We all experience some degree of tension in life, but excessive stress can take a toll on your body and mind. Learn how to identify stress and minimize its harmful effects.
As part of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center's whole-person approach to care, our Center for Integrative Medicine provides mindfulness-awareness training and meditation programs to reduce stress before surgery and address chronic conditions such as heart disease, pain, auto-immune disorders, gastrointestinal issues, anxiety, depression, cancer and diabetes.
Mindfulness is the practice of cultivating your potential to experience each moment, no matter how difficult or intense, with presence and clarity. By helping you feel better, sleep well and increase your ability to cope with stressful situations, mindfulness empowers you to feel more joyful and to gain immediate access to your inner resources for healing.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program
Taught by experienced practitioners, mindfulness-based stress reduction classes include lectures, discussions and experiential exercises. You’ll discover how stress affects your body and how to practice techniques to improve your coping ability, increase your immune function and reduce pain and anxiety.
Two decades of published research indicate that most people who complete the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course report:
- Better sleep and an increased ability to relax.
- Greater energy, concentration and enthusiasm for life.
- An ability to deal more effectively with both short- and long-term stressful situations.
- Major improvement in pain-related anxiety, depression, hostility and the tendency to become preoccupied with painful sensations in both body and mind.
- Lasting decreases in difficult physical and psychological symptoms.
- Reductions in pain levels with an enhanced ability to cope with persistent pain.
