The Liberative Nature of Mindfulness: Coming to Terms with Things as They Are

Having developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an approach that changed many western medical practices, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been dubbed the “godfather of modern mindfulness.” But for those who’ve followed his work over the last 50+ years, he’s been something else: their greatest teacher. Humble, practical, and full of spiritual wisdom and humour.

A Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School—where he founded the MBSR clinic in 1979 and years later, the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine—Kabat-Zinn is the author of 15 books, including the time-honoured bestseller Wherever You Go, There You Are and the recently released Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief. Used to treat everything from anxiety to trauma to immune response, with everyone from hospital patients to combat veterans, his teachings have produced a community of global healers, with more than 1,000 MBSR instructors and over 740 MBSR programs in hospitals, clinics, and health centres worldwide.

In this can’t-miss training, he’ll explore why mindfulness is so foundational to psychotherapy and how it can continue to provide all of us—clients and therapists—with a refuge for healing, acceptance, and radical acts of love during tumultuous times. The message of mindfulness, Kabat-Zinn once told the Networker, “Is an invitation to everybody to wake up to the true dimensionality of who we are.” Open yourself to an unforgettable experience of being in the here and now.