Do you live with chronic pain?

Do you often feel like life is out of control and you are struggling to keep up?

Do you rush through your day hoping to get somewhere better?

Do you battle hard to please others, prove yourself, seek validation?

Do you let your inner critic tell your stories, make your decisions and rule your life?

Do you do anything to avoid feeling the painful feelings (in your body and in your mind)?

If you answered yes to any of these, the MBSR is for you.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an evidence-based program incorporating formal and informal practices to help you skilfully manage life’s challenges, uncover unhelpful habitual patterns of reactivity, discover wonder and joy in present moment experiences and find your own way towards more ease and connection.

The benefits:

The program encourages you to inquiry into your own ways of living, your habitual patterns, reactivity and stress factors. Getting to know yourself allows greater freedom and choice into how you will relate to your life and your community.

Millions of people around the world have undertaken the program since it was developed in 1979 and the research is clear. When you undertake the course and the prescribed training as best you can, then you can expect to see changes such as:

o More capacity to deal with stress and anxiety
o Generally feeling more balanced and at ease
o More self-acceptance and less self-judgement
o Greater feelings of joy and freedom
o More energy and engagement in life
o Increased connection, meaning and sense of purpose
o Improved mental and physical health
o Effective ways to deal with difficult thoughts and emotions

You will not be expected to:

Sit twisted like a pretzel for hours on end. The MBSR program allows for you to choose what postures and involvement is right for you. While sessions are 2.5 hours a week, the class allows for a healthy mix of sitting, standing, movement, stillness as well as small and larger group discussions and silence.

Told what to do. The MSBR program is about you finding out what works best for you. We will do lots of exercises and examples of meditations, practical examples, sharing stories but this is not a standard class. No teacher out the front pointing their finger and telling you what to do. It’s like we are a group of fellow explorers, trialling and testing things together and for yourself at home.

Achieving bliss. Don’t expect your life to miraculously become blissful by completing this course. It’s about understanding your stress response so there will be times we are likely to lean towards difficult parts of life. We are not aiming for radical change but more looking for opening to the flow of your own experience, awakening to what’s happening and in doing this, choice arises, space to deal more skilfully with situations and events in your life.

Pain free. We will learn together that for us as humans, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. The MBSR practices give space and opportunity to explore how pain really feels and how our reactions to pain might plan a role in our experience.

The nuts and bolts of the program:

Week 1 – Breaking automatic pilot and recognising the present moment.

Thursday 5th October 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Week 2 – How we see things – perception and our experience

Thursday 12th October 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Week 3 – Being and Doing - Connecting mind and body to the pleasure of the present

Thursday 19th October 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Week 4 – Turning towards stress – when things get difficult

Thursday 26th October 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Week 5 – Responding to stress –exploring thoughts and emotions

Thursday 2nd November 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Week 6 – Relating to our world – our relationship with self and others

Thursday 9th November 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Full Day of Mindfulness: A full day to explore what you have been learning, to explore silence and the present moment over a longer period of time.

Sunday 12th November 10.00am – 4.00pm

Week 7 – Living with purpose & acting in accordance with our values.

Thursday 16th November 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Week 8 – Bringing it home, mindfulness in daily life

Thursday 23rd November 6.30pm – 9.00pm

UNSURE if this is for you? You are welcome to attend my introductory workshop (Sunday 17th Sept 10-12noon, $20) to get a little taste of what this course might be like. See here for more details: https://events.humanitix.com/o...