Mindfulness-based
Stress Management Course:
8-weeks plus 1/2 day silent retreat
Next course:
Mondays, Sep. 27 to Nov. 22, 2021
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
(no class Oct 11)
+ 1/2 day silent retreat Nov 13, 10 am – 2 pm
Cost: $325
Location: Squamish Anglican Church
Minimum 6 participants for course to run.
BC provincial Covid recommendations/requirements will be followed. Double vaccination required.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor Frankl
Every day we come up against stressors that can build and take a toll on our lives, affecting our health and relationships. Yet how much of the time are we running on automatic, relying on old habits, and then wondering why things don’t get better.
Mindfulness-based Stress Management offers concrete tools to transform your habits for dealing with stress and reactivity in order to create greater resilience, balance and ease in your life.
Drawing upon the disciplines of mindfulness, meditation, somatic methods for embodiment, and teachings on stress, emotions, forgiveness and compassion, the course trains us to:
- Manage stress through a greater understanding and control of emotions
- Employ self-care techniques to cultivate personal and professional resilience.
- Create effective strategies for relating to challenging situations.
- Enhance concentration and executive function (planning, decision-making, and impulse control).
- Revitalize purpose, personally and professionally
- Improve your overall mental and physical health
- Promote happiness through healthy habits of the mind
- Establish a daily meditation practice
A daily meditation practice cultivates a calm and steady mind that supports us in opening up to our moment-to-moment experience in a non-judgmental way. This practice is the foundation to staying present to the full range of experience of our emotional states and thoughts. Rather than defaulting into our unconscious, reactive, habitual patterns of pushing away, avoiding, escaping or projecting onto others we learn to stay present to our unfolding life and respond wisely and appropriately.
Resources
Session Overview
Session 1: Introduction to Course
In this session, we will get to know each other and spend time going over the course guidelines. We will explore the definition of mindfulness, and the research behind mindfulness based interventions. We will also experience some initial mindfulness practices together.
Session 2: Introduction to Practice
In this session, you will be introduced to two of the core practices of the program; a body scan and a sitting practice. We will also explore the differences between goal setting and intention setting, and becoming aware of intention that drives our behaviour.
Session 3: Reacting vs Responding
In this session, you will experience another core mindfulness practice: mindful movement. We will also define stress, discuss how it shows up in the body, and discover how perception affects our reaction to stress. We will also introduce ways in which mindfulness can help us respond in awareness, instead of getting trapped in a stress reaction.
Session 4: Emotions
In this session, we will explore the trajectory of emotions in terms of their intensity and length of time, realizing that emotions are impermanent and changing. We will practice working with emotions through observing them and how they show up in our bodies, watching them escalate and subside without being driven by them.
Session 5: Working with Anger
Anger is a natural and useful emotion that we all experience. In this session, we will explore the ways that anger shows up in our bodies and reflect on our own anger triggers. Through plotting anger as an emotion that escalates and subsides, we can see how it might serve as an example of how to work with other emotions.
Session 6: Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a capacity of the heart and a skill that can be cultivated. In this session, we will experience a forgiveness meditation, which will help to cultivate forgiveness toward ourselves and others. Remember that we cannot forgive on command, we must allow our readiness to develop in its own time.
Session 7: Silent Half-Day Retreat
It is a rare opportunity and a gift to oneself to spend a few hours in silent mindfulness practice. Walking meditation, guided meditation, movement.
Session 8: Kindness and Compassion
It is important to cultivate compassion and kindness toward oneself. By practicing kindness and compassion toward others, we can more easily see other people as multidimensional rather that two dimensional. We share a common humanity that can be cultivated with kindness and compassion practices.
Session 9: Beginnings and Endings
In this session, we will look at our relationship to endings in a mindful way, and bring closure to the group process and connection. We will also share resources for continuing the practices and exploring the concepts we have covered.
To Register: please call / text: 604.815.8386
or email: taratara@shaw.ca
Please note: It is possible that uncomfortable feelings or unpleasant memories may arise. Please be aware that Tara is not a counselor and you will need to take care of your own emotional mental health. If you are in active addictions or struggling with serious mental health issues this may not be a helpful course at this time.
What To Bring
Please bring a water bottle, something comfortable to sit on for meditation, as well as a blanket and yoga mat to lie on. It is recommended to wear loose, comfortable clothing.
BC Provincial Covid recommendations / requirements will be followed