by developing a foundation of breath awareness, the program systematically teaches students to cultivate the qualities of kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna). Each series of the program begins by sending kindness to people such as grandparents, friends and children—those individuals toward whom it is easy to access tenderness. From there, participants progress to thinking of people about whom they are ambivalent or who cause them downright frustration: the barista at the local café, the bagger at the grocery store, the ex-husband’s new wife. The CCT strives to help individuals imagine each of these people happy and flourishing. But the program also encourages participants to remember or imagine times when they themselves have been hurt, shamed, ill or suffering in some way. By working through such progressions, participants can learn to strengthen the muscle of the heart. Such strengthening can engender a fearlessness that allows them not only to send others wishes of love, and compassion, but to also breathe others suffering into their own hearts and to breathe out relief and ease.

To date, the program has been piloted at Stanford, Google, the Cancer Support Community and in a few series open to the general public in the San Francisco Bay Area. As one of the senior teachers, I have witnessed many transformations. A recent training I led with cancer patients and their loved ones generated a number of moving stories. The following are just two of the narratives of heart that emerged from the eight-week program:

A cancer patient in active treatment has been living with, and caring for, her ninety-five-year-old mother. Having developed her own capacity for tenderness and generosity, the daughter made a radical decision. At our closing circle she shared with tears that she and her mom had invited her suicidal and recently homeless nephew, a war veteran, to come live with them. She said, “Before this course, I might have tried to help him, but my heart wouldn’t have been open enough to take him into my home.” Through this extraordinary act of compassion, both she and her mother learned that, in spite of the limitations imposed by age and illness, they could find happiness by helping another person.

A retired professor of environmental science took the course in order to support his wife, a cancer patient. He told us, “I spent a lot of time talking with my students about the ‘problem’ of poverty, but I just didn’t feel the suffering.” About to cry, he said, “If I had taken this course earlier, I think I would have been a better teacher. Poverty isn’t just a term you can pass over and move on. I’m now able to draw it in and feel the pain. This has been a big aha.”

MBSR & Fibromyalgia a Preliminary Study

Mindfulness-based Contemplative Training Reduces Avoidance and Facilitates Disengagement from Threat in Women Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia
David Vargo

