Nashville, TN - Feb. 25th - Mindfulness for Mental Health Professionals
What: Introduction to Mindfulness for Mental Health Professionals
When: 10am – 5pm – Saturday, February 25, 2012
Where: Integrative Life Center, 1104 16th Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37212, Phone: 615 891-2226, www.integrativelifecenter.com
Workshop Cost: $60 online – $75 at the door. CEUs are available.
Description Over the last decade, mindfulness-based interventions have grown rapidly in popularity in different mental health contexts ranging from individual psychotherapy to group interventions with high-risk populations. Over 30 years of research has consistently shown that mindfulness can help decrease stress and impulsivity, increase emotional regulation, and increase overall psychological well being. Mindfulness is fundamentally a science of attention training – a way of “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment” as mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn put it.
This workshop will introduce the practice of mindfulness meditation specifically to mental health providers. There is a large amount of data that suggests that providers (particularly those in agency settings) are grappling with unprecedented levels of stress, burnout, and depletion. Providers working with high-risk populations in particular face a variety of challenges arising from the increasing acuity of the needs of these populations. Increased stress has a cascade of negative health repercussions, including immune dysregulation, effects on emotional equilibrium, and effects on short-term memory. The mindfulness tradition has a great to deal to say about the management of stress, anxiety and secondary trauma. During the daylong, participants will….
· Understand the physiology of chronic, toxic, and traumatic stress and its impacts; understanding that the condition of the nervous system creates “a way of thinking, being and perceiving.”
· Understand the relationship between stress and obsessive thinking; getting beneath the mental stories around stress (discursive thought) in order to work with the actual, somatic (body-based) reality of “not feeling good.”
· Develop mindfulness and body-based practices for alleviating stress and increasing emotional wellbeing; in particular, go home with a set of practices participants can do daily on their own.
The training will also briefly introduce ways that mindfulness practices can be integrated into work with different client populations. The workshop will focus on teaching a small “toolkit” of exercises that can be utilized in a wide variety of contexts, as well as on what language and metaphors are appropriate for introducing mindfulness practices to different communities.
The workshop will facilitated by Chris McKenna and Dave Smith.
Chris McKenna is the Executive Director of the Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA), a nonprofit that has pioneered the development of mindfulness-based interventions for at-risk youth. He manages the delivery of mindfulness-based rehabilitation programs in six different juvenile detention facilities and two aftercare sites in four different counties in California. In collaboration with Oakland Children’s Hospital, he is currently implementing a program which utilizes MBA’s curriculum as a formal medical prescription for anxiety and insomnia for youth in the probation system. He is also working with Stanford Medical School to measure the effects of retreat-style mindfulness practice for youth in long-term detention. Chris has spent over a decade working with diverse communities suffering from high incidents of trauma and violence, including with two Amnesty International-sponsored projects that provided legal, medical, and psychosocial services to victims of torture and war crimes from over 20 countries. Chris has a fifteen-year history with mindfulness meditation and has taught mindfulness practices to refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder and other severe mental health conditions. He is on the Advisory Council of “Honoring the Path of the Warrior” – a project of the San Francisco Zen Center which teaches mindfulness and somatic awareness techniques to U.S. soldiers returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dave Smith is the Program Director and Head Facilitator of MBA’s programs in the Nashville area. Dave has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1993. He began his practice at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre MA. For the past 3 years Dave has worked one-on-one with teens struggling with alcohol and drug abuse; he has also been volunteering and teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence retreats for teens for the last 5 years. Dave has graduated from a training program to teach mindfulness meditation taught by author, teacher and counselor Noah Levine at Against the Stream Meditation Society in LA. Dave uses a wide range of mindfulness techniques and emotional intelligence exercises to “meet” people wherever they are at. Dave is committed to bring mindfulness practice into any facility or program that will allow him to do so. Dave also writes, records and performs live music throughout Nashville TN.
