The inner life
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Direct answer
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR): Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR, is an eight-week secular course in mindfulness meditation founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at a Massachusetts hospital in 1979.
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At a glance
- Also called
- MBSR course, mindfulness based stress reduction, what is MBSR, Jon Kabat-Zinn MBSR
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Mindfulness, Body Scan, Vipassana, Zazen
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR, is an eight-week secular course in mindfulness meditation founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at a Massachusetts hospital in 1979.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What does MBSR stand for?
MBSR is a group course that teaches mindfulness as a skill for living with stress, pain and illness. It runs for eight weeks: a weekly class of about two and a half hours, one full day of silent practice, and daily home practice of around forty-five minutes. The exercises are the body scan, sitting meditation, gentle yoga and walking.
Kabat-Zinn drew the methods from Buddhist insight meditation and Zen and presented them without religious language, in a hospital, for patients whom ordinary care had not fully helped. The course became the template for later programmes, including Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Meditation.
What sets Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) apart
MBSR is a curriculum more than a technique. What sets it apart is the fixed format, eight weeks with set exercises in a set order, which let hospitals offer it and researchers repeat it. Kabat-Zinn's working definition, paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and without judgement, became the standard one in psychology. The course asks a lot: the home practice alone, at forty-five minutes on six days a week, comes to thirty-six hours.
- Founded: 1979, University of Massachusetts Medical Center
- Founder: Jon Kabat-Zinn
- Length: eight weekly classes and one all-day session
- Core exercises: body scan, sitting meditation, gentle hatha yoga, walking
- Handbook: Full Catastrophe Living, 1990
- Best known offspring: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, 2002
Often mistaken for something else: Mindfulness is the quality of attention being trained; MBSR is one specific eight-week course for training it.
The story behind Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist who had trained in Zen and insight meditation, opened the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979. His book Full Catastrophe Living described the course in 1990. In 2002 Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale published Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, adapted from it for people with recurrent depression.
Why Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) matters
Most of the clinical research on mindfulness was done on this course or its offspring, so claims about mindfulness usually rest on it.
How to read Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Hospitals, clinics and workplaces offer it as a taught course, and researchers treat its fixed format as a standard that can be tested.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in practice: an example
In week two a participant with back pain lies on a mat and moves attention slowly from the toes upward, for the full forty-five minutes.
Where readings of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) go wrong
The benefits found in trials are moderate, not dramatic; the course does not replace medical or psychological care, and long silent practice unsettles some people.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- MBSR, MBSR course, mindfulness based stress reduction, what is MBSR, Jon Kabat-Zinn MBSR, eight week mindfulness course
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does MBSR stand for?
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. It is an eight-week group course in mindfulness meditation and gentle yoga, first taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979.
What happens in an MBSR course?
Participants meet weekly for about two and a half hours, attend one day-long silent session, and practise at home most days with recordings. They learn the body scan, sitting meditation, mindful movement and walking.
Is there evidence that MBSR works?
A 2014 review of 47 trials in JAMA Internal Medicine found moderate evidence that mindfulness programmes ease anxiety, depression and pain, little evidence for other outcomes, and no sign that they outperform other active treatments.
