People today are inundated by a variety of stressors on a minute-to-minute basis. While there is no way to avoid them, there is a way to change your relationship with stress so you no longer suffer from its presence. Crouse Hospital’s Mindful Living & Stress Reduction program teaches meditation practices that will make you more aware of the present moment and increase your ability to deal with stress. The program also heightens your creativity and, in turn, improves your problem-solving.
“Mindfulness is a way of paying wise attention to all the circumstances that arise, and offers a way to relate to those circumstances in a way that can reduce stress and suffering,” says course instructor Pauline Cecere, LCSW. She has taught this class for over a decade and has recently reformatted it to better suit the busy lives of those who attend it.
The course, which begins Thursday, May 16, runs from 6:30 to 8 p.m. for four consecutive weeks with the final class on Thursday, June 6. The class is held in the Marley Education Center, 765 Irving Avenue with free parking in the Marley or Crouse garages. The cost for the course is $200, and covers instruction, CDs and materials and an optional retreat, led by Cecere, Scott Treatman, DO, MPH, and Bill Cross, PhD, on Saturday, June 1 from 8 a.m. to noon. Register by calling 315/470-8076. Inquiries about the course can be made by calling Pauline Cecere at 315/655-3066 or email paulinec@frontiernet.net. Deadline to register is May 9.
Cecere is an experienced psychotherapist with a private practice in Cazenovia. She earned her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan, and is on the clinical faculty of Upstate Medical Center, a certified Kripalu yoga instructor and a certified SoulCollage® facilitator. Cecere has trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Jon Kabat-Zinn, who was instrumental in expanding the practice of mindful meditation in the United States nearly 30 years ago through a program he developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The Mindful Living & Stress Reduction program is offered through Crouse Hospital’s Institute for Integrative Medicine.