Mindful Boston

We modern Bostonians do work hard to achieve our goals. And then once the goals are achieved, there is a sense of satisfaction about the achievements.  This is a great thing.  Miraculous accomplishments that we have in our lives (such as, for example, working plumbing) would not exist without our abilities to have goals and to achieve goals. It is also clear from media articles, medical reports and our own experiences that there is a side effect to having and achieving so many of the modern goals that we have: stress . During my meetings with MBSR applicants, I have been hearing them say, "I have a goal to reduce my stress."  And I have been hearing the ways in which these folks have been addressing this goal.  Because it works well for achieving their other life goals, they have been approaching stress reduction in the same way that they might approach the goal to fix their own sink.  They read about it. They take classes. They consult with experts. They ...

MBSR class will be starting in two weeks.  Before class starts there are a number of things that the students need to understand about the format and structure of class.  And, there are a number of things I need to understand about where each student is coming from.  So, there needs to be an orientation process before the start date.  In MBSR, there is some leeway about class structure.  Each teacher can decide how they want to run the orientation process for their class.  Some teachers do group meetings or skype calls.  My preferred method is to hang out in a coffee shop for an hour with each student.   There are some drawbacks to this method.  Primarily, if I am going to have 30 students in my class, I will need to budget my time to include about 40 hours of sitting in a coffee shop.  When I reflect upon the concept of 40 hours in a coffee shop, I do laugh out loud at myself for this decision.   But, we all weigh our o...