Eight-week courses in mindfulness-based contemplative training focusing on specific meditation and yoga practices have been shown to have explicit benefits for many clinical disorders, especially with relation to treating stress, targeting emotion dysregulation, and attentional processes, yet little research has explored the effects of these practices in the context of bias.
Attentional bias is a tendency to focus on one aspect of the environment over others. A bias may arise through varied mechanisms, but is driven by evolutionarily shaped mechanisms. Attentional bias will influence how one perceives and processes information in the present moment, from the past, and how one anticipates the future. Humans typically have their attention automatically captured by fear-relevant stimuli, and for good reason, to avoid danger and threat of harm. Persistent attentional bias to threat cues in the environment will typically result in increased perception of danger, hypervigilance, and often frequent or intense experiences of anxiety. Although it may appear that an enhanced sensitivity to detecting threat is advantageous, hypervigilance is not necessarily adaptive, as it consists of persistent intensified monitoring and attentional fixedness at the expense of ongoing cognitive demands and a continually active sympathetic nervous system. Hypervigilance may also generalize to innocuous stimuli, wherein non-threatening stimuli are determined to be threatening. Thus, bias becomes a distorted interpretation of one’s experience, with consequences that could lead to chronic anxiety and stress-mediated pathology. Interestingly, there is now evidence that hypervigilant processing could be occurring without conscious awareness, such that very early stages of sensory processing (e.g., < 300 ms from stimulus exposure) are detecting possible threat-related cues. Once a threatening cue is detected, automatic and strategic forms of emotion regulation processing typically follow. Automatic forms of processing have the potential to operate below conscious awareness as well, and are typically over-trained, habitual responses to threat. Strategic forms of processing are more volitional, and cognitive in quality. Avoidance is one emotion regulation strategy that occurs at both automatic and strategic time-courses for the purpose of reducing elaborative or evaluative processing and deflating the threat value of the stimulus. When avoidance becomes habitual, it also can be maladaptive.
Both hypervigilance and avoidance have been found to contribute to the exacerbation of chronic pain and disability, and a vulnerability to pathological emotional states in chronic pain disorders like fibromyalgia (FM). FM is a disorder characterized by diffuse tenderness and widespread chronic pain, and is often accompanied by impaired cognitive, emotional, and physical functioning. Although various external stimuli such as infection, trauma and stress may contribute to development of FM, recent studies have emphasized the role of hypervigilance and avoidance of pain-related information. Pain-related information are cues in the environment or recalled from one’s memory and can be anything from images, sounds, certain trigger words (e.g., sharp, pounding, throbbing), or even people that remind one of a past experience of pain. Because these cues have previously been associated with pain, a heightened sensitivity towards such pain-related information develops and leads to a generalized pattern of hypervigilance.
My colleagues from the Utah Center for Exploring Mind-Body Interactions and I recently published a preliminary study in Cognitive Therapy and Research that investigated attentional bias of pain-related threat between women diagnosed with FM who went through an 8-week course of mindfulness-based contemplative training and an age-matched comparison control group of female FM individuals. The mindfulness-based training program was designed to accommodate the physical limitations of the FM population, but modeled after curriculum for Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) (see paper for exact modifications). A well validated dot-probe task (see paper for methodology of task) was used to explore early versus later stages of attentional bias processing of pain-related threat words. The rapid exposure of cues at short durations (100 ms) intended to capture automatic stages of processing by limiting attention to early sensory-perceptual stages, while longer cue durations (500 ms) intended to capture initial strategic forms of cognitive processing. The data indicated that individuals from the control group appeared to be hypervigilant-avoidant in their processing of pain-related threat, such that pain-related words were rapidly detected and avoided without much time for conscious elaboration. This form of avoidance is presumed to be a highly conditioned, automatized form of processing. Individuals from the control group also appeared to have difficulty disengaging from pain-related threat once strategic, elaborative processing was possible. This lingering engagement with negative stimuli slowed their response time on the dot-probe task, such that processing of threatening stimuli was assumed to interfere with the necessary processing for the task at hand (i.e., keyboard press indicating position of dot-probe). One may speculate that the mental stickiness that is typically described as a target for Buddhist meditation practices could also be explained by disengagement difficulty. Extended elaborative processing has also been implicated in ruminative cognition, a maladaptive, repetitive evaluation of one’s experience in a negative context.
The individuals exposed to mindfulness training demonstrated significantly less avoidance of threat than individuals from the control group and also disengaged more rapidly at later stages of processing. These results suggest that mindfulness training reduces avoidance of pain-related threat at early levels of attention processing, and facilitates disengagement from threat at later stages of processing. Furthermore, it appears that effects of mindfulness training on early attentional threat processing do not remain stable after long-term follow-up. The enduring effects of mindfulness training on attentional bias were assessed 6-months after completion of the mindfulness-based program. With little to no continued meditation practice, the apparent effects on attentional bias were reduced. What did remain was a lack of attentional bias towards pain-related threat in comparison to neutral words.
The take-home message for this preliminary study is that mindfulness training for individuals diagnosed with FM appears to increase engagement with and decrease avoidance of pain-related information that normally leads to anxiety and emotion dysregulation. Furthermore, mindfulness training appears to decrease time of lingering or “mental stickiness” with pain-related information. Further studies will have to investigate whether the decreases in bias after 6 months with little to no continued practice were indicative of a linear trend towards maladaptive avoidant emotion regulation strategies, or a stabilization of attention over time, in which no bias remains between threat and neutral stimuli. This study is the first preliminary evidence for the effect of mindfulness training on attentional bias. Future studies are also needed to clarify changes from pre- to post-meditation training using a mixed level of analysis, so that within and between group comparisons can be properly made.

