Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

        Joy LeVine Abrams will be bringing the eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) to Westport on April 6. Created by Jon Kabat-Zinn at UMass Medical Center in 1979 as a way to support its participants in uncertain, stressful times, MBSR has been featured on Bill Moyers’ PBS special, “Healing and the Mind.” More than 5,000 physicians have referred their patients to the program at UMass to help with anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic pain, heart disease, cancer and more. While mindfulness practices do not necessarily cure such conditions, they change our relationship to them.

  Kabat-Zinn believes that “Learning how to stop all your doing and shift over to a being mode...to make time for yourself...to slow down and nurture calmness and self-acceptance...to watch your thoughts and...let go of them without getting so caught up and driven by them...to make room for new ways of seeing old problems and perceiving the interconnectedness of things, these are some of the lessons of mindfulness.” Participants will learn gentle conditioning exercises to strengthen the body and reduce tension. Awareness of the relationship between body and mind in health and illness will increase, and they will be offered ways to face change, loss and challenges with greater ease.

  Joy Le Vine Abrams has been teaching MBSR since Fall 2007, and has been teaching yoga since 1995. She was a director of volunteers at Mid-Fairfield Hospice for nine years, and holds a master’s degree in biology.

The 8-week program is $395, and will be held on Tuesday evenings, beginning April 6 from 6:30 to 9 (with first and last classes slightly longer), at the Saugatuck Congregational Church in downtown Westport. Beginners in yoga and meditation are welcome. A pre-class phone interview is required for all participants. For more information or to register, contact Joy at [email protected] or call 203.255.8815.