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Bob Stahl
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Tap the power of mindfulness meditation to alleviate stress, anxiety and pain.
Discover simple, proven practices to bring more peace, calmness and clarity into your life.
Information overload. Endless to-do lists. Job, money and relationship challenges. Just reading those words is stressful, much less living them. Just making it through the day can seem overwhelming at times.
The faster we run on the treadmill of life, the more it can seem like we’re running in place. It’s no surprise we’re seeing historic levels of stress-related anxiety, illness and disease around the world — tangible expressions of overwhelm made manifest in our bodies and minds.
As an example, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) reports that nearly half of all U.S. adults (123.6 million) have reported experiencing considerable pain in the last three months.
Are you part of these statistics... living with anxiety, illness or pain?
Do you feel strung out, overworked and run down?
If stress has taken over your life, you may not realize what it’s like to be at real peace. Excess stress not only undermines your physical and mental health and wellbeing, it siphons away your enjoyment of life.
If you’ve been relying on “a pill and a prayer” to manage your stress to no avail, relief is within your grasp. Imagine feeling at peace and at home with yourself — with your body, mind and spirit fully aligned and lovingly supporting all that you do.
Imagine a “new normal” way of living, where each day is filled with joy, balance and the sense that you’ve got all the time in the world to do what needs to be done.
How do you get there? A good place to start is mindfulness pioneer Bob Stahl’s new 7-week online program, Mindfulness and Healing: Transforming Your Relationship to Pain, Illness and Stress through Mindfulness Meditation.
Today’s most progressive medical institutions, including Yale, Stanford, Harvard and UCLA, are proving that mindfulness meditation — when learned and practiced correctly — can offer real, lasting and significant benefits to those who suffer occasional or even severe conditions such as stress, anxiety, insomnia and chronic pain or illness.
What’s more, documented studies in such respected publications as The Journal of Pain, The Journal of Neuroscience, The Journal of the American Medical Association and The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine reveal that applying the fundamentals of mindfulness meditation not only helps protect you against illness, it also enhances your physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing... even if you’re feeling perfectly healthy now.
With the mindfulness meditation principles taught by Bob, you don’t have to keep living in fear of the next episode, flare-up, illness or attack. You can reclaim your health and vitality, and regain confidence, happiness and zest for life.
His methods draw from his mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs which have served thousands over the last twenty years and consistently and successfully help participants improve their ability to live and cope with chronic pain, illness and stress-related conditions. In fact, their complaints about physical and emotional challenges dropped by 41%, and more than 100 healthcare professionals regularly refer patients to Bob’s programs.
What Is Mindfulness Meditation?
Mindfulness grew out of early Buddhist meditative traditions that originated over 2,500 years ago. Similar practices can be found in many of the world’s great religions, philosophies and psychologies.
At its most basic, the practice of mindfulness meditation is to be aware of whatever’s arising in your body and mind, as life unfolds from one moment to the next.
This includes your breath, your movements, your thoughts, and even the dance of subtle sensations in your body.
Studies show that intentionally shaping your attention in mindfulness practice induces positive changes in the brain. Over time and with repetition, these modifications can take on more permanence, resulting in beneficial changes in both brain function and structure.
Through regular practice, you begin to embody mindful presence, rewiring yourself for calmness, serenity and joy — the best antidotes to pain, stress and disease.
Proven Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation include:
- A more accepting attitude to life and challenges
- More effective coping strategies
- Lasting improvements in stress-related physical symptoms
- Lessening of chronic pain
- Significant decreases in anxiety and depression
- Enhanced concentration and creativity
- Improved immune system functioning
- Greater self acceptance
- Increased capacity to cope with a wide range of experiences, including difficult internal mind and body states
- Taking an active role in the management of your health and wellbeing
- Cost-effective avoidance of stress-related illness
- Fewer healthcare visits
- Decrease in use of prescription and nonprescription medications
Mindfulness and Healing
The name of this course is Mindfulness & Healing, but what exactly does “healing” mean in this context?
The words healing and curing are often used interchangeably in the medical world, but from a mindfulness perspective they are very different.
Curing relates to the repair of your physical body; healing relates to the care of your soul.
Healing is dealing with what’s right with you.
– Ingrid Dilley
Mindfulness sees people as whole human beings, whether sick or well, living or dying. Mindfulness says there can be healing, even in the midst of living with chronic pain or illness – that one may learn how to live with greater harmony and acceptance. Healing can be defined as coming to terms with the way things are through greater wisdom and compassion.
