Genesis offers program to lower stress, become mindful

WESTFIELD – Life is stressful business, but our reaction to it does not need to be another burden.

The Genesis Spiritual Life and Conference Center will be offering a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MSBR) for the second time. The program will again be led by John Meiklejohn, LISCW, BCD.

MSBR is a program designed to help people be more attentive in their day-to-day lives, something that helps them live in the present moment and better cope with stressors.

“The heart of it is really learning approaches that allow you to move from the standard way in which all of us are doing things all day long in our waking day – we’re task orientated, we’re doing this, we’re doing that,” Meiklejohn said. “We always have more to do on our to do list in a day than we can get to, but we’re not called ‘Human doings’ and we are human beings and this kind of a training gives us a chance in a small group setting to explore, once again, that dimension of being as opposed to doing.”

The MSBR program teaches participants breath-based and body-based practices, Meiklejohn said, as well as some light yoga. 

When research in this field began in 1979, MSBR was originally designed to provide a complementary form of medicine for patience diagnosed with chronic medical conditions or psychological distress. 

As time went on, it proved valuable to not only those people seeking medical attention for varying reasons, but also for people to use to reduce stress in daily activities. Because stress is unavoidable, Meiklejohn said MSBR helps to accept it.

“It turns out it’s a vital part in being able to be resilient and nurture your own well being in thea face of stressors that we all encounter. Stressors themselves aren’t all bad; they’re necessary,”?Meiklejohn said. “You can’t be alive and awake and conscious without having some stimulation and stress to deal with but we tend to get overwhelmed and kind of hijacked by the stressors that come our way.”

The other key component of the program is learning to be mindful, which John Kabat Zinn, the pioneer of MSBR, described as “paying attention on purpose in the present moment with acceptance for whatever is arising in our moment to moment.”

Participants learn to act mindfully in formal practices with group, but Meiklejohn said they are also encouraged to practice informally on their own. They do so by being in the present moment while doing daily activities, such as eating breakfast and enjoying every bite or showering without thinking about the day’s tasks.

It encourages them to enjoy the moment that they are in.

“Practicing mindfulness in this secular way is really just a way to inviting ourselves to come off of autopilot and to pay a little closer attention to our moment to moment experiences,” Meiklejohn said.

Part of this mindfulness is also learning to be at peace, not judging situations but accepting them.

“As you go through the eight weeks, you’re really being invited in both your attitude towards yourself and your attitude towards whatever comes up in the environment to explore suspending judgment, thinking things good or bad or right or wrong, just kind of perceive and receive it and see it what it’s like to be nonjudgmental a little bit,” he said. 

Meiklejohn said that it was clear to see what the nine participants in the fall session took away from the program. People came in for varying reasons, including reeling in anger. 

They walked away with a new perspective, that human emotions should be felt, even if negative. There are just other ways to channel them rather than lashing out. 

“It’s not that we stop that. We just catch it midstream and kind of hold it mindfully and let ourselves pass through that so we end up with a more fully human response to the situation rather than our quicker reactions to them,” Meiklejohn said.

MSBR helps guide students to the acceptance and embracing of the full range of human emotions. 

“It’s helping people come to terms with that human aspect of the mind. We can’t just shut that off. We don’t need to, but we can find ways to be a little nonreactive to our own emotional, initial reaction to things so we can pass through it,” he said.

The MSBR program at Genesis starts with a free orientation session on Feb. 23 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. After the orientation, the sessions will run every Monday evening until April 20.

For more information about the MSBR program, contact Meiklejohn at 348-2848 or at j.johnmeiklejohn@comcast.net.