Mindfulness

MBSR Teacher Training for Diverse and Underserved Communities

We at the UC San Diego Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute have been awarded a grant to train a cohort of people from diverse and underserved communities who would like to become MBSR teachers. We have scholarship funds for people to participate in our MBSR Teacher Training Intensive and MBSR Teacher Certification Program.

MBSR TTI: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher Training Intensive

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an empirically-supported 8-week psycho-educational group intervention that teaches mindfulness meditation as a health intervention. Created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, MBSR offers participants the possibility to develop a different relationship to stress resulting from chronic physical and psychological illnesses. Research outcomes have demonstrated positive improvements in physical and psychological symptoms, as well as changes in health attitudes and behaviors.

What Actually is a Silent Retreat, and Why Go?

As a person who has practiced silent teacher-led meditation retreats for decades and led them for about 14 years, I’ve been reflecting on this question a lot, trying to see it through “fresh eyes” and with a “beginner’s mind”. With my own experience and great mentors to draw from, I thought I would share some of my evolving thoughts and feelings about what a retreat should or could look like, in the hope that these things might interest or inspire people to participate in a retreat.