This month, I am featuring a letter written by one of my prior students. Written to a dear friend, she shares her impressions of the 8-week MBSR class and describes her experiences in a way that I never could. I hope you will enjoy her letter, and that it inspires you take the class. The next session begins Thursday, January 21 in Rochester.

Dear Sue-
How's everything with you? I am looking forward to seeing you again soon and want to tell you about something I have been doing that you may be interested in.

I have one week to go in my "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction" class I'm taking in Rochester, and I keep thinking you would enjoy it as much and find it as beneficial as I have. It will be offered again in the New Year, and I thought maybe we could take it together. I would find it helpful to go through it again.

Here is the scoop. It's an 8-week class from 6:30 to about 8:30 pm one night a week. Our class has been on Mondays, but I don't know about the next one. We do mindfulness based practices including body scan meditation, seated meditation, walking meditation and yoga. One Saturday during those 8 weeks there is a "retreat" from 9 am to 3 pm that is silent (except for the instructors directions) and includes all of the forms of meditation. The retreat was amazing - I don't remember when I've felt so relaxed and at peace. The cost is $300 for those 8 weeks and the retreat, and it's well worth it.

I've found the classes and retreat relaxing, but it takes time to quiet the mind enough to meditate. The instructor is Linda Bowers, a former GM manager who decided to leave the hectic corporate life after she became acquainted with mindfulness. She was on the fast track at GM and left to raise her kids and change her life. She's studied at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn who has written many books and is the guru of mindfulness based stress reduction and pain relief. I was attracted to this class because I watched a television special many years ago called "Healing and the Mind" with Bill Moyers that featured Jon Kabat-Zinn. When I saw that Linda trained with him, I figured it would be pretty cool.

There's some interpersonal communication training, assertiveness training, and mind-body connection info related to health and diet, too. All in all, I've found it to be so good for me, expecially after the difficult summer I've had. It's kind of amazing that I was drawn to the class at just the right time.

Anyway, here's Linda's website : http://www.awakeninghealth.net/

Let me know if you are interested in attending the next 8-week session with me. We are alike in many ways, and I think you would "get" what's going on in these sessions. I would love to share it with you.

Love,
Sarah

Is stress making you sick?

Have you ever wondered what it is about being stressed that makes you feel sick? In the classes I teach, we talk about how the events of our lives and the way we think about them can unleash a torrent of stress hormones and throw our bodies into disequilibrium. When this imbalance becomes chronic, we can feel sick and even develop illness.

In The Balance Within - The Science Connecting Health and Emotion (2001), Esther Sternberg, MD, a respected rheumatologist and neuroscientist, explains recent insights into the mind-body connection and how chronic psycholgical and physical stresses (sleep deprivation, divorce, and social isolation, for instance) make people ill by negatively affecting their immune and hormonal responses. She then describes the research that shows how belief can heal.

I just listened to her 2007 interview on "Speaking of Faith" on NPR, where she presents these ideas in language we can all understand. Through anecdotes about her own experiences with stress and inflammatory arthritis, she explains how stress makes us sick and belief can make us well. She suggests that much like the computer that has locked up from too many emails and too many programs running, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to "go offline and reboot."

If you are curious about the connections between health and emotion, or you want to learn more about going "offline," I invite you to listen to this facinating broadcast by clicking here.

What is your ratio?

I just finished reading "The Science of Happiness-Barbara Fredrickson On Cultivating Positive Emotions" by Angela Winter. This interview was published in one of my favorite magazines, The Sun, back in May (ok, I'm a bit behind in my reading) and it really hit home for me.

Ms. Fredrickson's thesis is that if we can cultivate positive emotions, our lives will be happier and healthier. Positive emotions come and go and most of us want them because they give us pleasure and help us to move forward. Yet most of us do little to cultivate them, we just let them come and go, and frequently don't even notice them with a great deal of consciousness.

Her research has found that when we pay attention to the positive events in our lives, we experience more positive emotions. When we experience more positive emotions, we have fewer physical symptoms, we sleep better, we are more open to all that life brings us and more able to deal with it in a healthy way. The tipping point between negativity in life and a positive outlook, according to the data she and others collected is a ratio of about 3:1. When one brings awareness to three positive events for every one negative event, the attitude begins to shift towards the positive. She suggests a healthy ratio would be 5 or 6:1 to put yourself on solidly positive ground.

We don't control many of the events that happen in our lives, or how others treat us. What we can do is choose how to relate to it, and where to focus our attention and energies. It is easy to get stuck on all the difficulties of life - they are constantly pointed to on radio and TV, in print, and in our daily conversations with each other. For many of us, it is our default state.

Instead, allow yourself to see the entirety of your world and your experiences and you will find that there are a lot of positive ones in the mix. You can notice the car that cuts you off in traffic, and you can also notice that your favorite song is on the radio, that the sun is shining and that you are healthy and prosperous enough to be riding around in a car in the first place.

