This class series offers CE’s and offers a smart phone app as optional reference material.
This program is an invitation to foster greater present moment awareness in everyday life through the lens of mindful eating. We will explore common everyday struggles with unhealthy habits –like emotional eating, consuming news, gorging on social media, feeding worry thinking, smoking, and other unhealthy activities that are driven by our craving minds. Practicing mindful eating is an opportunity to foster wholesome change in many facets of our lives, where kind curiosity cultivates the inner rewards of self-kindness.
The course introduces mindfulness training for anyone who wants to change their relationship with food and cravings. It’s not about losing weight, although that may happen, instead this program will teach you how to enhance your awareness to feel natural signals of when you are hungry, when you are full, or when you are just emotionally craving. The training will demonstrate the science behind the habit loop and the theory of how we form habits around eating and consuming. Understanding the same habit loop system will help you rewire your brain to identify stress and emotional eating patterns, reduce cravings and build sustainable healthy habits. Class sessions will include experiential exercises, mindful movement and meditation, community support, breakout rooms, and time for your questions.
Mindfulness Based Habit Change (MBHC) is based on the work of researcher and addiction psychiatrist, Judson Brewer, MD, PhD. Integrating both ancient wisdom based on Buddhist psychology and new learnings from modern science, Dr. Brewer developed a step-by-step approach to habit change demonstrated to be effective with stress eating, smoking cessation and reducing anxiety. You can learn more in his Ted Talk – click here
MBHC is an 6-session program aimed at teaching you to:
- Describe how habits are formed and perpetuated with regard to adverse eating behaviors.
- Describe how mindfulness affects brain processes and how to apply mindfulness skills.
- Identify emotion-driven habitual behaviors.
- Discuss how mindfulness approaches can help change addictive habit patterns.
- Observe how mindfulness skills and knowledge of reward based learning are implemented with group participants.
- Discuss observations/insights of weekly practices in a group setting.
- Relate to difficult emotions with greater moment-to-moment acceptance.
- Become motivated by healthy self rewarding actions and letting go of cognitive distortions instead of forcing motivation with willpower.
- Integrate experiential learning techniques to increase freedom of choice.
- Recognize and cultivate skillful, wholesome mind-states and habits.
- Integrate core mindfulness exercises into daily life.
Participants will receive electronic materials including access to the Eat Right Now App with daily lessons for up to 60 days, guided meditations, articles, and links to other videos. You also get access to a global online community through journaling and a live midweek video meeting directly with Dr Brewer and other expert facilitators. This approach has been shown to work in rigorous clinical trials and reduce craving-related eating by 40%.
Recommended readings by Judson Brewer:
“The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habit”
“Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind”
Schedule Thursdays 6-7:30pm (PT):
April 28
May 5
May 12
May 19
May 26
June 2
Testimonials:
“I would recommend this course to anyone looking to work with habits and even those who are not. It’s just a good class.”
“This course helped me change my relationship to anxiety and helped me see numerous habit loops I wasn’t aware of and to be kind to myself while changing my before. It was a great follow-up to MBSR.”
“Robert was professional, courteous and very respectful and empathetic to the needs of all participants. Would definitely be interested in future classes he offers. I would recommend this program to anyone. The tools I have learned can be applied to someone who is looking to improve their quality of life. I learned so much and I am very grateful that I was able to sign up.”
“Robert’s teaching style was very conducive to underlining the main points in the Unwinding Anxiety app, and he creative a very safe environment for people to share their experiences.”
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Continuing Education Units:
Psychologists: Continuing Education Credit for this program is provided by UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
This course offers 9 CE credit. California licensed MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, LCSWs: Continuing Education Credit for this program is provided by UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. 9 CE credit may be applied to your license renewal through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. For those licensed outside California, please check with your local licensing board to determine if CE credit is accepted.
Nurses: UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number CEP16351, for 10.75 contact hours.
