Re: Mindfulness

[Anonymous]

Hi Tiddler,

I have had lots of experience with mindfulness. My first was with a program called MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) which was developed by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn at the U of Massachussetts Medical Centre. There are a number of offshoots of this (MBCT or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Training, etc). People offering these programs are health care professionals (usually psychologists) and the program involves 8 weeks of training (weekly group class, 1 group silent day on a weekend, mindful movement instruction and home practice of about 45 minutes per night). Then there are usually “graduate” groups that meet periodically. The MBSR program got me started in meditation practice, although I’ve moved on to zen practice and recently dzogchen and tibetan meditation practices.

Try doing a google search for your city or town and MBSR or mindfulness training, and see what comes up. Here’s a link to Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s program at U of M http://www.umassmed.edu/content.aspx?id=41252

Here’s a place where you can search for a program in the UK http://w3.umassmed.edu/MBSR/public/searchmember.aspx

And here’s a link to Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s website for the audio programs if you want to try to go it by yourself http://www.mindfulnesscds.com/index.html

Honestly, it’s best to work with someone if you can and train properly and then sit with a group periodically. There’s something about the energy of a group that’s very helpful for practice.

Hope that helps.

Susan

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