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Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Course
- 1.1 Course Overview and Introduction to Mindfulness
- 1.2 Mindfulness of Perception/s
- 1.3 Learning to be Present
- 1.4 Dealing with the Stress Response
- 1.5 Building Awareness of Unhealthy Habits and Reactions
- 1.6 Resilience and Interpersonal Relationships
- 1.7 Integrating Mindfulness into One’s Life
- 1.8 Course Review
- 1.9 Frequently asked questions
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Course
Our Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Course is a self-guided programme that will not only help you to deal with stress more effectively it will also help you to gain more enjoyment from all the potentially pleasurable aspects of life.

This program is for you if who want to learn how to deal more effectively with stress, the difficult reactions it evokes within us, and the unproductive behaviour we often engage in. This course is designed as a self-guided program that includes 8 modules to be engaged with over a period of at least eight weeks.
This program includes the following resources for each of the 8 modules:
- Videos.
- Meditation Recordings.
- Comprehensive course notes.
- Opportunities for offering and receiving support from group members.
“I have been on medication for many years for anxiety attacks… This is the first life skill I have found to help me cope without medication.”
— Course participant with panic disorder
The following topics will be covered (1 topic per module):
Week 1
Course Overview and Introduction to Mindfulness
This session provides you with an overview of the course and establishes the learning context for the rest of your experience. You will learn the theory and evidence of mind-body medicine and how to apply it in your life. You’ll be experientially introduced to mindful eating, mindful breathing, and the body-scan method, with a special emphasis on what it means to be fully engaged in the present moment.
Week 2
Mindfulness of Perception/s
This session provides you with an understanding of how and why perception is key in mindfulness—how you see things (or don’t see them) will determine to a large extent how you respond. This week’s session and practices will ask you to examine your perceptions, assumptions, and the way you view the world. You will learn to use the body-scan practice to cultivate a greater degree of awareness of how you react to stressful situations. Changing the way you perceive and respond to difficulties and challenges will impact the short- and long-term effects of stress on your mind and body.
Week 3
Learning to be Present
In this session, you’ll practice several distinct yet interrelated mindfulness practices—mindful yoga, sitting meditation, and walking meditation. You will discover that there is both pleasure and power in being present—you’ll directly attend to and investigate how your experiences create such reactions as pleasure or discomfort in the mind and body.
Week 4
Dealing with the Stress Response
This session aims to provide you with a sense of how practicing mindfulness enables us to cultivate curiosity and openness to the full range of our experience, and through this process our ability to pay attention becomes more flexible. This week, your practice will focus on the development of your ability to concentrate and systematically expand your field of awareness. You’ll learn about the physiological and psychological bases of stress reactivity, and experience mindful strategies for responding in positive, proactive ways to stressful situations.
Week 5
Building Awareness of Unhealthy Habits and Reactions
At the halfway point in this course, you should now be familiar with the foundations of mindfulness and able to focus on applying it more rapidly and effectively to specific challenges and stressors in your life. This week you will begin to pay attention to the places where you might be stuck in repeating, unhealthy patterns that you can disarm through mindful awareness. You will also learn how to apply mindfulness at the critical moment when you experience a physical sensation, intense emotion, or condition, with special attention to exploring the effect of reactivity in health and illness.
Week 6
Resilience and Interpersonal Relationships
This session provides you with an understanding of the term “resilience” or “stress hardiness” – the ability to return to equilibrium after stressful situations. This week, you will focus on transformational coping strategies to broaden your inner resources and enhance your resilience through mindfulness practice. You’ll also learn the fundamentals of interpersonal mindfulness—applying awareness and presence at times when communication becomes difficult or fraught with strong emotions. You’ll gain direct experience of a variety of styles for more effective and creative interpersonal communication.
Week 7
Integrating Mindfulness into One’s Life
This session explores the many ways that you can integrate mindfulness more fully and personally into your life. While having a dedicated regular practice for mindfulness meditation is important and beneficial, it is just as important to bring a broader sense of awareness and presence to every moment in your life, and to use non-judgmental mindfulness in your self-reflection and decision-making processes. You’ll learn how to maintain the discipline and flexibility of daily practice as circumstances change over the course of your life. Mindfulness is most effective when it is a lifetime commitment.
Week 8
Course Review
This session provides a complete review of everything you’ve learned over the course, with an emphasis on carrying the momentum you’ve built forward into the coming months and years. You’ll learn about resources available to you to pursue mindfulness in new directions as your life and practice evolve, as well as the support systems that exist to help you continue to integrate, learn, and grow. The final lesson creates a satisfying closure by honoring both the end of this program and the beginning of the rest of your life.
This training is based on over 40 years of international research into the benefits of mindfulness and other similar practices. You will learn how to pay attention to your experiences in a focused yet counter-intuitive manner. In particular, you will learn how to focus attention on your inner experiences of difficult body sensations, thoughts and feelings in a way that significantly reduces their intensity… so that you no longer react in an automatic way and cause yourself to feel stressed and/or negative about life.
