Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

Held live via Zoom or in-person, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an 8-week, evidence-based, experiential program providing in-depth training in mindfulness meditation and movement practices. The program also helps participants integrate mindfulness into their daily lives. Created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, MBSR is based on ancient contemplative practices integrated with western medical approaches. This program harnesses our inner resources and has been demonstrated to enhance emotional resilience.

MBSR has been researched for over 40 years and consistently delivers benefits associated with increased self-awareness, and attentional and emotional regulation. In addition, outcomes have included reductions in symptoms for various physical and behavioral health conditions such as:

  • Stress
  • Anxiety and Depression
  • Chronic pain
  • Hypertension

The University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing has offered mindfulness programming for individuals, organizations, businesses, and communities for more than two decades. Your Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction experience with the Center includes high-quality instruction from expert facilitators who are passionate about your health and wellbeing.

Learn more and register

Questions or comments? Please reach out to the Bakken Center's community relations office if you have questions about our mindfulness programming ([email protected], 612-625-8164). We welcome the opportunity to connect with you! 

To view this program's refund and make up session policies, please visit this page

To make disability-related accommodations, please contact the Bakken Center's community relations office ([email protected], 612-625-8164).

Program Overview and More

Expand all

What You Will Learn / Session Topics

Orientation

The orientation session is a required, interactive, hour-long session where you will meet the program facilitator, learn more about the MBSR program's benefits, and understand the program scope and expectations.

Week 1

In this session you will receive an overview of the program and establish the learning context for the rest of your experience. You will learn the theory and evidence for MBSR and how it will be applied throughout the eight week program, as part of and in between the weekly sessions. You'll be experientially introduced to mindful eating, mindful breathing, and the body-scan method, with a special emphasis on what it means to be fully engaged in the present moment.

Week 2

Perception is key to mindful awareness. How we see things (or don't see them) - determines our actions and responses to our daily life circumstances. This week's session and practices will ask you to examine your perceptions, assumptions, and the way you view the world. You will learn to use the body-scan practice to cultivate a greater degree of awareness and understanding of how you react to stressful situations. Changing the way you perceive and respond to difficulties and challenges will impact the short and long-term effects of stress on your mind and body.

Week 3

In this session, you'll practice several distinct yet interrelated mindfulness practices—mindful hatha yoga, sitting meditation, and walking meditation. This is an ideal time to share your insights about your experiences with formal practice and integrating mindfulness into your daily life. You will discover that there is both pleasure and power in being present—you'll directly attend to and investigate how mindful awareness can impact sensations and experiences of both pleasure and discomfort in the mind and body.

Week 4

By practicing mindfulness, we cultivate curiosity and openness to the full range of our experience, and through this process, our ability to pay attention becomes more flexible. This week, your practice will focus on the development of your ability to concentrate and systematically expand your field of awareness. You'll learn about the physiological and psychological bases of stress reactivity, and experience mindful strategies for responding in more positive and skillful ways to stressful situations.

Week 5

At the halfway point in this program, you should now be familiar with the foundations of mindfulness and able to focus on applying it more rapidly and effectively to specific challenges and stressors in your daily life. This week, you will begin to pay attention to the places where you might get stuck, or be repeating conditioned or unhealthy patterns. You will learn how to compassionately apply mindful awareness at the critical moment when you experience a challenging physical sensation, intense emotion, or a maladaptive response. Special attention will be given to exploring the effects of stress reactivity on one's health and overall wellbeing.

Week 6

Resilience or “stress hardiness” is our ability to return to equilibrium after stressful situations. This week, you will focus on mindfulness practices and transformational coping strategies that can enhance your resilience.  You'll also learn the fundamentals of interpersonal mindfulness—applying awareness and presence at times when communication becomes difficult or fraught with strong emotions. You'll gain direct experience in applying mindfulness to your interpersonal communications, and in your daily relationships.

All Day Retreat (typically between week 6 & 7)

This day-long guided retreat will take place between weeks six and seven. The intensive nature of this 6.5 hour session is intended to help you integrate all that you have learned to date in the MBSR program, and support you in establishing a personal mindfulness practice.