Mindfulness promotes healing, even in the midst of living with chronic pain or illness, by helping its practitioners come to terms with the way things are through greater wisdom, compassion and understanding.
— Richard Moss
As you’ll discover in the Mindfulness & Healing program, mindfulness teaches us to see the world from a broader perspective. The healing cultivated through mindfulness meditation applies to your whole being and affirms that no matter what you are faced with, you can begin to meet life’s challenges with equanimity and a peaceful heart.
Managing Pain with Wisdom and Compassion
In the 7-week Mindfulness & Healing program, you’ll be given mindfulness practices that will help you re-educate and reorient yourself to live with greater comfort and ease in all aspects of life. Just as sailors learn how to ride out raging storms and crashing waves, you’ll discover how to skillfully navigate the storms of life rather than resisting or fighting through them.
Ultimately, mindfulness meditation practice can improve your wellbeing by lessening the mental, emotional and even physical aspects of pain and other bodily challenges. And mind-body studies reveal that welcoming more peace into your life actually sets off positive biochemical processes that lead you to be be even stronger, healthier and more resilient.
Each of this program’s 90-minute sessions will consist of a talk on different dimensions of mindfulness practice; a guided mindfulness meditation to work with pain, stress or illness; a small-group discussion; and a question-and-answer session.
During this life-changing, interactive course, you’ll discover how to:
- Change your relationship to stress and emotional, mental and physical pain
- Reduce your suffering as you build a constructive relationship with pain
- Navigate the bridge between healing and curing, so you can manifest greater wisdom around challenges
- Meet pain as a teacher and gain a renewed enthusiasm for life
- Improve your sleep, focus and acceptance of whatever life delivers to your doorstep
- Decrease anxiety and depression
- Boost your immune system and overall health and wellbeing
- Better cope with stressful situations
- And much more...
If you’d like to know how to use mindfulness meditation to promote health and healing by transforming your relationship to stress, pain or illness, this is an ideal course for you.
The Importance of a Master Teacher
As with any endeavor, your progress can be helped immeasurably by a great teacher — one who has not only mastered the content, but who can inspire you in your practice, open your mind and heart, and lead you forward on the path.
Bob Stahl has founded seven mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs in medical centers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. He lived and practiced for over eight years in a Buddhist monastery, is the guiding teacher at Insight Santa Cruz, and a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center.
He is a co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Living With Your Heart Wide Open and Calming the Rush of Panic.
Plus, he’s a warm, funny and wonderful man. You’ll love him!
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
Course sessions are on Tuesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.
In this 7-week Mindfulness & Healing program, you’ll be introduced to mindfulness practices that will help you live with greater peace, calmness and happiness. This course can offer profound support to anyone desiring improved health and wellbeing as well as for those living with stress, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain or illness. A growing body of evidence-based research reveals that mindfulness meditation fosters improved health, stress reduction and overall healing.
Each weekly, LIVE contemplation and training session will build harmoniously upon the next so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles you’ll need to sustain your mindfulness practice.
In each session, Bob will offer a guided mindfulness meditation practice and a talk on a variety of topics on how mindfulness can support wellbeing. There will also be time for small- and large-group discussions, and each class will include a Q & A session with Bob.
During your 7 weeks with Bob, you’ll learn how to apply mindfulness practices to many areas of your life, including:
- Mindful communication
- Stress management
- Discernment of mindful reactivity and responding mindfully
- Chronic pain management
- Living with illness
- Developing better concentration
- Increasing creativity
- Cultivating better balance and more equanimity
- Decreasing anxiety and depression
- Improving immune system functioning
- Experiencing more peace and greater vitality and happiness
Module 1: Your History Is Here Inside Your Body: Mindfulness of the Body
(May 31)
Become more connected to your body and mind through mindfulness meditation. The body has its own intelligence, and our history can be found within our own skin, flesh, organs, bones and being. The body is the storehouse for all our memories and learnings, through our thoughts, feelings and experiences.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- What is mindfulness
- Mindfulness as a way of life
- Mindful breathing
- Mindful check-in
- Body scan
- Mindfulness in everyday life activities
Module 2: Is it a Stick or a Snake?: Perception (June 7)
Perception plays an important role in health and wellbeing. It’s all in how you see things. Our challenge is to break free from the box of our limited perceptions and see from a wider perspective. At times, our beliefs can be self-limiting and imprisoning.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- Mindful check-in meditation, mindful breathing and the body scan
- An investigation on perception — is it a stick or a snake?