If you pay attention, you will find that there is truly a lot more that is right with you and the world than is wrong. You only need to take the time and energy to notice it, and to be healthier and happier as a result.

Here are a couple of videos of people who took my last class, "Calming the Anxious Mind."

Check out their comments!

Plan "B"

In the summer, I normally spend long weekends and an occasional week at our family cottage in northern Michigan. As my parents age, I have increased the amount of time I am there, because I want to be with them as much as possible before they return south for the winter. This year, I arranged to spend several two week periods with them. I got the cottage opened up and cleaned the cobwebs away. I cut the grass and weeded the garden, and even planted some coreopsis and zinnias for my mom.

They still have not arrived, thanks to a cascade of health issues that my mom is experiencing. After not arriving in mid-May, they planned for July 1. Then the end of July, then mid August.

With each delay, I found myself sad and disappointed, and a little scared that "this might be it" for my mom. As I sat with these thoughts and feelings, I realized this was all out of my control, and that I could choose to be miserable and upset all summer, or I could choose to go on with my life just like I do when they are south for the winter.

I have grieved the changes this summer and missed them a great deal. And I have also begun to create a life for myself at the cottage. I have had dear friends come to vacation here, gotten to know some of my neighbors better, reconnected with old friends, and even gotten a library card in town. I have shared some "quality time" with my kids, gone on some field trips, and picked way too many raspberries!

It can be this way for all the difficult changes in our lives, if we choose. We can feel the pain of change and also open into the space the change creates. We can choose how much we want to suffer, or not. We may not be able to control the things that happen in our lives - we can decide how we want to act in the midst of those events.

I am choosing to experience my feelings as they arise and to let them pass, as they will. I am practicing gratitude for all the love and times that I have shared with my parents here at the cottage. And I am planning a visit to their southern home...

Building strong roots

I have a cottage on a lake in northern Michigan, surrounded by old and mighty trees. They persevere through the most ferocious blizzards and thunderstorms that come up out of the west.

Yet each spring, I find trees that have fallen towards the west, by winds that have come from the east. After some contemplation, I realized that the roots on the west side of the trees are deep and strong, because they are continually being tested by the weather. I also noticed that those on the east side of the tree are shallower and weaker, because they haven't been continually toughened by the prevailing winds.

We are all pretty adept at surviving the routine stresses of our lives (albeit with some less than healthy coping methods!). It is hard for us to see where our "roots" are shallow, opening us up to being suprised and knocked off balance by something unexpected storm.

Taking as little as 5 minutes a day, every day, to just stop and pay attention, to our breath, our bodies, our thoughts and our feelings, can help us deepen our "roots." We may bend and be tested by the weather of our lives, but with deep, strong roots all around us, we can keep standing through even the most trying storms.

Don't believe everything you think!

"We are what we think. All that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." Buddha

How often do you examine your thoughts? Are you even aware that you are thinking most of the time? Most of us are not. And this opens the door for your thoughts to run your life, rather than you.

You might want to take a few minutes each day, to just sit and watch your thoughts. Noticing how they arrive, stay a while and then move away, making room for the next one, you can begin to separate the thought "event" from the thought "content." Sometimes thoughts may arise slowly or not at all, and other times may come in torrents. Just let yourself observe, and learn from these discrete events.

When you start to look at the content of your thoughts, you may learn that a lot of what you think is just not true, and may even be ridiculous. It may be rooted in past experience and personal interpretation, and does, in fact, alter the way you experience your life. If you are unhappy with your life, examining the content of your thoughts may provide not only clues to the source of your suffering, but the antidote as well.

Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

This YouTube video of Jon's mindfulness talk at Google is a great introduction as well as a refresher of mindfulness practice. Take the time to watch and practice with him and I think you will see why he has been so successful in bringing this practice not only into the mainstream medical world but also to "regular" folks like you and me.
Just click on the link below and enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc

Comments from MBSR students

"This class has helped me to, each day, live mindfully. I am more comfortable in "letting life unfold" and being aware of what is going on around me...and inside me."
Connie

"This course helped me discover the space within myself to better emotionally navigate my life."
Paul

"This course has provided me with the tools I was looking for to make the positive changes I wanted to make in my life."
Sharleen

"I began the MBSR class series during a difficult period in my life. I now use the mindfulness practices which I learned in the class to help me stay grounded and focused."
Patrick

"This program has helped me be more relaxed and mindful of the things around me. I highly recommend this class to anyone who has stress in their lives and wants to be more aware of themselves and of life altogether."
Tia

"This program has taught me that it is not being selfish to take time for myself. It has also taught me how to relax and to focus on my emotions. I am grateful for these insights."
Margaret

"Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction taught me many things, and one in particular was how to meditate...while being kind to what my body and mind were feeling."
Carol