Week 7

Mindfulness is most effective when it is a lifetime commitment. This week, you will explore the many ways that you can integrate mindfulness more fully and personally into your life. While having a dedicated regular practice for mindfulness meditation is important and beneficial, it is just as important to bring a broader sense of mindful awareness and presence to every aspect of your daily life. You'll learn how to more confidently develop and apply mindful awareness to the changing circumstances of your life.

Week 8

In the final week of the program, you will have a complete review of everything you've learned over the past eight weeks, with an emphasis on carrying the momentum you've built forward into the coming months and years. You'll be provided additional mindfulness resources, including Bakken Center resources and other community support to help you continue to integrate, learn, and grow your mindfulness practice. The final lesson creates a satisfying closure by honoring both the end of this program and the beginning of the rest of your life.

Who This Program is For

This program is appropriate for anyone, 18 years old or older, wishing to improve their general health and wellbeing through a regular and consistent mindfulness practice.

The 8-week MBSR program provides comprehensive training in developing and sustaining a mindfulness meditation practice. It is not a teacher training program and completing the program does not qualify the participant to teach MBSR. Completion of the 8-week MBSR program is, however, a prerequisite for beginning a standardized MBSR teacher training program or certification process.

What to Expect

These highly participatory, practical sessions will include individual, tailored instruction in mindfulness meditation practices, as well as group discussions, gentle yoga and stretching, daily homework, and related class materials. You will also receive a link to access a MBSR portal that allows you access to all necessary handouts. 

The MBSR program involves a significant commitment of time. In addition to the weekly sessions and retreat, you will be given instructions for daily practices between sessions. Please note that you will be asked to practice at home for roughly thirty to forty-five minutes per day, whenever possible. 

Please note, consistent with the in-person Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction (MBSR) program and curriculum, the online MBSR program focuses on experiential learning where participants gain awareness and insight through both completing the practices and sharing experiences in a supportive learning community. For the online program, you will engage with the facilitator and interact with other participants through your computer screen and video camera. At a minimum, please plan to have your video camera on during each session's attendance, group discussions, and breakout sessions. It is important for the psychological safety and wellbeing of the entire group that cameras are on during these elements.

Facilitators

Your MBSR experience with us includes high-quality, cutting-edge instruction from expert facilitators who are passionate about your health and wellbeing. All Center MBSR facilitators are committed mindfulness meditation practitioners who received extensive MBSR teacher training through either the UMass Memorial Medical Center/Center for Mindfulness or Brown University’s Mindfulness Center. In addition, all Bakken Center MBSR facilitators completed an MBSR Teaching Online program offered by Brown University’s Center for Mindfulness, supporting our facilitators in offering the 8-week MBSR program online program, with skill, ease, and interactivity.

Jean Fagerstrom, MSW, LICSW

Fagerstrom_Jean

Jean has over 30 years of experience in meditation, bodywork, natural healing and psychotherapy. She has been teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for the University of Minnesota’s Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing since 2007, and Mindful Self-Compassion since 2016. She has a long-term meditation practice and is an active volunteer and participant in the Twin Cities meditation community.

Jean is also a clinical social worker with over twenty years of experience as a mental health counselor working in a variety of settings, basing her work in the framework of mindfulness and self-compassion. She currently sees psychotherapy clients in-person and on-line.

Susan Flannigan, CNP, MPH

woman in black shirt

Susan completed extensive Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher training through the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn. She received her MBSR Teacher Certification designation from Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and is included on the Center’s Registry of Certified MBSR Teachers, representing an international community of teachers and leaders in the field of MBSR and mindfulness. She also has training in Mindfulness Based Chronic Pain Management and training in Trauma and Healing.

Mariann Johnson

MariannJohnson

Mariann Johnson is a wellbeing and mindfulness instructor for the University of Minnesota Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing. Prior to joining the Bakken Center, Mariann taught mindful leadership, mindfulness at work, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in a number of business, corporate and community settings throughout the United States. Mariann has practiced mindfulness meditation for over 25 years and studied with national and international leaders in the field. She completed extensive MBSR teacher training through the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and received her MBSR Teacher Certification designation from Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and is included on the Brown University's Registry of Certified MBSR Teachers, representing an international community of teachers and leaders in the field of MBSR and mindfulness.