- How to work with physical pain
- How to work with Illness
- More on bringing mindfulness into everyday life activities through S.T.O.P. (Stop, Take a Breath, Observe what’s here in body and mind, Proceed being present)
- How to calm and steady the mind and body
- Mindfulness in everyday life activities
Module 3: The Passing Weather Systems: Pleasant, Unpleasant & Neutral Feelings
(June 14)
We live in a world of change, as evidenced by the weather, the seasons and our aging bodies. Understanding how to more skillfully navigate our moods, thoughts, emotions and senses (sights, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations) can help us live a more peaceful life. It’s important to clearly see how and why each moment can be either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. When not attended to — when we are not being mindful — these moments can catapult us into reacting in ways that don’t support our wellbeing.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- Mindful check-in meditation
- Introduction to the sitting meditation
- Guided sitting meditation
- Bringing mindfulness to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings — and not getting so caught up in them
- More effective coping strategies for working with physical and emotional pain and illness
Module 4: Back in the Hole Again:
The Patterns of Automatic Reactivity
(June 21)
This session is devoted to exploring how patterns of reactivity impact us. As humans, we can become creatures of habit and live life on automatic pilot, which can have a decidedly negative effect. We’ll explore how reactivity affects our body and mind. It’s not the stress, but how we react to it that makes all the difference.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- Mindful check-in meditation
- Guided sitting meditation
- Bringing mindfulness to habitual patterns
- How reactive patterns affect your sensations, thoughts and emotions
- Mindfulness in everyday life activities
Module 5: Walking Around the Hole:
Mindful Responding (June 28)
Viktor Frankl says, “Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space, and in that space, lies our freedom to choose.” We will explore this “space” and the difference between mindless reactivity and mindful responding. Reacting, versus responding, can often fuel habitual patterns that can have a detrimental effect on your thoughts, emotions and sensations. Conversely, when you become mindful, you may see that you have a choice, that you can respond in a more constructive way rather than react in a non-productive or even destructive way. We’ll explore how the practice of mindfulness transforms old patterns of reactivity.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- Mindful check-in meditation
- Guided sitting meditation
- The difference between mindless reactivity and mindful responding
- Bringing mindfulness to habitual patterns and responding to them in a much more constructive way
- How to have a broader and wiser attitude when meeting life’s challenges
- Mindfulness in everyday life activities
Module 6: Understanding Each Other: Interpersonal Mindfulness (July 5)
Bringing mindfulness to the way we communicate is one of the most important things we can do to bring more peace into the world and to ourselves. Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The way we relate to one another can foster a sense of belonging, trust and love, or can lead to separation, fear and hate. This session will offer mindfulness practices to cultivate deeper listening and more mindful speaking, which will seed greater understanding and deeper connection into our relationships.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- Mindful check-in meditation
- Guided sitting meditation
- Using mindful response rather than mindless reaction
- The satisfaction of being heard and understood when you talk with another
- The rewards of listening deeply to another and offering the gift of your empathic heart
- Loving kindness meditation
- Mindfulness in everyday life activities
Module 7: Mindful Living: Food, Media &
the World (July 12)
In this last session, we’ll look at what we take in, in the form of food, media and the world, and how it affects us physically, mentally and emotionally. We’ll also explore mindfulness as a way of life, and what we can do to support our mindfulness practice upon completion of this course. We’ll discover that we are at the beginning of a mindful journey that can help foster our wellbeing and sense of peace throughout our lifetime.
In this module, you will practice and discover:
- Mindful check-in meditation
- Guided sitting meditation
- A greater awareness of what you take in and how it affects your body and mind
- Resources to support your mindfulness meditation practice
- Loving kindness meditation
- Mindfulness in everyday life activities
The Mindfulness & Healing Bonus Collection
In addition to Bob’s transformative 7-week virtual course, you’ll receive these bonus training sessions. These additional teachings and meditations complement the course — and take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.
Body Scan Meditation
Audio Meditation from Bob Stahl
The Body Scan Meditation is a meditative practice to help you get in touch with your body and mind. It shows you how to bring attention to the body, part by part, and directly observe and acknowledge whatever feelings you are experiencing. Through this process, you’ll discover where tension is being held in your body as well as any unacknowledged emotions. By acknowledging these feelings, rather than suppressing or repressing them, you can feel lighter and less burdened. The Body Scan can be a wonderful way to calm and quiet your body and mind.
