From the boardroom to the classroom to the yoga room, mindfulness techniques are being used to manage stress, improve performance, gain insight and clarity and improve time management. Find out what mindfulness is all about in a six-week series starting today at 5:45 p.m. at Vitality Spa & Wellness of Old Lyme.
Anderson Cooper started everyone talking about mindfulness in early December when his CBS 60 Minutes program discussed the time that he spent with Jon Kabat-Zinn on a weekend-long mindfulness retreat. A meditation expert of over 47 years, Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and developer of the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program.
But Cooper was not the first skeptical newscaster to benefit from mindfulness. ABC News Anchor Dan Harris talks about how MBSR helped him after his very public on-air breakdown in 2004. He was drawn to mindfulness despite “massive misgivings” but found that MBSR provided a secular and sustainable practice that allowed him to regain control of his life and his career.
One of those “well known secrets,” MBSR is finally gaining traction as medical experts recognize it is a valuable tool in the management of stress and depression. Both the US National Institutes for Health and the National Institute of Clinical Excellence in the UK recommend mindfulness as a treatment and as a preventative tool in addition to, or as an alternative to traditional pharmacological treatments.
“Have you been wondering about the benefits of meditation, but didn’t know what to ask? Do you want to start a mediation routine in your daily life, but are not sure you have the time?” asks Karen Gomez, a Holistic Life Coach at Vitality Wellness, who has been practicing and teaching mindfulness techniques for over 20 years.
Gomez notes, “One of the most rewarding things about my work is seeing people who come keyed up … ‘come on, get on with it, teach me these techniques, I haven’t got time to hang around’ … and by the end of the series they realize that mindfulness has created time for them. It has given them back time, it has created that 25th hour in the day or better still it has taught them that they really don’t need 25 stressful hours to achieve all that they want to achieve.”
She continues, “Mindfulness has taught them to live in the moment, these techniques have shown them how being present in every moment of your life and not wasting time on the past or the future creates space, creates time and creates balance. Their performance at work improves, they gain clarity in their thinking at work and at home with their families and most importantly they reduce stress and learn to live and love life again.”
Each weekly interactive class will cover techniques you can integrate into your busy schedule easily, a group coaching component, as well as a meditation segment. The purpose of this series is to enable participants to gain a sound background in holistic approaches for stress management and share a variety of effective relaxation techniques which include, deep breathing, positive thinking, affirmations, visualizations, muscle relaxation, with reviews of Yoga, Meditation, and Reiki.
If you would prefer to schedule 1:1 sessions at Vitality, call
860.434.1792.
