What is MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health?
MBSR 2 broadens the mindfulness practices to include more of the contemplative underpinnings of the ancient wisdom traditions of Buddhist psychology and yoga. Students deepen mindfulness, lovingkindness, and meditation practices, and expand their understanding of interpersonal relationships and internal and external environments.
What Can I Learn in a MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health Course?
MBSR2 builds on foundational mindfulness practices, deepening students' engagement with the contemplative wisdom of Buddhist psychology and yoga. The course enhances mindfulness, lovingkindness, and meditation, while introducing new mindful movements and themes while exploring the impact of physical health and our relationship with the environment. Through this, students cultivate greater physical, emotional, and mental well-being, expanding their mindfulness practice to foster inner freedom and ease.
What are the Benefits of MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health?
While each student's experience is unique, the published research has shown changes like these are common.
Deepened mindfulness practice, building on the foundational skills learned in prior courses • Improved well-being • Greater connection with the natural world • Healthier and more balanced lifestyle habits • Expanded awareness and insights • Support for long-term mindfulness practice
What are the prerequisites for this course?
The course is open those who have completed either MBSR or another 8-week course, such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MB-RP), Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure (MB-BP), Mindfulness-Based College (MB-College), Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT), or a similar multi-day intensive mindfulness-based course.
Orientation and 8 weekly 2 1/2 hour sessions with a 7.5 hour All-Day session on a Saturday or Sunday.
Tuition: Pay-It-Forward: $765, Standard: $595, Scholarship: $390.
Course pricing is set to allow for generosity while meeting individuals needs. We encourage you to pay as much as you can afford and we appreciate your care and thoughtfulness when deciding.
Payment plans are available at checkout. See our refund policy.
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Upcoming MBSR2 Courses
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What is MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health?
Students explore bringing curiosity, energy, joy, focus, and balance into their lives and how this can help strengthen awareness and increase access to mindfulness.
MBSR 2 expands the mindfulness practices to include more of the contemplative underpinnings of the ancient wisdom traditions of Buddhist psychology and yoga. Students deepen mindfulness, lovingkindness, and meditation practices, and expand their understanding of interpersonal relationships and internal and external environments.
Students learn new mindful movements and how to build on the themes of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), including bringing mindfulness to perception, stress reactivity/responsivity and communication.
MBSR2 explores well-being and sustainability on a range of levels: individual, social and environmental. Mindfulness practice, physical activity and food choices are powerful individual behaviors that impact our well-being. Awareness of environmental and social contexts, and mindful choice-making about these factors, can also affect health and well-being.
MBSR2 builds on the experiential foundation of mindfulness and meditation established in a prior-completed mindfulness-based course, to help students further access the potential benefits of mindfulness practice. By mobilizing innate human resources for learning and flourishing, MBSR2 supports students to systematically cultivate physical, emotional and mental well-being, strengthening inner freedom and ease.
The course engages students to explore how bringing curiosity, energy, joy, focus and balance into their lives can help strengthen awareness and increase access to innate mindfulness resources. These qualities support and complement mindfulness, and so, in MBSR2, exploring them helps expand the breadth of mindfulness practice to include more of the essential contemplative underpinnings of the ancient wisdom traditions of Buddhist psychology and yoga. Furthermore, the practice of yoga as a meditation continues and is deepened here, adding new postures and framing the exercises in terms of practicing mindfulness of proprioception and interoception. Building on the themes of MBSR, which include bringing mindfulness to perception, stress reactivity/responsivity and communication, this course adds two additional themes that were elements of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s original vision for MBSR: our relationship with physical health and well-being specifically in terms of researched metrics related to nutrient and food consumption and physical activity and our relationship with the environment.
Expanding from the scientific findings of MBSR, which show positive changes in pain, stress, quality of life, anxiety symptoms, and depression, MBSR2 students further integrate insight and clarity, and explore the development of greater agency in their lives.
What is the Weekly Overview of MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health?
The MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health curriculum presented here serves as a general overview and is subject to potential modifications based on the unique needs, insights, and discussions that may arise during class.
