MBSR Benefits – the Full Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program Review
- Abigail Balkus - MSc. in Health and Social Psychology
- Mar 14
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 19
MBSR – Mindfulness Stress reduction course, is it worth the time and money?
Is it beneficial for mental health or just a helpful side course while you are in therapy?
Keep reading for a behind the scenes look into a a real MBSR course experience.
MBSR has been shown in 1000’s of empirical articles to be beneficial as an addition to the treatment as usual (TAU) for both physical and mental health treatments.
Discover my personal experience of the course that has shown significant effects in just 8 weeks for patients.
In treatment trials comparing only TAU vs MBSR + TAU, the latter group of participants consistently displayed significant treatment effects compared to the groups that only received the TAU.
Check out my initial article on the background of MBSR when I was just about to begin the program to participate from the point of view of a health psychologist that learned about the significant results of the course during my studies.
Get fully up-to-date on what goes on during an MBSR course by reading my review halfway through the course.
Now… Ready. Set. Go!
The end all be all.
Maybe dramatic, but it truly feels like the end of an era.
But, many opportunities lay ahead after the healing that I experienced during MBSR.
From January to March of my life… and many Saturday nights focused on mindfulness practices and heart-opening conversations with strangers…
Initial interviews, intakes, and personality assessments….
A full day retreat of devoted mindfulness practice from meditations, body scans, mindful movement yoga, and qi gong…..
Weekly homework practices squished into busy days…
Waiting until the practice would pay off from the initial added stress of pushing the homework practice into packed days… to feeling naturally more at ease during normally stressful work days.
Did it happen?
Did the devotion pay off?
Would I recommend the course for anyone else with general stress?
Did I learn to surrender and feel more at peace?
Would I recommend reading the course book: Full Catastrophe Living?
Do I plan to continue implementing the MBSR practices into my daily life?
Did I enjoy the course?
Dip into the MBSR benefits that I personally experienced.
Table of Contents
I. Who Can Experience The MBSR Benefits
II. The MBSR Benefits That I Experienced
III. MBSR Cultivating a Compassionate and Patient Awareness For Inner Peace
IV. Group Work in MBSR
V. MBSR Session Schedule
VI. MBSR Developed a Mind-Body Connection
VII. How MBSR Strengthened My Intuition
VIII. Final Course Review
IX. References
Who Can Experience The MBSR Benefits
If you are a normal human adult, you likely experience some generalized stress especially if you have faced adversity throughout your life.
This course is for you!
If you are currently seeing a therapist you are likely actively working on inner healing and reducing your ability to be triggered and reactive in life – shall we say you are aiming for a consistent sense of peace.
This course is an amazing addition to improve your ability to become more aware of the areas in your life that could use improvement.
And, if your therapist has already made you aware of these maladaptive habits, then taking this course gifts you with the patience and steadiness to work on these tough areas of your life without hating yourself for everything bad about yourself that you are becoming aware of.
Awareness is a powerful thing, just like attention.
You can give someone with ADHD strong attentional control medicine… but until they have strict priorities of what they should focus on and an inner motivation to focus on these important things, they will just end up with amazing non-blinking attention on their phone screen.
The MBSR Benefits That I Experienced
In the halfway review of the MBSR course, I deeply reflected upon how developing a stronger self-compassion during the course had become a powerful healing tool.
Something that appears so simple and natural yet is usually greatly missing from stressed-out adults.
And, when added back, is like a necessary ingredient in the frosted cake of a happy life.
A strong sense of self-compassion not only makes us feel nice about ourselves and keeps us setting healthy boundaries from toxic relationships.
It also helps us deal with the ups-and-downs of the therapy process and the healing journey in general.
As we, on our own, or via a therapist’s tough love, become more aware of our triggers, bad habits, and painful childhood memories, life can become extremely overwhelming.
This is the part where you start to think that ignorance is bliss ✨
That maybe you were better off not knowing all of these parts of yourself that you don’t like.
Enter, MBSR’s benefits of self-compassion and patience.
Wondering how MBSR cultivates greater self-compassion, read the halfway-through review article.
And we’ll check in here with how I cultivated patience and inner peace through the program.
MBSR Cultivating a Compassionate and Patient Awareness For Inner Peace
Throughout the program, we were constantly reminded to find a practice that works for us, that we could implement smoothly into our daily lives.
Something that fit just us… that didn’t need to be the same formula to peace as everyone else’s.
A daily practice that matched just us, that we felt personal benefits afterwards.
We were taught that our differences were okay, that it was okay if we preferred one mindfulness practice over another, if we had differing experiences with a certain practice compared to another MBSR participant.
And, we got to hear everyone's specific experience and growth throughout each of their personal practices.
Group Work in MBSR
This was the magic of MBSR that just can’t be found in traditional therapies – the community.
As I reflected upon my experience after the MBSR course I realized that it had such amazing benefits on our self-compassion, self-care, and patience throughout our healing process because of the group work.
Something that you just can not receive in individual therapies.
MBSR is comparable to a group therapy, and that is the magic ✨ of it.
Sometimes we need that wake-up call from feeling miserable about our own downfalls by hearing someone else’s struggles.
No…. not to know that our problems are not as big as there’s.
Well, it is a small part of it – but mainly to understand the difference in how we treat other’s going through similar stressors as us.