Cass McLaughlin

Cass smiling at the camera wearing glasses and a purple sleeveless top

Cass McLaughlin, B.A.S., tried to sit still with her first foray into meditation in 1991 (at Pathways of Minneapolis with Mark Nunberg, founding teacher at Common Ground Meditation Center) Cass was unaware of how anxiety was driving her life. Yet a seed of mindfulness was planted.

In 1997, seven years later, Cass began again to explore mindfulness with Sister Eileen O'Hea, through centering prayer. She also persisted in practicing at Common Ground Meditation Center while hosting events with thought leaders that she called "Community Spirit Ventures".  In 2002, Cass started working as outreach coordinator for public engagement and programming at the University of Minnesota, now named, Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing where she worked for 12 years. In 2004, Cass was asked to help start up the Center's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and continued to support the program and teachers for 10 years. She met and worked with Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2005 when the Center brought him in on his new book "Coming to Your Senses" and soon began her journey to train and teach MBSR through the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical Center, and several other teachers and programs.

Through the years and to this day Cass participated in many day-long retreats, and with a variety of teachers and research projects. In 2007, Cass was accepted into The Shamatha (which means calm-abiding) Research Project, in a 3.5 month-long, full-time research initiative held at Shambala Mountain Center, in the Colorado Mountains. This research project, conducted by researcher Cliff Saron, PhD (who started Richard Davison's lab at the University of Wisconsin) at the University of California-Davis. The purpose of The Shamatha Project was to study "attention and emotional regulation" with lay meditators to further the movement of mindfulness in the west. In 2012, Cass also participated in a year-long well-being study conducted by Richard Davidson's Center for Healthy Minds at the Waisman Research Center, at the University of Madison, WI.  

Cass is committed to sharing mindfulness and mind-body skills with others. For nearly 9 years, Cass has been coordinating and co-facilitating Lifestyle-Based Group Medical Visits with integrative and functional medicine providers at Whittier Clinic’s Department of Family Medicine, and also working in the Department of Internal Medicine teaching and coordinating Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in the Hennepin Healthcare System.

Trained in Technology of Participation (TOP) Facilitation Methods, Mind-Body Skills, Integrative Imagery, Art of Hosting, Mindful Self-Compassion, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, MBSR online certification, and Mindfulness Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE).  Cass started coming to Pathways in 1989 at the suggestion of a friend. She then was invited to serve on the Pathways Care Committee, which she did for several years, as well as partnered with Pathways through her work with Community Spirit Ventures, LLC  inviting speakers to the Twin Cities. Cass also provided Laughter Workshops, trained with Annette Goodheart, Mind-Body Skills groups trained through the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, and Cultivating Emotional Balance learned in The Shamatha Project with B. Alan Wallace at Pathways, and other community sites in the Twin Cities. Cass's Bachelor of Applied Studies (BAS) was in Human Services through the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota was a combination of studies in social work, psychology and on being a “change agent” in the field of human services. Cass has been involved in the Integrative health and healing field since 1989.

Susan Miles, JD, BS

A woman in a white shirt.

Susan Miles has been practicing meditation for thirteen years. She served as a Minnesota District Court Judge for 22 years, and held positions as Assistant Chief Judge of the Tenth Judicial District, and as past president of Minnesota District Judges Association, Minnesota District Judges Foundation, and Minnesota Women Lawyers. She is qualified by the University of Massachusetts Medical School Center for Mindfulness to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.

Susan has completed the MBSR Teaching Online program offered by Brown University’s Center for Mindfulness, supporting instructors in offering the 8-week MBSR program live online, with skill, ease and interactivity.

Expertise

Vipassana meditation

Judicial ethics

Judicial selection, retention, and performance evaluations

Awards & Recognition

MDJA President's Award, 2014

Tubman/Verizon Hope Line Community Award, 2015

Academic Interests and Focus

Mindfulness skills for the general public and legal professionals

Robb Reed

Man in grey sweater.

