MBSR - Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

Explore the stress response and its neurophysiology, including stressors, fight–flight–freeze, epinephrine and cortisol, energy mobilization, breathing, blood pressure, attention, and altered pain perception.

Shape how we appraise encounters and determine stress intensity through our beliefs. Believe we can overcome challenges to reduce stress; believe we are helpless to trigger it.

The lecture explains how persistent modern stress hijacks the stress response, dimming long-term brain functions and increasing illness. Mindfulness based stress reduction aims to change this response.

Oppose stress response by activating the relaxation response, which slows breathing and heart rate, minimizes adrenaline and cortisol, lowers blood pressure, and expands mental concentration to include thoughts and feelings.

Explore the seven fundamental components of human experience: sensation, feeling, thought, judgment, belief, memory, and imagination, and how the cortex and amygdala shape our responses.

Explore how thoughts, feelings, sensations, images, memories, judgments, and beliefs intertwine to create stress and lead to conflation in everyday experience.

Intercept the dynamics of experience to relieve stress by differentiating sensations, feelings, thoughts, images, memories, judgments, and beliefs, and changing responses through mindfulness-based stress reduction.

Choose how you think, the easiest component of experience to change through conscious direction, and shape how you respond to rain and to anxiety or depression.

Mindfulness based stress reduction opens a space in the mind free from preoccupation with concerns, reducing stress by letting go of thoughts, feelings, images, memories, and beliefs.

Practice mindfulness based stress reduction through mindfulness based meditation and journaling to reduce stress and differentiate components of experience for lasting calm.

Engage in a 20–30 minute mindfulness meditation to notice the cycle of sensations, feelings, thoughts, images, memories, and beliefs, create a pause between experience and response, and identify their conflation.

Explore mindfulness-based stress reduction by directing attention to diverse objects such as breathing, stillness, sounds, or light, while using breathing and a candle as a secular focus.

Observe the triangle of sensations, feelings, and thoughts during mindfulness based stress reduction, noticing how stress manifests in body and mind without trying to change it.

Mindfulness meditation guides the client through a stress-reducing process by recognizing self-talk and inner voices. These voices can inspire or terrify, with phrases like 'I am failing' intensifying stress.

Explore how cognitive psychology and mindfulness reveal the inner self-compassion voice, a benevolent mantra fostered by mindfulness meditation to reduce stress and support kind self-talk.

Practice mindfulness based stress reduction through regular meditation and journaling to stay present in the here and now, letting go of past and future concerns for relief.

Practice structured mindful journaling to create a pause between self and experience, observing thoughts, feelings, and sensations with the journalist's distance, guided by mindfulness based stress reduction principles.

Practice mindfulness based meditation with or without music, using candle flame as focus, in a 30 minute video, and download the journal to record experiences before moving to part four.

Develop mindfulness through standard meditation: breathe with full attention, observe stress in the body, and return to the candle flame, mantra, and compassionate guidance to stay present here and now.

Train in standard mindfulness meditation by guiding breath, candle visualization, and compassionate mantra to observe stress and bodily sensations with tenderness and present-moment awareness.