Mindfulness-based stress reduction

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an educational program designed for learning mindfulness and discovering skillful ways to manage stress. MBSR was developed in the late 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The eight-week course combines mindfulness meditation, body awareness, and yoga to help individuals manage stress, pain, and illness. Although widely applied in clinical settings and researched for its benefits on well-being, MBSR is classified as an educational intervention rather than a form of psychotherapy.

MBSR incorporates a blend of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga, and the exploration of patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and action. Mindfulness can be understood as the non-judgmental acceptance and investigation of present experience, including body sensations, internal mental states, thoughts, emotions, impulses and memories, in order to reduce suffering or distress and to increase well-being.

Mindfulness meditation is a method by which attention skills are cultivated, emotional regulation is developed, and rumination and worry are significantly reduced. During the past decades, mindfulness meditation has been the subject of more controlled clinical research, which suggests its potential beneficial effects for mental health, athletic performance, as well as physical health. While MBSR has its roots in wisdom teachings of Zen Buddhism, Hatha Yoga, Vipassana and Advaita Vedanta, the program itself is secular. The MBSR program is described in detail in Kabat-Zinn's 1990 book Full Catastrophe Living.