Robb Reed began practicing meditation in 1993 after a transformative week in Plum Village, France, Thich Nhat Hanh’s retreat center. Thanks to the deep peace and joy which he experienced there, he embarked on the path of exploring the inner terrain of the body heart and mind. He has studied at the Minnesota Zen Center and in 2002, he co-founded the Children’s Mindfulness Program at Common Ground where he practices today and leads trainings. He has extensive formal retreat practice including several 6-week silent retreats.

Robb has completed the 9 day practicum in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness. He also completed the Teacher Advancement Intensive from The Mindfulness Center at Brown University. He began his training with the Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing in 2012 and has been teaching MBSR classes since 2013.

Robb is a former public school teacher with both New York City and Minneapolis Public Schools. For many years he taught a modified MBSR course to teachers called Mindfulness: Self-Care for Educators and continues to consult with educators on bringing mindfulness into education. Robb received his yoga teaching certificate in 2020.

Robb has completed the MBSR Teaching Online program offered by Brown University’s Center for Mindfulness, supporting instructors in offering the 8-week MBSR program live online, with skill, ease and interactivity.

Chance York

ChanceYork

After purchasing the book, Yoga for Dummies: Pocket Edition, Chance quickly noticed the benefits of regularly practicing yoga, including reduced stress and soreness. For 15 years after this first purchase, he acquired more yoga books, practiced on his own, and eventually enrolled in the school at Radiant Life Yoga. He has worked with students of all ages and abilities in studios, schools, corporate offices, fitness gyms and private settings. Consciousness—with practice—is the ability to observe the workings of the mind and body to identify habits and limiting beliefs and how they relate to our physical and emotional health. Our energy, and our purpose in life is revealed through the practice of studying inward. Yoga—defined as union—benefits everyone. His teaching is considerate to you as an individual, while his knowledge of the ancient practice and contemporary research, center on a perspective of connectedness and harmony.

Merra Young, MSW, LICSW

Merra Young

I began my journey with meditation and yoga practice about 40 years ago while in graduate school . I moved to the Twin Cities shortly after an independent study at a local meditation center that transformed my life.

I found " home" and my calling. I've been integrating meditation and psychotherapy ; spirituality and mind body, holistic practices, buddhist psychology and mindfulness-based, compassion centered and neuroscience, trauma-informed and other approaches with a wide range of people, issues, settings including clients, students and professionals ever since.

I see this way of being, working and teaching as a " midwife" companioning others in their journeys of discovery; learning to come home to their own inner wisdom, innate goodness and wholeness . I aspire to embody authentic, compassionate presence along with humor, creativity and joy.

I'm a psychotherapist in private practice and a local grief center, adjunct faculty, supervisor, consultant, meditation teacher and MBSR instructor. I'm honored to engage in this sacred work of sharing, learning and practice from the ancient wisdom traditions and contemporary understanding for the alleviation of human suffering towards resilience and transformation for ourselves others and in the world .

My background includes work at: mental health clinics, grief center, prison, cd, eating disorder treatment programs, university, healthcare, meditation centers with adults , elders, teens, students and professionals. Work with : individuals,couples, groups, classes, retreats, courses and workshops. Areas of expertise include: life transitions, grief work, trauma healing, depression, anxiety , stress reduction, spiritual mentoring & support, teaching, supervision, consultation.

I have completed the MBSR Teaching Online program offered by Brown University’s Center for Mindfulness, supporting instructors in offering the 8-week MBSR program live online, with skill, ease and interactivity.

I feel deep gratitude and grace on this path of awakening and compassion. I have great appreciation, beyond words for my teachers and mentors.

I'm also a poet, a daughter of immigrants, mother and spouse. I love being in nature, bicycling, being with friends...

Expertise

Meditation and Compassion may include: MBSR / stress reduction, life balance.

Integrative Psychotherapy includes: Emotional Healing and Happiness.

Grief and loss, life transitions

Learn More

bg-gray-lighter
Is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction right for me?

Is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction right for me?

What Will I Learn in an 8 Week Mindfulness Class?

What Will I Learn in an 8 Week Mindfulness Class?

Meet Mindfulness Instructor Mariann Johnson

Meet Mindfulness Instructor Mariann Johnson

grid-3