Before this training, challenging events will often provoke quick reactions. After this training, you will be able to pause and create space between an event and your reaction. This transforms automatic or knee-jerk reactions into thoughtful responses.
Before this training, a thought may lead to anxious feelings and behaviours. After this training, you will be far more skilled at halting an anxious response in its tracks.
Being able to pay focused attention to one’s inner experience (i.e. practicing mindfulness) is a skill which anyone can sharpen with practice. It’s a skill which scientific research shows improves calmness, impulse control, patience, empathy, executive function and attention span. It’s a skill we can give ourselves to not only connect more deeply with others around us but to really nurture a sense of self-respect and self-compassion.
If you are interested in participating in this training or would like to discuss options to suit the needs and resources of your organisation/group, please fill in the form and/or contact us via email: info@optimumhealth.co.za or by phone, on (++27) 79 472 5309.
FEE:
For clients residing in South Africa: R1 470
For clients residing outside of South Africa: $ 97
“I have benefited so much more than I could ever have imagined or dreamt of. I have better interactions… and also my relationships have improved with all my family members.”
— Course participant
Frequently asked questions
Basically, you will learn how to incorporate mindfulness into your everyday living such that stress has a diminishing impact on your health and well-being. You will be taught how to engage with mindfulness practices/meditations that involve focusing on a single point of attention for an extended period of time, such as a 20- or 30-minute sitting meditation with a focus on the sensations of breathing, (e.g. the rise and fall of one’s chest). You will also learn how to bring ever-expanding moments of mindfulness into your day. You will learn breathing methods and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.
Yes. This course is a “self-guided” online program. This means that although it is designed as an 8-week course, you might like to take more time to work through the videos and course materials. All of the course materials are available to you once you have paid the course fee.
Once you are an established client, and have engaged with one of our programmes, then you are welcome to consult with one or more of our health practitioners on an ad hoc basis.
Like anything, the work you put into it is what you will get out of it. Stress gradually begins to diminish in intensity when you engage on a daily basis with the simple practices that you will be taught on this course.
It is possible, but unlikely, that you will be reimbursed even if you have comprehensive medical aid cover and/or a medical savings account.
You will have THREE WEEKS (21 days) from the time that you make payment to engage with the course materials and practices and to decide whether the course is ‘right’ for you. We will reimburse you 80% of the course fee if you request a refund before the 21 days have elapsed. No refund is possible after 21 days have elapsed.
Mindfulness has been described as a ‘state of mind’ that involves maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than being focused on the past or on the imagined future.
Mindfulness practices are often taught secularly, but their roots involve an integration of Western psychology and a particular type of focused Buddhist meditation. The Massachusetts Medical School and Hospital offered the first Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in 1979. This was initially designed and researched by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Mindfulness can be thought of as a particular form of meditation. Broadly speaking, it is a meditative way of being in which one focuses one’s attention on what one is sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment.
Practicing mindfulness means to give one’s focused attention to whatever it would be best to focus one’s attention on in the moment. At times this will involve focusing entirely on the conversation that one is having with another person. At other times, this will involve focusing entirely on the email that one is typing. At yet other times, this will include focusing entirely on the delicious mouthful of coffee that one has taken… before moving one’s focus on to the next point of attention, which may be a particular feeling or emotion that is arising in the moment.
Yes. One important way in which mindfulness works is through building a greater awareness of one’s own body and mind. This enables one to identify the first miniscule sensations of pain as they arise together with any thoughts or feelings that may accompany the physical sensations… and then respond appropriately, long before the pain becomes intense or unbearable.
Yes it does. By focusing our attention on the present moment, mindfulness effectively counteracts rumination and worrying. In other words, mindfulness can be an important tool for helping us to focus on the present moment rather than getting caught up in thoughts that are anxiety-provoking in nature. Research has shown that mindfulness helps to reduce anxiety (and depression) in most people who practice it on a daily basis.
Numerous studies, such as one from the University of Oxford, have found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is just as effective as anti-depressants for preventing a relapse of depression. One important way in which this works is through building a greater awareness of one’s own body and mind, which enables one to identify signs of stress, and respond appropriately, long before depression might otherwise arise.
Mindfulness has a wide range of benefits. For example, it can induce the well-known relaxation response, which is very valuable in reducing the body’s response to stress. Mindfulness also allows one to obtain maximum pleasure from every pleasurable moment that arises, such as enjoying that mouthful of delicious coffee… or enjoying the thought of being with one’s best friend, etc.
In 2011, a study conducted at Harvard University found that mindfulness meditation actually changes the structure of the brain: Eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was found to increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory, and in the prefrontal cortex, which regulates emotions and is involved in decision-making and problem-solving.
You will learn how to incorporate mindfulness into your everyday living. You will be taught how to engage with mindfulness meditations that involve focusing on a single point of attention for an extended period of time, such as a 30 minute sitting meditation with a focus on the sensations of breathing, (such as the rise and fall of one’s chest). You will also learn how to bring ever-expanding moments of mindfulness into your day. You will also learn breathing methods and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.