Building an ark: creating a vessel for the education of MBSR teachers.

This paper is a response to an invitation by the editors of this special issue to write a first person account about mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teacher education as it developed within the Stress Reduction Clinic (SRC) and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. As the founder of Oasis Institute, I have attempted to describe, in very personal terms, the ground out of which Oasis emerged and the ways this ground shaped the intention, educational trajectory, pedagogy, and infrastructure of Oasis Institute.

The beauty we love: MBSR teacher education going forward.

The paper begins with a brief overview of the current field of mindfulness and MBSR. Following this, the paper identifies and details nine domains of MBSR teacher education to consider going forward.

Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation.

OBJECTIVE: The underlying changes in biological processes that are associated with reported changes in mental and physical health in response to meditation have not been systematically explored. We performed a randomized, controlled study on the effects on brain and immune function of a well-known and widely used 8-week clinical training program in mindfulness meditation applied in a work environment with healthy employees. METHODS: We measured brain electrical activity before and immediately after, and then 4 months after an 8-week training program in mindfulness meditation. Twenty-five subjects were tested in the meditation group. A wait-list control group (N = 16) was tested at the same points in time as the meditators. At the end of the 8-week period, subjects in both groups were vaccinated with influenza vaccine. RESULTS: We report for the first time significant increases in left-sided anterior activation, a pattern previously associated with positive affect, in the meditators compared with the nonmeditators. We also found significant increases in antibody titers to influenza vaccine among subjects in the meditation compared with those in the wait-list control group. Finally, the magnitude of increase in left-sided activation predicted the magnitude of antibody titer rise to the vaccine. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate that a short program in mindfulness meditation produces demonstrable effects on brain and immune function. These findings suggest that meditation may change brain and immune function in positive ways and underscore the need for additional research.