David R. Vago, Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School
Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Dept. of Psychiatry

reference:
Vago, D.R. & Nakamura, Y. (2011). Selective attentional bias towards pain-related threat in fibromyalgia: Preliminary evidence for effects of mindfulness meditation training. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6(35), 581-594. doi: 10.1007/s10608-011-9391-x

UCSD Offers Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workshop for Nurses

We are thrilled to announce registration is now open for our Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workshop for Nurses January 28, 2012, 9am-3pm at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, La Jolla, CA. Please join workshop leaders Lois Howland, DrPH, MSN, Livia Walsh LMFT, MS, MA, RN, and Amy Holte, PhD, MEd, in this exciting experiential workshop. You will gain insights on bringing mindfulness into your daily life for self-care along with exploring strategies for offering mindfulness to your patients to promote healing. This continuing education activity has been approved for 7 contact hours by the UCSD Medical Center Nursing EDR which is accredited by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider # CEP55 .

In this workshop, nurses will learn how to:

• Practice mindfulness strategies and techniques

• Practice self-care on and off the job

• Apply mindfulness and self-care in daily activities, such as eating, walking, and moving

• Integrate mindfulness into interactions with patients, colleagues, family, and friends

• Improve ability to cope with short- and long-term stressful situations

• Implement brief mindfulness practices with patients and family members as a means of coping with acute pain, anxiety, and distress

Registration

On or Before January 14, 2012: $125

On or After January 15, 2012: $150

Lois Howland, DrPH, R.N.

Senior MBSR Teacher

Lois Howland, DrPH, RN, completed the professional training program in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and at the Omega Institute with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, and Saki Santorelli, EdD. She has been a mindfulness practitioner since 2000. Dr. Howland is a graduate of the UCSF School of Nursing, and the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Howland is a full-time faculty member in the School of Nursing, University of San Diego, and conducts research related to biological mechanisms of stress particularly as it affects maternal and child health.

Livia Walsh, RN, LMFT

MBSR Teacher

Livia Walsh is a nurse and licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Encinitas, California. She developed an interest and pursued training in the area of holistic/integrative health including mindfulness over her 30 plus years of professional practice. She completed the MBSR training program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Omega Institute under the direction of Jon Kabat Zinn, Saki Santorelli and the senior teaching staff. Ms Walsh also teaches MBSR at the Senior Center in Encinitas. She integrates mindfulness in her work with patients and students. In her capacity as clinical supervisor at San Diego Hospice and other institutions she has taught mindfulness-based interventions to graduate/post-graduate students and professional staffs. Ms. Walsh believes strongly in the mind-body connection and in an integrative approach to achieve and sustain optimal health and well being.

Amy Holte, PhD, MEd

Senior MBSR Teacher

Amy Holte, Ph.D.,M.Ed. has been a meditation practitioner since 1997 and has been teaching mindfulness techniques for health, stress-reduction, and well being since 1999. She is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin where she completed her doctoral research on meditation and the brain in an interdisciplinary Ph.D.program in East West Biopsychology, and a M.Ed. in Human Development and Education. Dr. Holte is the Director of Mind-Body Medicine and Team Leader of the Functional Restoration Program at The Center for Orthopedic Care in SanDiego where she teaches mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and tai chi in her work with chronic pain patients.

Wondering about ways that MBSR touches lives? This graduate says it beautifully and powerfully.

By Steven Hickman, Psy.D.
Director, UCSD Center for Mindfulness

In the course of teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, I have had the opportunity to hear first-hand how participation in the program has had an impact on the lives of many people. I know from my own experience of mindfulness practice how powerful it can be, but I often struggle with how to put that into words that really capture the experience. Fortunately, every now and then, one of our MBSR participants articulates it so poignantly and eloquently that I get a new look at how this practice changes lives. Recently, in a class taught by my colleagues Luis Morones and Amy Holte, one of their participants (we will call her Katie to protect her privacy, but she has given us permission to quote her) offered some wonderful feedback about her experience that we felt would be helpful to anyone considering embarking on a practice of mindfulness or in taking an MBSR course. Here is what she had to say:

“Thank you … for letting me attend most of the recent class  (in which I had) a 60% attendance rate, which makes me laugh because in addition to suggesting kindness to ourselves and not always striving towards something (like counting attendance) a mere 60% of your class has changed at least 90% of my life.  Although I have read only the opening of the book and made very little time to practice outside of the class, I cling to the concept of my breath always being there for me, or my feet being planted on the ground, and that has consistently redirected my next action in every situation.  Pausing for a moment to just be present gives you the time to envision a desired outcome or at least remember your long-term goal in any given interaction.

