Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an intensive eight-week course designed to transform your relationship with stress, improve your health, and increase enjoyment of life.

Who will Benefit?

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction has benefited people reporting a variety of conditions and concerns:

Stress-including work, school, family, financial, illness, aging, grief, uncertainty about the future, and feeling "out of control."

Medical conditions-including chronic illness or pain, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, cancer, heart disease, asthma, GI distress, skin disorders, and many other conditions.

Psychological distress-including anxiety, panic, depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbances.

Prevention and Wellness-including health enhancement and wellness focused on prevention and learning the "how" of taking good care of yourself and feeling a greater sense of balance.

"Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is highly respected within the medical community. It is not offered as an alternative to traditional medical and psychological treatments but as a complement to these approaches. Our experience over nearly three decades suggests that doing what you can from yourself, coupled with what your physician can do for you, can be far more effective than either approach used on its own."
-Center for Mindfulness, UMass Medical School

WHAT TO EXPECT

The program consists of eight weekly two-and-a-half-hour classes and a six-hour class on week seven. Highly participatory, supportive, and structured, this program will provide you with:

• guided instruction in mindfulness meditation practices
• gentle stretching and mindful yoga
• group dialogue and mindful communication exercises to enhance awareness in everyday life
• individually tailored instruction
• daily home assignments
• home practice materials including guided mindfulness practice CDs, handouts, and reading materials
  

Research and Outcomes

Since 1979, the Center for Mindfulness has been dedicated to investigating and understanding the effectiveness of MBSR through pilot investigations, small studies, and large-scale research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Since the inception of the Stress Reduction Clinic, MBSR research at UMass and other academic medical centers has shown consistent, reliable, and reproducible demonstrations of major and clinically relevant reductions in medical and psychological symptoms across a wide range of medical diagnoses over the weight weeks of the MBSR program.

Studies have demonstrated:
-Reduced anxiety, panic, and depression
-Improved well-being and mood
-Improved quality of sleep
-Improved attention and concentration
-Lowered blood pressure levels
-Increased joy, gratitude, and compassion
-Improved immune function


For more research information, visit www.umassmed.edu/cfm and click on "Research."

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