Announcing MBW Program

Today we had our first Faculty/Staff meeting of the new academic year. Our agenda included an announcement about our new Mindfulness-Based Wellness program; Dr. Maria Hunt and I explained the the program, and solicited participants. We were delighted to receive a very enthusiastic reception; it's clear that the numbers of volunteers for our first year will easily meet, and probably exceed, the number of openings that we had planned. What a great dilemma for us!

Following is the text of part of my comments to the assembled faculty and staff:

Mindfulness practice has been a part of every major religious and spiritual tradition for thousands of years. It has been cultivated because it is a way to move from a position of conflict to a place of peace. We all understand what it is like to live in conflict, conflict within ourselves and with the world around us. It may seem that our lives are full of uneasiness, dissatisfaction, and distraction. When we have a regular mindfulness practice, we feel more grounded, at peace, focused, and emotionally strong and balanced.

So, there have been many reasons for people to engage in mindfulness practice; now there are scientific findings that are showing us what happens in our brains when we engage in mindfulness practice.

We have learned that when people practice mindfulness, which is a type of attentional training, their brain functions improve in ways that help them to respond better to stressful and upsetting conditions and situations, like chronic pain, or upsetting thoughts. They become more peaceful, happier, more awake and present to reality and to their own lives.

What this means is that we have found that we can harness the power of the brain to change its own circuitry; and, when we do this, we can achieve goals that may have always seemed un-achievable.

Because of these findings, universities and hospitals across the United States are offering mindfulness training to staff members as well as to patients , and they are finding that individuals who have gone through mindfulness training gain benefits in a wide variety of areas: improved stress management, enhanced spirituality and well-being; increased capacity for empathy; and reductions in anxiety and symptoms of burn-out.