“Always a mellow driver, I now am even more inclined to let others race along without getting upset (hard not to urge others to do the same).  When working with my children, my focus is not on being right, but on getting them to decide for themselves what is right and why.  When there is a work crisis, it is amazing how many people already have the solution but have not dared to allow themselves to solve it.  Or friends who want you to solve their problems but don’t like your solutions, you realize they want the problem, and you can let go without guilt.

“Mostly I am finding that giving myself a moment to reflect keeps me calm and much more able to enjoy everyone’s company.  Just this week, all five of my family were in 1) my bathroom, 2) my closet, 3) our bedroom, and in each instance I stopped myself from saying “why are you all here, stop following me” but thought instead, how wonderful that you want to be with me, that we trust each other and listen to each other and want to be together.”

Katie works in the same office space as that of the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, and her group recently experienced a significant reduction in their workforce. The stress of the process of “downsizing” was immense, and we were moved to extend the offer of free participation in MBSR to any of their group affected by these layoffs. Katie noted, “I know that Steve may have been thinking about laid off employees when he so generously offered us a space in your class, but for those of us left behind to pick up the pieces of the dozen or so people we’ve lost, it has been stressful in a different way – survivor guilt, maybe, and the inability to share about the quality and quantity of work when we should be grateful to still have the opportunity to serve.  If I were going through all of these changes without the anchor of this class, my flame would definitely be starting to flicker!!  It is also such a grounding experience to learn from those whose life situations harbor even darker days. I do so regret having missed the retreat, I felt like I was letting my classmates down, but it was unavoidable.

“I feel so empowered about how to live my life in a way that is healthier and happier and that has positive effects on those I love.”

When I wrote to ask Katie’s permission to share what she wrote in her email to the teachers above, she responded with still more wonderfully descriptive feedback: “. . . essentially this experience has been the best gift since my wedding and the birth of my three healthy boys.  That is really not an overstatement or overly enthusiastic – I feel so empowered about how to live my life in a way that is healthier and happier and that has positive effects on those I love, which was my original goal for joining the group.  It will obviously take a lot more practice, but I can already tell that I am making better choices and just thinking before I speak (I can have a sharp tongue) is improving many relationships.”

It seems as though there is nothing else to say, as Katie said it all quite well! If someone you know could benefit from the practice of mindfulness or may be interested in taking a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course, I highly recommend that you share this blogpost with that person. It could change their life in the way that it changed Katie’s. (NOTE: We have a morning sitting group on weekdays in our office and Katie continues to attend with us many times each week.)

The 2012 Schedule of MBSR Classes offered through the UCSD Center for Mindfulness is now online and available for online registration. Take a look at the lineup starting in mid-January and consider joining us to more fully experience the practice of mindfulness for yourself.

Bridging the Hearts & Minds of Youth: February Conference on Mindfulness with Youth in San Diego

Mindfulness, as a powerful and important means of cultivating health, well-being and equanimity, is nowhere more important than in our work with the young people of our society. Alongside the explosive and transformative growth of mindfulness-based programs for adults, there is a particularly heartening and vibrant effort to bring mindfulness to youth of all ages, in a plethora of settings and formats designed to have a significant impact on the lives and futures of literally millions of young people around the world.

To support and grow this important movement, the UCSD Center for Mindfulness has teamed with Stressed Teens to organize and present a first of its kind conference on February 4 and 5, 2012 entitled Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth: Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Education and Research . The intention of this conference is to bring together a number of key thought leaders in the field of mindfulness, both those engaged in bringing it to youth and those whose influence extends well beyond that one area, with the hope that the synergy created by such a gathering will provide further impetus to a growing and important field.

