The Department of Psychiatry at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center offers a Mindfulness training programs designed to help decrease stress, anxiety, and/or depression, and to improve concentration, focus, and overall well-being.

Mindfulness is shown to help build resiliency, aid in everyday stress management, and increase mental and physical health. The goal of the program is to teach participants how to purposefully bring attention to present moment experiences, peacefully and without judgment.

The program consists of three levels:

  • An 8-week Introduction to Mindfulness Group
  • 8- Week Advanced Groups, including:
    • Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MBCBT)
    • Fake It Till You Make It
    • Mindful Eating
  • Weekly drop-in Mediation Group

The cost of the first two levels may be covered by insurance for individuals with a mental health diagnosis; speak with your personal provider or call us to see if you qualify.

 

The program is offered at two locations:

For more information or to register, contact Deirdre West Roy, LICSW at 781-744-8164.

 

Level 1: Intro to Mindfulness Group

This 8-week introductory group meets once a week for 1 hour 15 minutes. In this group, you will learn:

  • What mindfulness is and how it helps to build resiliency
  • How mindfulness can increase overall mental and physical health
  • How the simple act of breathing can aid in everyday stress management
  • Strategies to bring mindfulness into everyday life

Level 2: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MBCBT)

This 8-week session meets for 1.5 hours a week and helps participants:

  • Make a change in their relationship to their thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations
  • Learn to recognize their habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and sensing, and how to challenge their automatic reactions to these experiences
  • Learn to accept these events as a predictable part of the human experience and develop a response that is appropriate to the situation rather than reacting to the unpleasant or unwanted experience based on habitual patterns of the mind and body.

Step-by-step instructions are provided for integrating meditation, mindful movement, and cognitive interventions during each group session. Significant mindfulness homework is part of the program.

Level 2: Fake It Till You Make It

This 8-week session meets for 1.5 hours a week and helps participants:

  • Recognize current patterns of destructive thinking and how this pattern of thought inhibits them from actualizing their authentic self
  • Develop an understanding of their core beliefs and goals and identify the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving them
  • Develop skills to quiet their inner negative dialogue and learn to develop self-compassion and self-confidence

Through the use of mindfulness, visualization techniques, humor, and mindful self-compassion, participants develop an understanding of their true self. Participants learn that their self-concept indeed has an impact on their ability to achieve their goals and aspirations. “The body achieves what the mind believes,” so feed it positive thoughts!

Level 2: Mindful Eating

This 8-week session meets for 1.5 hours a week and helps participants:

  • Bring mindful attention to who we are, what we eat, when we eat, where we eat , how we eat, and why we eat
  • Develop an awareness of how eating is nourishing for both the mind and the body

By learning to slow down and be truly present with their food and the people they share their meals with, participants will develop new patterns of eating behaviors, from food choice. to food preparation and consumption.

Level 3: Drop-In Meditation Group

This group is open to any participant who has completed the Intro session and either the MBCBT or the Fake It Till You Make It session. Participants have the opportunity to discuss their mindfulness practice, participate in a 20- to 30-minute group-guided meditation, and process their experience afterwards. This group meets for 1 hour and is a self-pay group (not covered by insurance); the cost is $20 per session.

This ongoing group meets Thursdays at 6 pm at Lahey’s Burlington campus.