Mindfulness For Stress Reduction And Success

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life, a way of taking charge of your life, a way of doing something for yourself that no one else can do for you — consciously and systematically working with your own stress, pain, illness, and the challenges and demands of everyday life.

Augusta Hopkins is an experienced, colorful, creative instructor who is passionate about mindfulness practice. She began her practice of movement and mindfulness when she was a young girl and has been formally studying since she was five! In addition to training in the United States, she has practiced mindfulness and movement in France, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

Augusta began facilitating meditation groups in the San Francisco Bay Area In 2006, after returning from a soul searching odyssey that brought her from Thailand’s Wat Suan Mokkh to Plum Village, France where she studied under Thich Nhat Hanh.

Her MBSR training was with leading instructor and author Dr. Bob Stahl. She was mentored by and co-taught with Renee Burgard LCSW, senior MBSR instructor for Apple, Google and Stanford.Augusta received lay ordination from Thich Nhat Hanh, her primary teacher, and is a lay monastic member of the Order of InterbeingAugusta’s foundational awareness practices were modern dance and quiet reflection in Quaker Meetings in Philadelphia. She is a third degree black belt and has been a martial arts instructor since 1989.

The experience

Worldwide, tens of thousands of people have participated in MBSR courses. They are a lot like you, and they’ve learned to integrate the methods developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts into their everyday lives. Three decades of published research indicates that the majority of people who complete the course report:

• Lasting decreases in physical and psychological symptoms
• An increased ability to relax
• Reductions in pain levels and an enhanced ability to cope with pain that may not go away
• Greater energy and enthusiasm for life
• Improved self-esteem
• An ability to cope more effectively with both short and long-term stressful situations.

Restoring within yourself a balanced sense of health and well being requires increased awareness of all aspects of self, including body and mind, heart and soul. Mindfulness-based stress reduction is intended to ignite this inner capacity and infuse your life with awareness.

What it’s not…

You’ve probably encountered moments of “mindlessness” — a loss of awareness resulting in forgetfulness, separation from self, and a sense of living mechanically. Have you ever arrived home and had no recollection of your commute?

Accordingly, the aim of MBSR is not to ‘stop thinking’, shut down your mind, zone out. Nor is it to become intently focused on an outcome. Rather, MBSR can be integrated with and influence your everyday life, resulting in more calm, ease and a feeling of groundedness.

Fortunately, mindfulness is not something that you have to “get” or acquire. It is already within you — a deep internal resource available and patiently waiting to be released and used in the service of learning, growing, and healing.