To reflect upon the compassion, kindness, and understanding that we feel for their own fight through their inner demons or just general life stressors that have reached a point of overwhelm.
In that moment, we see them.
We understand them.
And we let them know that they are actually doing great and just need to be patient with their selves throughout the ups-and-downs of the healing process.
One step (or crawl) at a time.
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MBSR Session Schedule
In each Saturday session, we would discuss our experiences with the past week’s assigned homework and how we were handling it – if we were consistently practicing or the overwhelming life stressors weren’t allowing space for “yet another task”.
After each 20 minute group breakout session, we would have a full group discussion where the facilitators would pronounce the same understanding and care that we had just given each other in peer-to-peer support.
Lessons were learned and self-compassion and patience were cultivated as they instructed us to keep on trying and pushing through but also to know when a bad, ugly, stressful feeling really is not our fault….as they taught us about how general stress turns into overwhelm when the stressors in our lives become larger than our available resources (support, money, mental health, etc.).
The Stress Bucket Analogy
MBSR is a beautiful healing tool (and in just 8 weeks) because we learn about how stress operates, how trauma is created in our bodies and minds, and how it can make small daily stress even more difficult to handle.
It is not just someone giving you the practices and telling you to do them.
You learn about how the practices work, how to motivate ourselves to do them (attributed to the book learning (FCL)), and how to be kind to ourselves (self-compassion) when we don’t do the practices.
A nice example of why self-compassion and patience are important traits that are often lacking in traumatized people lies in perfectionism.
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Children of strict parents (who may or may not have created trauma in the child), are often perfectionists1.
Adults that have the stellar resumes and amazing grades from their childhood schooling often have an underlying dark past.
One that has caused a reflection of their parents’ ideas of them on their inner self talk.
Telling them that they are not good enough unless they do, do, do and be the best at everything.
That they are never allowed to take breaks even when they are feeling burnt out or fighting a sickness.
And this negative inner talk created a disconnect from their natural bodies’ signs and signals2.
Important messages to listen to if we want to be happy and healthy mentally and physically.
MBSR Developed a Mind-Body Connection
Losing the mind-body connection is a much larger issue than we realize and an incredibly common problem and misconception.
The health technology revolution has brought about smart watches and similar health tracking tools.
Yet, I can’t help but ponder that this health tracking technology, is making the gap between our bodies and minds even larger.
Can’t I just know when I am feeling bad in the moment?
Can’t I feel on my own that I haven’t had enough physical activity, eaten enough, or slept enough?
As we slip deeper into capitalistic achievement and financial-based ideals of worth and self-appreciation, humanity has been slowly diminishing its natural body-mind connection.
Before we panic -- MBSR, just 8 weeks of health devotion, can help reverse this loss of inner connection.
How MBSR Strengthened My Intuition
If you notice that if you have a habit of getting too much done: constantly doing and working, not taking time to relish in the moment when you achieve a goal, but instantly moving on to the next task….
This course is for you!
Learning to listen to our body’s signs and signals is an under-rated yet simple tool to improve wellness.
Body scans are a no-brainer to feel into our bodies but mindfulness in general, basking in the quiet allows us to finally hear our bodies talk (not only our mind chatter).
This, this is the first step before we can listen to our body’s we need to hear them!
Listening to our body’s can not be built by an outside program or person telling us what is going on with it.
Listening to our body’s requires an internal awareness and an ability to let go of the multi-tasking and welcome stillness and its silence and peace.
The more we do, do, do out of a lack of self-compassion and a desire to please other’s and fit into this fake societal rules box that we made up… the more our body’s natural healing properties slip away.
Our body has always known exactly what to do to heal.
It always gives us exactly what we need.
Our body feels icky and produces vomiting when we eat something that was poisonous to us.
Our body’s temperature rises and we feel the heat, or a mix of extreme hot and cold, when we have a virus.
Our body’s stomach feels uncomfortable when we over-eat.
Our body’s feet feel numb when they don’t receive enough blood flow.
Our body’s bladder sends us pressured signals when we need to release it.
Our body’s smell sense tells us when food (especially milk) has gone bad.
Our body has always been there for us, but trauma and a lack of self-compassion and self-work can lead us to over-work it until it results in mental or physical problems.
Problems that our bodies were urging us to avoid; sending us signals to avoid and to slow down and rest.
Mindfulness opens this door that may have appeared glued shut - to the natural healing powers of our own human bodies.
Well welcome back to your body!
Welcome back home.
MBSR gifts you the capacity to work on your healing with that broad awareness that is not overwhelming but a kind nudge in the right direction ➡
And the healing journey stops being full of road-blocks but life lessons that you have the capacity, care, and patience to work through step-by-step.
Enjoy the adventure.
Healing towards holistic wellness is lifelong.
Utilize MBSR to have more fun on the never-ending path of growth.
Final Course Review
In conclusion, would I recommend the IM2 MBSR Course?
10/10
I connected with individuals from around the world that have faced a wide-variety of similar stressful situations and life adversities as my own.
And within just 8 weeks of my life I had the opportunity to build a more stress-resistant lifestyle, compassionate mindset, and experience the natural healing, embodying power of mindfulness ✨
All under caring, dedicated facilitators that hope to give back to the world the same magic and un-ending happiness that MBSR brought them in the first steps of their healing journey.
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