Teaching mindfulness online: Several examples

I first heard of distance education for MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) training when at the University of Massachusetts Medical School's 8th Annual International Scientific Conference for Clinicians, Researchers and Educators, this year titled "Investigating and Integrating Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society." (At the end of this post, I will tell you more about what I learned at the conference about MBSR through distance ed.)

I learned recently of more efforts to teach mindfulness through distance ed. In the e-newsletter from eMindful, I read a message from Dr. Michael Baime, director of the University of Pennsylvania Program for Mindfulness. He writes:

For thousands of years, mindfulness has been passed down from teacher to student and from generation to generation.  Each time mindfulness has entered a different culture, it has been transformed into something new. When the mindfulness tradition born in India came to China and Japan, it was transformed and Zen was created. In our time, we are witnessing the growth of something that has never been seen before.

This winter we participated in a remarkable new

approach to the way mindfulness is transmitted: we presented our Foundation  Mindfulness-Based Stress Management program online. Using state-of-the-art technology, classes were taught in real time with a live instructor using streaming video, internet microphones and webcams. I wasn't surprised that it was possible (you can do anything online if you try hard enough), but I honestly didn't expect it to be so successful and powerful. As is expressed about our in-person Foundation classes, on-line participant evaluations were extremely positive and their comments were heart-warming.

 This Fall we'll be offering two on-line classes: our Foundation class and another online program for people with cancer. We are also collaborating with Duke University on a major research project that will compare the effectiveness of online and in-person Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction classes. If you have friends and family outside of our local area who might be interested in this web-based program, please send them along. Let us know what you think. And stay tuned...I think that we are beginning to see the birth of something interesting and important!

Yes, I would agree that this use of technology is "Interesting and important." Here is what I wrote to the MasterWebinars listserv. (They are a group of people from around the US and Canada who are together learning how to present Webinars.)

Hi, all. I attended a program this morning here in Massachusetts. The topic was creating a MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) curriculum. As part of their talk, the presenters talked about a program they had given partly by phone. I thought, "Hey, if THIS can be taught by phone, anything can."

In their book Teaching Mindfulness,  the presenters describe their teleseminar program. By the time I got to the conference bookstore, the book was sold out. It costs nearly $80 on Amazon so I was lucky that one of the editors of Shambhala Sun loaned me his so I can see if I want to buy it. In addition to the description of the teleseminar, I wanted to see how they have reduced the live MBSR program to intentions. Having done so allowed them to create the teleseminar. (As an exercise, I am going to reduce my Brains on Purpose program to intentions.) From the way they described intentions, they are different from things like learning objectives.

I was happy to see that the section of the book on the teleseminar was in Google books. You can read it at this link (go to "Example 1: Adjusting Standard Content").

Although I know most of you do not plan to teach mindfulness, I think there is still something to learn from this about converting a real-time class. For the mainly-teleseminar class, they did have two live meetings, once at the beginning and once at the end, but that may have been preferable due to the content. I am not sure if it was necessary, and will ask if I see them.

During their program this AM, they said that their telephone calls lasted 1 hour but they would now recommend 1-1/2 hours. They also said that after two weeks everyone recognized each other's voices so they did not have to keep announcing their names. (I am not sure if this is because of the initial, live get-together.) They all had photos of each other which helped. They said that an initial barrier was silence on the phone -- people were not comfortable with it in the beginning. (I telemeet with a group that begins with a 5-minute silent meditation, and it seemed odd to me in the beginning but not now.)

During Q & A, a woman got up and says she too teaches MBSR via phone; she was very enthusiastic. Does not sound like she has any face-to-face meetings.

At the conference, I talked with another person who teaches MBSR; her program is at U of MN. They also have an initial face-to-face meeting. She said her facilitators think that is very important because they need to show people the various practices (e.g., yoga) and see how they do.

When they have their phone calls, the calls include the practices. When people are down on the floor, they either use a speaker phone or headset.

Yes, "interesting and important."

Comments

[Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.]

Sorry I missed you at the conference Stephanie, I was there, would have liked to have met you in person.