Orientation: Welcome and introductions
Orientation includes reviewing the history of MBSR, mindfulness practices, class logistics/guidelines, and addressing student questions. It provides essential information regarding logistics, themes, commitments, and expectations for the course. It also includes experiential practice sessions, discussions on research findings, exploration of challenges and benefits of mindfulness related to well-being, and practical information about the course format. Overall, the orientation and teaching plan aim to prepare students effectively for the MBSR2 course.
Week 1: Establishing the foundation for MBSR2
The importance of mindfulness as a foundational endeavor to enhance health is discussed. Important themes from MBSR are reviewed with a specific focus on engaging evidenced-based health behaviors within the frame of both formal and informal mindfulness practices. Throughout the class, emphasis is placed on reconnecting with the core principles of mindfulness, understanding its application in daily life, and fostering a supportive learning community.
Week 2: Cultivating curiosity to support well-being
Students are invited to explore the hypothesis that both curiosity and agency are human potentials that can contribute to well-being or to stress in daily life, depending on how one relates to them. The possibility of being in relationship with one’s life intentionally and contributing to greater health of the mind, heart, and body is explored.
Week 3: Exploring how what we take in affects well-being
Students are invited to begin to feel into their own innate, but changeable, energetic resources, and the ways in which these energies affect overall well-being. Recognizing how one’s capacity to build resources and conserve energy intentionally through mindfulness is explored, including how mindfulness can counteract energetic challenges, such as “stuckness”.
Week 4: Bringing awareness to physical well-being and the environment
One key aspect addressed during this week is the recognition of how different motivations, urges, and drives shape our behaviors and ultimately impact our well-being. Mindfulness of sensations, thoughts, and emotions remains central, allowing students to observe how different motivations manifest in their actions. Furthermore, the significance of understanding automatic habitual reactions and the potential for change is emphasized, including the power of cultivating compassionate attitudes towards oneself and others.
Week 5: Strengthening the flexibility of attention
Practices are offered toward sustaining and building on the momentum that has been established so far, with self-care and compassion in mind. The notion of concentrating attentional and energetic resources to make transformation possible is explored, including the possibilities of transforming anxiety into awe, worry into wonder, and stuckness into strength.
Week 6: Harnessing joy in times of unsteadiness
Students explore how mindfulness practices can support well-being amidst life's challenges with practices designed to investigate experiences of contentment, enjoyment, and enough-ness through various lenses: meditative, sensate, and relational. With an emphasis on autonomy, students are encouraged to choose their approach to meditation and self-care activities, empowering them to align their practices with their personal intentions and goals.
All-Day: Deepening mindfulness practice
As in MBSR and other 8-week mindfulness-based courses, this 7.5 hour session is held largely in silence and provides students with the opportunity to further explore the practices of the MBSR2 course in a quiet, supportive environment. With reduced external demands and distractions, this day of practice helps to strengthen one’s use of mindfulness across multiple situations in daily life and may spark new insights and perceptions.
*Note: The All-Day can take place between Weeks 4&5, Weeks 5&6, or Weeks 6&7
Week 7: Befriending one's changing (and imperfect) life and world
The session explores interconnectivity, sufficiency, and sustainability through experiential group activities. Richie Davidson's four skills of well-being: attention, generosity, resilience, and outlook is explored and how mindfulness practice contributes to personal, social, and environmental well-being.
Week 8: Multidimensional factors contributing to well-being and resilience
Serving as the culmination of the MBSR2 course, the expansion of mindfulness practice into various aspects of daily life is emphasized. Students reflect on their journey, challenges, and achievements, while considering how to integrate mindfulness into their future endeavors. Key course topics are reviewed along with strategies for maintaining and deepening mindfulness skills beyond the course's completion.
What are the Learning Objectives and Outcomes of MBSR2: An Ecology of Mind-Body Health?
- Expand your mindfulness practice
- Continue and deepen your mindfulness
- Expand practice to include relationships
- Learn new mindful movements
- Build on MBSR, including perception, stress reactivity/responsivity and communication
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