Sitting Meditation
Audio Meditation from Bob Stahl
This life-enhancing audio will help you expand your field of awareness to all of your senses. You’ll begin to observe any predominant physical sensations, sounds, thoughts, visual impressions, smells, or tastes. These practices will help you to see more clearly the changing nature of all mental and physical phenomena. You’ll begin to observe that all of your physical sensations and thoughts are in a constant state of flux. As you begin to experientially understand the changing nature of things, you’ll be better able to let go. You’ll come to understand that your very resistance to "what is," is a deep source of your own pain. The sitting meditation can help you grow with more equanimity and balance, bringing you deeper wisdom and freedom from the nature of your own suffering and pain.
Mindful Lying & Standing Yoga
Double Audio Meditation Set from Bob Stahl
Yoga has been recognised for thousands of years for its benefits to both the mind and body.This powerful two-audio meditation set is designed to help you bring compassionate awareness to the body. The poses are gentle and accompanied by a focus on mindfulness that pays close attention to what you are feeling physically and emotionally. It is recommended that you practice very gently until you get used to doing the poses, and that you consult your health professional if you are unsure this form of exercise is right for you.
What People Are Saying About Bob Stahl...
We are such a stressed society that many of us are stressed about how stressed we are. Books abound that give us more information. But A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook [from Bob Stahl] takes a far more helpful approach. It takes you by the hand and leads you step by step. If you want your life to have greater balance and peace, if you want to live with less stress and more joy, I can’t recommend this beautiful offering highly enough.
– John Robbins, author of Healthy at 100, Diet for a New America and Reclaiming Our Health
This is an incredible resource for anyone who is interested in reducing stress in their lives. We all live in a world where it is easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged. This workbook and the accompanying audio program is the best resource I know of for helping us stay present and centered when so many forces would push us off balance. I highly recommend it for clients, fellow professionals, and any man or woman who wants to have more comfort, ease, and joy in their lives.
– Jed Diamond, PhD, author of The Irritable Male Syndrome and Male Menopause
What a delight it has been to review this beautifully written, deeply important book that offers readers a path toward a new life balance. For those interested in knowing more about what it is that has excited so many in the fields of medicine, psychology, neuroscience, and education, this book is a mind-opening volume that will clarify the key concepts of mindful meditation. Those who simply want to find ways to reduce stress and anxiety will find it to be an extraordinary aid. Those in a program of mindfulness-based stress reduction will find this book an invaluable addition to their training. A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook adds depth to the practice of mindfulness for everyone, from beginning practitioners to experienced teachers of mindfulness stress reduction classes.
– Marion Solomon, PhD, director of training at the Lifespan Learning Institute and author of Love and War in Intimate Relationships
This book is an excellent guide to the life-changing practice of mindfulness. In these pages, you will find the missing piece, the hidden truth, and the open secret. Mindfulness saved my life and transformed my world. This workbook offers the key to health, happiness and freedom. Read it, work it, practice it and be free.
– Noah Levine, MA, author of Dharma Punx and Against the Stream
I found this workbook informative, helpful and user-friendly. It is filled with pragmatic tools to keep the practitioner on track and would be beneficial to all who read it.
– Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness, A Heart as Wide as the World and Faith
Join the Global Community
Mindfulness & Healing with Bob Stahl not only offers some of the best online teachings currently available, it also offers a thriving global community of support.
Join your fellow students and practitioners from across the world in the live interactive conference calls or in our online community to support and learn from each other while you transform stress, anxiety and physical pain through mindfulness practices.
This international community is also at the leading edge of a global movement of people who are committed to manifesting a better world for all beings. This emerging planetary movement is rooted in an open heart and stands for the principles of mutual support, cooperation, harmony and reverence for all of life.
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Seven 90-Minute Class Sessions with Bob Stahl
Experience a rare opportunity to be mentored and learn with renowned mindfulness teacher Bob Stahl — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session guides you to discover the specific skills and abilities to mindfully meet stress and pain. Course sessions are on Tuesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.
Seven Audio Recordings of
Class Sessions
After each class, the audio will be available for you to download in high quality MP3 format. This way, you’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere — on your iPod, in your car and at your convenience.
Seven PDF Transcripts of
Class Sessions
In addition to the high-quality MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format after each session is completed. This way you can review, print and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.
Seven 30-Minute Interactive Group Practice Sessions
With live class attendance, there will be a 30-minute optional interactive practice session directly following each class where you will be placed in an intimate group with several other participants on the conference call to interact, share and do additional practices to help further integrate the weekly lessons. If you’re unable to attend the calls live, the Online Community group allows you to connect with each other to find alternative times to interact.
Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
After each lesson, you will then have the option to do related exercises, practice new tools and answer questions in order to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.
Online Community
Our exclusive Facebook online community is the perfect place to continue your discovery process after each class. Here, you can ask additional questions, interact with your fellow students and get access to additional resources to take your exploration to an even deeper level.
The Mindfulness & Healing Bonus Collection
- Body Scan Meditation
Audio Meditation from Bob Stahl
- Sitting Meditation
Audio Meditation from Bob Stahl
- Mindful Lying & Standing Yoga
Double Audio Meditation Set from Bob Stahl
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join The Mindfulness & Healing Virtual Training
We feel honored that Bob Stahl has chosen to partner with The Shift Network for this exclusive, LIVE online training. This is a rare opportunity to interact directly with a contemporary spiritual teacher whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves, our partners — and our world.
Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations and meals — which would cost thousands of dollars), you’ll be able to benefit from Bob’s incredible teachings and exercises from the comfort of your home — at your own pace!
If you are serious about transforming your relationship to life’s challenges, including physical and emotional pain, by gaining healing wisdom and compassion through mindfulness practices, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones and our world to take this one-of-a-kind training.
If you’re ready to take the next step in evolving yourself, click the register button below to reserve your space now.
About Bob Stahl:
Bob Stahl, PhD has founded seven mindfulness-based stress reduction programs in medical centers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and currently directs programs at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz and El Camino Hospital in both Mountain View and Los Gatos. Bob serves as a senior teacher for the Oasis Institute for Mindfulness-based Professional Education and Training. He is a co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Living With Your Heart Wide Open, Calming the Rush of Panic, A Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety and MBSR Every Day. Bob is a long time practitioner of mindfulness meditation, having lived and practiced over eight years in a Buddhist monastery and is the guiding teacher at Insight Santa Cruz and a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a virtual course?
A: It’s a great way to engage live teachings and each other from the comfort of your home! All you need is a phone line (or an equivalent voice service). If there is more than one person in your household taking the course, you will each need your own line. We use MaestroConference to make it just like an in-person event, where you can ask questions, participate in groups and deepen your exploration of the course themes.
Please note that dialing MaestroConference from your phone is a regular toll call to California; your telephone service provider will charge you according to your existing long-distance calling plan. You can also use Skype credit/subscription or Google Voice to dial in to MaestroConference; and you’ll need to use your virtual keypad to enter your PIN and to indicate that you want to ask a question. Other options include calling cards and discount long-distance carriers; and we also have a webcast which is free to use from anywhere in the world.
I have never participated before in an online course. The packaging, presentation, inclusion and Facebook postings created a wonderful, safe cocoon to participate. I haven’t seen a course so well put together ever — not in all the years of taking college classes — and I had my doubts about doing an online course. The wealth of organization and ease of learning materials and support made this fun as well.
– Claudia F., Medford, MA
Q: Can I get benefit from the course if I miss the live classes?
A: Absolutely! You can download the recordings and transcripts of all course sessions from our online media archive, so you never need to worry about missing live calls. You can also engage the full community and leaders on our private community website.
Q: Can you tell me about the Private Course Group?
A: We will have a private community group for all course participants on Facebook that will support you in making connections with others, sharing insights, engaging in discussions, completing homework assignments and exchanging information about events and other activities that can supplement your transformational journey. You’ll have the ability to share your experiences, projects and growth throughout the Course.
Q: Are there scholarships available for this Training?
A: Yes, we always make a certain percentage of spaces available for partial scholarships, giving preference to those in developing countries or doing important but underpaid work to which they can apply the training material immediately. If you would like to apply for a scholarship, please review our guidelines, which include a link to our online application form.
Q: What is your refund policy?
A: Your satisfaction with The Shift Network and this course is our highest priority! We offer a satisfaction guarantee so that you can sample the course risk-free. The deadline to receive a full refund is June 14, 2016. To request a refund, please click on this refund request form and submit your request. Your refund will be processed within five business days and we'll send you an email confirming your refund. However, we'd love to have a chance to address and resolve your concerns first. If there is something we can assist you with, please email us at support@theshiftnetwork.com and we'll be happy to help! (No refund requests accepted after the above date or with scholarship awards.)
Q: How can I reach Customer Support?
A: Please visit our Customer Support Center, where you should be able to find the answer to your question or the solution to a problem. And if you can’t, you can submit an online request form and we’ll get right back to you.
