MBSR Training Certification Overview
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Mindfulness is a basic human quality, a way of learning to pay attention to whatever is happening in your life that allows you a greater sense of connection to your life inwardly and outwardly.
More than three decades of scientific research at medical centers all over the world suggests that training in mindfulness and MBSR can positively and often profoundly affect participants’ ability to reduce stress, pain, illness, and medical symptoms while also learning to live life more fully.
Since its inception, more than 24,000 people have completed the MBSR training program. These participants have been strongly motivated to do something for themselves—something no one else can do for them—by learning to draw upon their inner resources and natural capacity for greater health as well as balance, ease, and peace of mind.
Here’s What You’ll Receive in this Life-Affirming Course in Conscious Living
The course schedule consists of eight weekly classes and one day-long class. This highly participatory, practical course presented by Dr. Saki Santorelli and senior instructor Florence Meleo-Meyer includes:
- More than 16 hours of downloadable video and audio instruction on mindfulness meditation, stretching, mindful yoga, and guidance for enhancing awareness in everyday life
- Online journal to record and reflect on your experiences
- A Year of Mindfulness: You’ll receive weekly e-mails with practice suggestions to help you live more mindfully all year.
- A Self-Guided Retreat—A Day of Mindfulness
- Certificate of Completion
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Training – MBSR 8 week course online is available for continuing education credits for an additional $120 here.
ENROLL HERE
Meet Your Instructors for Sounds True MBSR Training Certification
Florence Meleo-Meyer, MS, MA, is a senior MBSR teacher and a former member of the executive leadership team for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She wrote, coordinated, and is featured on the video program Living Awake: Mindfulness Practices for Young Adults.
Saki F. Santorelli, EdD, MA, is the former director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is the author of Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine.
ENROLL HERE
Here Are the Core MBSR Training Sessions to Help You Create Your Own Mindfulness Practice
Weeks 1 - 2
ORIENTATION
This introductory MBSR training session will acquaint you with the practice of mindfulness as taught at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. You will learn how this secular, scientific, evidence-based practice has become an accepted part of mainstream medicine, and discover how it can positively affect the quality of your everyday life.
WEEK 1
Here you will receive an overview of the MBSR training certification 8-week course and establish the learning context for the rest of your experience. You will learn the theory and evidence of mind-body medicine and how to apply it in your life. You’ll be experientially introduced to mindful eating, mindful breathing, and the body-scan method, with a special emphasis on what it means to be fully engaged in the present moment.
WEEK 2
Perception is key in mindfulness—how you see things (or don’t see them) will determine in a large part how you respond. This week’s session and practices will ask you to examine your perceptions, assumptions, and the way you view the world. You will learn to use the body-scan practice to cultivate a greater degree of awareness of how you react to stressful situations. Changing the way you perceive and respond to difficulties and challenges will impact the short- and long-term effects of stress on your mind and body.
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Here Are the Core MBSR Training Certification Sessions to Help You Create Your Own Mindfulness Practice
Weeks 3-5
WEEK 3
In this session, you’ll practice several distinct yet interrelated mindfulness practices—mindful hatha yoga, sitting meditation, and walking meditation. This is an ideal time to share your insights about your experiences with formal practice and integrating mindfulness into your daily life. You will discover that there is both pleasure and power in being present—you’ll directly attend to and investigate how your experiences create such reactions as pleasure or discomfort in the mind and body.
WEEK 4
By practicing mindfulness, we cultivate curiosity and openness to the full range of our experience, and through this process, our ability to pay attention becomes more flexible. This week, during your MBSR training your practice will focus on the development of your ability to concentrate and systematically expand your field of awareness. You’ll learn about the physiological and psychological bases of stress reactivity, and experience mindful strategies for responding in positive, proactive ways to stressful situations.
WEEK 5
Here Are the Core MBSR 8-Week Course Sessions to Help You Create Your Own Mindfulness Practice
Weeks 6-8
WEEK 6
Resilience or “stress hardiness” is our ability to return to equilibrium after stressful situations. This week, you will focus on transformational coping strategies to broaden your inner resources and enhance your resilience through mindfulness practice. You’ll also learn the fundamentals of interpersonal mindfulness—applying awareness and presence at times when communication becomes difficult or fraught with strong emotions. You’ll gain direct experience of a variety of styles for more effective and creative interpersonal communication.
ALL DAY RETREAT
This day-long guided retreat will take place between weeks six and seven. The intensive nature of this six-hour-plus session is intended to assist you in firmly and effectively establishing the use of MBSR skills across multiple situations in your life, while simultaneously preparing you to utilize these methods far beyond the conclusion of the program.
WEEK 7
Mindfulness is most effective when it is a lifetime commitment. This week, you will explore the many ways that you can integrate mindfulness more fully and personally into your life. While having a dedicated regular practice for mindfulness meditation is important and beneficial, it is just as important to bring a broader sense of awareness and presence to every moment in your life, and to use non-judgmental mindfulness in your self-reflection and decision-making processes. You’ll learn how to maintain the discipline and flexibility of daily practice as circumstances change over the course of your life.
WEEK 8
In the final week of the MBSR training program, you will have a complete review of everything you’ve learned over the MBSR course, with an emphasis on carrying the momentum you’ve built forward into the coming months and years. You’ll learn about resources available to you to pursue mindfulness in new directions as your life and practice evolve, as well as the support systems that exist to help you continue to integrate, learn, and grow. The final lesson creates a satisfying closure by honoring both the end of this program and the beginning of the rest of your life.
ENROLL HERE
MBSR Training Certification BONUSES:
Bonus #1 Florence Meleo-Meyer discusses the life-changing power of kindness. (Audio)
Bonus #2 Jon Kabat Zinn's groundbreaking audio-learning program—over 10 hours of teachings and practices.
Bonus #3 An additional day of mindfulness to help you go deeper and explore the practices you'll learn.