Mindfulness or mindfulness? It can be confusing. Mindfulness means to be attentive, to be aware, to be present. It has been the main part of the Buddhist practice for thousands of years. It was Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn (1982) who first recognised its potential for a therapeutic use suitable for treating the psychic ailments of contemporary people. Working with psychologists and psychiatrists, he found that mindfulness-based interventions could effectively reduce negative factors such as psychological distress in those living with chronic back pain.
Why Mindfulness? This different approach offers what no other treatment did so far: the opportunity for the patient to embark on a journey of healing, of going to the root of their problem. Kabat-Zinn searched for a way to apply the Buddhist practices for the common man, regardless of his beliefs or interests. He invented a training program for the mind, to help us to be at peace in all kind of situations, to know how to balance our nervous system, stop chronic anxiety and prevent stress bouts forever. He designed a famous 8 weeks course that goes through all the stages one needs to master in order to achieve lasting peace. Since such discoveries, Mindfulness has become an extremely popular topic for psychologists, with over 4000 scientific studies being published.
So, what we now simply call “Mindfulness” is the Jon Kabat-Zinn School of Mind Training.
The Mindfulness Course will help you to:
- Improve your mood and quality of life
- Respond to challenging situations instead of merely reacting
- Take decisions with a cool head
- Have more energy
- Improving social functioning by strengthening relationships
- Improving sleep quality
- Re-establishing a sense of control over your emotions
- Prevent anxiety, stress and burn-out
Your Mindfulness teacher will be Alain Bourguignon, a teacher trained by the Respiravida School, the Spanish outbranch of Breathworks, which is a UK based school following Jon Kabat-Zinn guidelines and recognized internationally, and also a founding member of the British Association of Mindfulness-Based Approaches.
