3-Day Interactive Training: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Teens Certificate Training – Gina M. Biegel

Course Description

3-Day Interactive Training: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Teens Certificate Training – Gina M. Biegel

The teen adapted version of MBSR recognized by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Gina will skillfully guide you step-by-step through this course, fully preparing and  certifying  you to use MBSR-T with your clients and students in clinics and schools.

It’s a high-stress and demanding life for teens today-social life, school, work, and family can easily become overwhelming for adolescents. Many teens are irritable, angry, in pain, and out of control. Without healthy interventions, they are prone to anxiety, depression, self-harm, and other psychological, and physiological issues.

Fact: 1 in 5 youth 13-18 years of age have or will have a serious mental illness.

Now that we recognize the problem lets discuss a solution.

By watching this training, you will be able to teach teens how to shift their thinking away from impulsive, thoughtless, and judgmental ways of reacting to life and teach them to mindfully respond. Mindfulness skills provide teens with an anchor and compass to guide them when they feel  emotionally dysregulated, stressed, anxious  and  depressed. Teach teens to live rather than just exist in an ever-increasing multi-media stimulated technological environment.

MBSR-T will help teens:

• Shift from reactivity and impulsivity to thoughtful responding
• Move from feeling powerless to feeling a sense of agency and control
• More accurately perceive and appraise stressful situations
• Decrease negative judgments
• Increase positive coping strategies and decrease self-harming thinking and behaviors
• Increase and maintain an overall since of health and well-being

1. Determine specific mindfulness techniques to shift from reactivity and impulsivity to thoughtful responding.
2. Articulate the essential core components of the MBSR-T program as they relate to clinical treatment.
3. Implement the curriculum in the MBSR-T program and practice clinical interventions from all of the 8-sessions.
4. Apply the guided instruction for the central formal mindfulness interventions in the MBSR-T program.
5. Employ the 4-step mindful check-in to better understand
6. teen’s stressors; and connect appropriate MBSR-T interventions to manage them.
7. Simulate the steps in conducting the dropping-in, body scan, sitting, walking, yoga, heartfulness and gratitude mindfulness practices.
8. Develop the ability to communicate the effectiveness of all formal mindfulness practices learned in MBSR-T.
9. Establish mindfulness techniques that increase teen’s present moment functioning and living.
10. Communicate how mindfulness creates a pause between a stimulus and response, which improves teen’s ability to respond to stress rather than reacting.
11. Evaluate the use of interpersonal mindfulness in facilitating effective communication and increasing awareness in teens.
12. Utilize calendars with teens to improve awareness of pleasant and unpleasant moments, as well as to track self-harming behaviors.
13. Ascertain the role of the media, social networking, and the use of mindfulness practices on the development of the adolescent.
14. Determine ways the MBSR-T program assists teens to take in the good, create positive experiences, and turn them into lasting resources.
15. Evaluate techniques such as mindful communication, acceptance, trust, and letting-go for building positive and beneficial relationships with self and others.
16. Incorporate skills such as letting go and gratitude to teach teens the importance of, and ways to cultivate, self-care.
17. Establish interventions that can be used in teen’s daily life to facilitate maintenance and growth of the MBSR-T program.
18. Explore the recent advances in neuroscience, neuroplasticity, and mindfulness on the developing teenage brain.
19. Document the evidence-based research on MBSR-T including latest studies in order to better inform choice of clinical intervention.

PRINCIPLES OF MINDFULNESS-BASED STRESS REDUCTION FOR TEENS (MBSR-T)

• Program similarities and differences from adult MBSR and MBSR-T
• Theoretical foundations of MBSR-T
• Ethical and moral considerations
• The mindful clinician: impact on MBSR-T outcomes
• Cultural relevance

THE CURRICULUM-SESSION TAKE-AWAY’S

• Session 1-Examine adolescent stress and its relationship to utilizing mindfulness
• Session 2-Develop a personal mindfulness practice
• Session 3-Deepen present moment awareness through daily living
• Session 4-Cultivate self-care and awareness of positive experiences
• Session 5-Think mindfully and respond to life events
• Session 6-Learn to positively cope with difficult emotions
• Session 7-Build mindful communication in relationships
• Session 8-Integrate mindfulness into all aspects of life

EVIDENCED-BASED RESEARCH AND CLINICAL APPLICATIONS

• Effects on mental and physical conditions
• Research in clinical and educational settings
• The MAAS-A: the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale-Adolescent version
• MBSR-T adaptations in individual and family psychotherapy
• Neuroscience research – effects of MBSR and MBSR-T on the brain
• Core MBSR-T interventions
• Model of MBSR-T awareness of intention, attention and attitude
• MBSR-T mechanisms of change
• Understand and define mindfulness
• Personal goal-setting: letting-go and non-striving
• Formal and informal mindfulness practices
• Foundational formal practice – the body scan
• Develop a mindfulness practice

INTERVENTIONS FOR EARLY MINDFULNESS DEVELOPMENT

• Dropping-In practice: Body, breath and mind
• Mindfulness and the 5 senses
• Eating mindfully
• Define and explore stress from a teen’s perspective
• 4-Step mindful check-in
• Mindful qualities for daily living
• Present moment awareness of thoughts, feelings and actions
• Breath mindfully: taking ten breaths
• Body-scan practice
• Sitting practice
• Integrate mindfulness into teens daily routine
• Learn to be with positive and negative emotions

INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE EMOTION REGULATION AND METACOGNITION

• Mindful yoga, walking and movement
• Cultivate self-care: both client and clinician
• Heartfulness practice – deepening compassion
• Awareness of negative and positive experiences
• Pleasant and unpleasant moment’s calendar
• Decrease judgments and worries: working with anxiety
• Mindful stopping – decrease reactivity
• Taking a mindful pause-prevent impulsivity
• Railroad practice: train of thoughts
• Understand and utilize positive coping strategies
• Approach stress, pain and suffering
• Teens have control over stress: stress equals pain times blocking (S=PxB)
• Self-awareness calendar to track negative behaviors
• The harm awareness journal

BUILD SOCIAL SKILLS, COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT

• Manage life events and associated stressors
• Mindful homework/test-taking
• 10 Tips to minimize homework and test-taking stress
• Mindful messaging in social media
• Using MI-messages and the different communication styles
• Mindful communication: listen and reflect
• Letting-go and the power of forgiveness
• Gratitude practice toward self and others
• Build trust: the trust exercise
• Bring mindfulness into home, school and community
• Build mindful relationships
• Reviewing and setting future goals
• Processing grief and loss