Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

The world acclaimed evidence-based 8 week MBSR course
comes to Yoga Spirit Studios

An in-depth approach to shifting your habitual thinking mind into a new and freer framework.

Understand how to come home to the wisdom of your body’s senses, and to arrive in this moment more peacefully, calmly and more empowered than you may have ever thought possible.

With mindfulness meditation practices and gentle movement as the core of this life-enhancing program, you will learn simple and highly effective ways to take better care of yourself towards the living of a healthier, more skilfully responsive life.

This course is for you if...

• You are prepared and motivated to participate 100% (including all home practice)
• You have ever felt the pace of your life is ‘out of control’, or you’re ‘just not feeling right’.
• You want more ease and peace in day-to-day life .
• You seek to enhance learning, concentration, creativity, personal resilience and professional effectiveness.
• You have job, relationship or family pressures that you find stressful, perhaps with symptoms such as headaches, irritability, high-blood pressure, fatigue and sleep disturbance.
• You have more serious conditions including mild depression, anxiety and panic disorders, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and/or chronic pain.

Your course fee includes...

• 8 weekly 2.5 hour classes run by a skilled facilitator in a safe, supportive setting
• One full ‘Day of Mindfulness’ to practice some of your newfound skills (at another location to be confirmed)
• An app of meditations to keep and practice with at home
• An information-full printed manual to follow along through the course and keep track of your progress
• Weekly emails full of additional resources, tips, links, and as relevant to the participants of the course
• A systematic training in mindfulness and all that it contains
• In-depth guidance for setting up a life-long practice that can continue to support you

6 Saturdays (2.00-4.30pm) 28th March-23 May, 2020 (excluding Easter, Anzac Day and 4 April)

2 Fridays (6pm-8.30pm) 3 April and 24th April

+ one full 'Day of Mindfulness' intensive on Sunday 3rd May (location to be confirmed)

Cost $695 full price
Early bird $595 extended to Friday 6 March

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This course is not a ‘quick fix’. But it is a very productive way into and through your issues, which will allow you to draw wisdom and insight as you gradually untangle your way out of them. This form of ‘attention-training’ creates the conditions for being with ALL your experiences, no matter how challenging. At the conclusion of this course, you will know much more about yourself and your needs, and you will have established a relationship with yourself that will be of a radically different quality from the one you have now – for life.

What are you waiting for?

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Here's what the course contains...

Week 1 Recognising the Present Moment

• interrupt your “automatic pilot”
• slow down and pay attention to your immediate experience
• use body sensations as an anchor in the present moment
• move from ‘doing’ mode into ‘being’ mode
• notice the flow of thoughts, feelings and sensations that arise in the present moment.

Week 2 Engage with the Breath

• use the breath as a way to anchor yourself in the present, and recognise emotional states
• cultivate a sitting practice using the breath
• use hearing/listening to centre yourself and anchor yourself in the present
• honour and accept all of your experiences – not just the ‘good’ bits
• cultivate curiosity about your experiences, not matter what they are.

Week 3 Practice, Practice, Practice

• practice patience and acceptance of yourself
• explore a moving practice
• learn about the stress reactivity cycle and stress physiology
• use movement practice to explore limits, and cultivate strength and flexibility of mind and body

Week 4 Stress and the Flow of Emotions

• learn more about stress reactivity and emotions
• explore emotions in a creative and accepting way
• use metaphors to work effectively with strong emotions
• use the bodily sensations of emotions as a way to ground in to the present moment
• recognise and interrupt the thoughts which are associated with painful emotions
• use the breath as a way of coping with intense emotions

Week 5 Stress and Thoughts

• remember that thoughts are not facts (even the ones that say they are!)
• explore the process of thinking and get some perspective on your thoughts
• recognise unhelpful patterns of thinking
• interrupt ruminative thoughts with focus on the breath and sensations
• use metaphor as a creative way to interrupt difficult patterns of thinking
• oscillate between ‘thinking’ and experiencing the present moment
• effectively label thoughts in order to make space between ‘you’ and your thoughts.

Retreat Day - A full day of Mindfulness Practice

• cultivate sustained curiosity into the ‘waves’ of sensations, feelings and thoughts over the extended time period of the day
• use silence as a path for ‘settling’ in oneself
• cultivate a sense of community and connectedness through silent practice together
• develop concentration and strength in practice

Week 6 Interpersonal Mindfulness

• pay detailed attention to the ‘other’
• listen and see others in more flexible and accepting ways
• use mindful contemplation as a way of cultivating acceptance and compassion for yourself and others
• explore patterns of relating through mindfulness.

Week 7 Living on Purpose

• integrate what you have been learning in to daily practice
• reflect on some options about caring for yourself and making choices in life
• develop a clear picture of what serves you and what doesn't
• begin practising without the supplied recorded meditations… all on your own!

Week 8 Making Mindfulness a Part of Your Life

• give your feedback about the program
• explore what you have achieved through the practice
• recognise that living mindfully is a process of ongoing practice
• explore choices about continuing to support this practice in your life
• pay attention to how it feels to be ending the course

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About your Facilitator, Anne Rodgers

Hi it's Anne here, I am so pleased you are interested enough to find out more about your facilitator for this life changing course. My passion is to support people to enjoy life more even in the most challenging of professional and personal circumstances.

I was formerly Managing Director of Starcom, a global media and communications agency. I turned to yoga and mindfulness to support my own mental health and to cope with the rigours of business. I was so taken with the benefits of mindfulness with my own wellbeing, I took a great leap of faith and changed my life’s direction.

I now support people to deal with the pressures of daily life through mindfulness based practices, meditation and yoga. Guiding my clients to replenish and regenerate the body-mind connection with emphasis on breath awareness and balancing the nervous system.

I have dedicated myself to study over the past 4 years and now hold a Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing and I am a registered Hatha Yoga Instructor. I have trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction through the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I am also a facilitator with Mindfulness Works Australia and Smiling Mind and I am a member of Meditation Association of Australia.

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