Learn how to reduce stress and discover how to use mindfulness and emotional intelligence to improve your quality of life and wellness. See Meaning and Mindfulness on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MeaningandMindfulness?ref=hl

1. Welcome to the Stress
Reduction Workshop
Presented by Carol Knox
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za

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3. Introduction - Workshop
Overview
1. What is stress and how does it effect
physical and emotional health?
2. Look at ways to cope with stress
3. Use mindfulness meditation techniques
4. Create positive and meaningful personal
contacts
5. Explore ways to create emotional health.
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za

4. About the Workshop
The structure of the workshop has five basic
parts:
1. Understanding stress
2. Taking responsibility for your own stress
3. Reducing stress
4. Improving relationships with self and others
5. Enhancing your emotional and physical health.
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za

5. About the Workshop
Introduction – Inspired and informed by - A
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Handbook
(MBSR)*
This workshop focuses attention on managing stress
to maintain good emotional and physical health.
We have many pressures as a result of our connected
lifestyles. Stress as a part of life cannot be escaped.
We all face uncertainties, difficulties, illness, aging
and other such life events.
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za
* By Bob Stahl and Elisha
Goldstein, 2010, New
Harbinger Publications,
INC.

6. About the Workshop
continued…
Our modern lifestyles are filled with new threats,
such as nuclear war, famine and environmental
degrading. Often we feel uncomfortable and not
fully able to connect with others in a meaningful way.
Herbert Benson related that a lot of people are not
equipped with coping strategies for dealing with
stress, (Benson 1976 p. 3 MBSR Workbook).
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za

7. About the Workshop continued
In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD., founded the
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Programme at the University of Massachusetts
Medical Centre. Kabat-Zinn’s early research showed
significant reductions in the symptoms of anxiety
and pain in patients whose conditions were chronic.
Since this early beginning as a beneficial process,
research has grown showing the benefits of
mindfulness in dealing with “stress, depression,
substance abuse, pain and illness.” p. 3
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za

8. About the Workshop
You will be guided to
understand the basic elements
of emotional health, improve
self-awareness and self-image,
and clarify the link between
physical wellness and
emotional wellness.
Red Rabbit Skills Services: www.skillsservices.co.za Image from:
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

9. About Jon Kabat-Zinn
We will look at some of the work
of Jon Kabat-Zinn who has made
great strides in stress reduction
and the use of mindfulness as an
aid in stress reduction.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is founding
Director of the Stress Reduction
Clinic and the Centre for
Mindfulness in Medicine, Health
Care and Society, at the University
of Massachusetts Medical School.
His books include Coming To Our
Senses: Healing Ourselves and the
World Through Mindfulness.
Red Rabbit Skills Services:
www.skillsservices.co.za

10. About the Mindfulness-Based
Stress Reduction Workbook
The authors of this book are Bob Stahl PHD and
Elisha Goldstein PHD. In the introduction to this
workbook they explain that mindfulness practice
“is the cultivating of non-judgmental awareness in
day-to-day life.” This workbook promotes that you
take an active role in the promotion of your health
and well-being. This is our aim too.

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