Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you’re mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience

Some 10 million Americans say they practice some form of meditation

It is readily arguable that the single most significant development in mental health practice since the turn of the millennium has been the widespread emergence of mindfulness-based approaches. They are popping up everywhere you look. Type “mindfulness” into Google and you get 27 million hits.

The modern mindfulness movement in the West was largely sparked by the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, starting in 1979. This led him to found: the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as well as the Cambridge Zen Center.
Over the last 40 years, mindfulness has been the subject of much research. Thousands of research papers have now been written on the applications of mindfulness, and its impacts on people’s lives.

Being mindful makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life as they occur, helps you become fully engaged in activities, and creates a greater capacity to deal with adverse events. Mindfulness has been used to:
• help relieve stress
• treat heart disease
• lower blood pressure
• reduce chronic pain
• reduce inflammation
• reduce brain cortical atrophy
• Improve memory and cognition
• enhance peak performance
• increase acceptance of self and others
• improve test performance and academic learning
• improve sleep
• alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties
• control appetite
• reduce impulsive behavior and thus help extinguish unwanted habits while cultivating desired habits
• promote healthy relationships
• increase pleasure
• increase appreciation and gratitude
• improve focus and concentration

More and more leaders in the corporate world have been taking note of the benefits of meditation, which include lower stress levels, improved cognitive functioning, creative thinking and productivity, and even improved physical health. A number of Fortune 500 companies, including Google, AOL, Apple and Aetna, offer meditation and mindfulness classes for employees — and the top executives of many major corporations say that meditation has made them better leaders.

More than 240 programs in clinics and hospitals teach some kind of mindfulness based classes and workshops.

Since 2007 over 200,000 children in 48 U.S States in 43 Countries have been taught mindfulness via an 8-week curriculum designed and developed by an American non-profit organization known as Mindful Schools.
The Association for Mindfulness in Education has documented some of the benefits of mindfulness in school settings, and these include:
• Increased emotional regulation
• Increased social skills
• Increased ability to orient attention
• Increased working memory, planning and organization
• Increased self esteem
• Decreased test anxiety, ADHD behaviors and impulsivity
• Decreased negative affect/ emotions
• Fewer conduct and anger management problems

In 1998, Dr. Rosman completed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction in Mind-Body Medicine professional training for clinical therapists. This unique mindfulness and meditation program was taught by Drs. Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. Dr. Kabat-Zinn is widely regarded as the “father” of the mindfulness movement in the United States and the seminal figure in the realm of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Moreover, he collaborated with Dr. Anne Webster of Harvard University and the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine of the Massachusetts General Hospital to create the LifeBalance program to serve patients with chronic pain conditions, anxiety, depression, IBS, fibromyalgia, autoimmune conditions, and functional disorders.

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” Thich Nath Hanh

– Brain Health Therapy
– Neurofeedback/Biofeedback
– Integrative Lifestyle Medical Programs

When was the last time you really felt healthy?
The reason you may not feel your best is because you have developed an unhealthy lifestyle. As we get older we tend to develop bad habits and take our health for granted. Poor eating, stress, environmental and chemical toxins, and lack of exercise all take a toll on your natural defenses. For a while your body was able to cope. However, now you may have noticed some changes: You probably don’t get enough sleep and when you do sleep you may catch yourself having to get up two, three or more times during the night. The food you eat simply does not satisfy you. Losing weight has never been more difficult. You may exercise, but something still does not feel right inside. You can’t seem to put your finger on it. You simply don’t feel well, but you don’t have any obvious symptoms that would make you want to see your healthcare professional. In fact, these puzzling, non-specific symptoms may be an early warning that one or more of your body’s systems are malfunctioning.

Symptoms are Signals
Just like the red warning light in your car that flashes when there is a problem with your engine. A physical symptom is a signal telling you that an underlying health problem needs to be corrected. Treating a symptom without uncovering the real cause is like placing a piece of black tape over the blinking red warning light. The consequences of this action are obvious and more costly than necessary. Unfortunately our bodies can’t be overhauled and chronic neglect of these symptoms could eventually lead to a serious illness.

Unlike the disease-specific approach which is geared to suppress the expression of symptoms, physicians practicing functional diagnostic medicine are delighted to discover that many diseases have a real underlying cause which when identified and corrected can have a dramatic impact on the health of their patients.

Clinicians practicing functional diagnostic medicine are able to identify underlying causes of many health conditions by uniquely designed questionnaires, years of specialized training, utilization of assays and tests that seek to identify reasons for root causes and not simply surface symptoms. These are not your standard medical tests. These tests have been designed by researchers and scientists from the finest universities and innovative, licensed laboratories. They expand the boundaries of inquiry to include investigation of the biochemical and metabolic glitches likely to cause a specific disease process. Based on the results of these tests, physicians are then able to develop personalized, patient-specific treatment protocols designed to reverse, stop or prevent the disease and its related symptoms.
The Missed Diagnosis

Some health professionals typically interpret symptoms as indicators of a specific illness and use diagnostic assessments to identify or confirm that condition. While perhaps validating a suspected disease process, this approach often fails to identify the real roots of the condition – – especially in cases of chronic illness. Most treatments based upon this approach tend to be heavily dependent upon pharmaceutical drugs. Again, this approach does not address the underlying cause of the condition. Further, many drugs have toxic side effects and cover up symptoms, making additional attempts at diagnosis even less reliable.