Keynote speakers, breakout sessions and half-day workshops will form the structure of this gathering, but the intention is to create an overall atmosphere of connection, collaboration, encouragement, support and innovation that will inspire attendees to continue or begin the work of teaching mindfulness to the young people with whom they work. A full description of the conference is available on the UCSD Center for Mindfulness Professional Training website, but a  few highlights include:

Rick Hanson, author of The Buddha’s Brain and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time will be presenting a public talk on Friday evening, February 3 entitled “Taking in the Good: Helping Children Build Inner Strength and Happiness” and then will provide a keynote address on Saturday at the conference itself with the intriguing title “Managing the Caveman Brain in the 21st Century”.

Psychologist and well-known mindfulness researcher Amishi Jha will be offering her insights in another keynote address, entitled “From Dazed and Distracted to Attentive and Calm: What the Neuroscience of Mindfulness Reveals”. Dr. Jha will be joining the other keynote presenters, Susan Kaiser Greenland, Pamela Siegle and Chip Wood on a discussion panel on Saturday as well.

Three post-conference half-day workshops will be offered on Sunday, February 5, allowing attendees to deepen their understanding and training in working with mindfulness and youth. Workshops include one by conference co-organizer Gina Biegel, developer of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Teens (MBSR-T); another by Randy Semple, who has adapted Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for children, and a wonderful session on “Nurturing Your Self in Your Work With Youth” offered by mindfulness teacher and holistic physician, Amy Saltzman.

These are just a few of the highlights of this inaugural conference that promises to be literally packed with interesting and engaging speakers, presentations and experiences. Co-organizers Steven Hickman, Director of the UCSD Center for Mindfulness and Gina Biegel, founder of Stressed Teens, hope that this will become an annual event that makes a significant contribution to the field of mindfulness with youth. If you are an educator, therapist, physician, or just a concerned and engaged parent looking to explore how you might integrate mindfulness in your work with youth, you may want to consider joining this impressive lineup of presenters in San Diego at the Catamaran Resort Hotel on February 4 and 5, 2012. Space is limited, register early and receive a $50 Early Bird Discount.

Shambhala Sun Features Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) in latest issue

One Moment at a Time, is the title of a recent item in David Swick’s column The Mindful Society published in the most recent edition of Shambhala Sun, about the relationship between mindfulness and substance use disorders. The article specifically highlights Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) and the work of the late G. Alan Marlatt, Sarah Bowen and colleagues at the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington. 

By Blair Buckman

Most of us are looking for magical solutions to solve our problems instantaneously. Some of us turn to indulgences like ice cream for a quick fix, and others habitually turn to more harmful addictive substances, like alcohol or drugs. Addiction affects millions of individuals and their families each year and can be an insurmountable obstacle for many. Dr. Lawerence Peltz, a Massachusetts psychiatrist, describes mindfulness as “the microscopic version of One Day at a Time,” adding “it’s One Moment at a Time.”

Much of the research on mindfulness and addiction is conducted at the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington in Seattle, established by the late Alan Marlatt. Dr. Sarah Bowen and her colleagues there have conducted a number of studies on the topic, including a study examining mindfulness implementation among previously imprisoned drug and alcohol offenders. She found that by learning mindfulness practices, they were able to recognize internal triggers without responding to them, therefore reducing the likelihood of returning to drug and alcohol use as compared to control subjects that did not receive mindfulness training. Their MBRP program was modeled after Segal, Teasdale and Williams’ Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) program and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). MBRP assists people in developing awareness of what their triggers and habits are, in addition to changing how we respond to physical and emotional discomfort. Furthermore, MBRP assists in developing a compassionate and nonjudgmental mindset.

The program emphasizes meditation practices and implementation of mindfulness practices in daily life in order to regain control of our attention and actions. Bowen and colleagues will be integrating mindfulness meditation practices and utilizing demonstration, role-play, simulated exercises, and inquiry to teach MBRP in a 5-day intensive retreat training through the UCSD Center for Mindfulness at the EarthRise Retreat Center in Petaluma, California in April 2012. More information about the training is available through the UCSD Center for Mindfulness.

We invite you to read the full text of David Swick’s article, in the November issue of the Shambhala Sun, available on newsstands now.