Mindfulness

How Can Mindfulness Help Kids?

Parenting is a journey filled with joy, but it also brings moments of real emotional challenge. We invite you and your child to join this first-of-its-kind online program, specifically designed to transform how you relate to one another. By integrating the core principles of mindfulness and self-compassion, this course provides the essential tools to navigate distress with grace and resilience.

What Is Mindfulness

Mindfulness teaches moment-to-moment non-judgemental awareness. It is simply learning to pay attention to our experience just as it is in each moment. Much of our stress occurs when we let our minds run on autopilot, which can lead to rumination and worry. Through simple practices, Mindfulness can improve emotional resilience and strengthen our capacity to respond skillfully to life's challenges. Essentially, Mindfulness empowers kids to live happier and healthier lives!

In this program, you and your child will explore ways to...

• Build a Foundation: Create a lasting base of warmth, security, and trust.
• Develop Resilience: Learn practical self-care skills for both parent and child.
• Meet the Moment: Approach difficult emotions with newfound awareness, kindness and respect.

Schedule and Registration

CFM requires a minimum of 10 registrants per program. Classes with fewer than 10 registrants will be cancelled and provided a refund. Please be aware of this when making arrangements to attend this program.

Please note: The child must be between the ages of 8–12. If you have more than one child who wishes to participate, you must register them separately. One to two parents may attend with their child.

Have you ever felt swamped with negative thoughts and emotions? Have you ever found yourself feeling down and blue? You are not alone. Feeling anxious or sad is really common and the World Health Organization (WHO) says that depressive mood and anxiety could be the biggest health problems we face in the world.

Well, you have come to the right place! Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy(MBCT) is an 8-week, evidence-based, experiential program that combines ideas of cognitive therapy and mindfulness meditation practices to cultivate present moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is designed to cultivate resilience and safeguard against recurring bouts of negative thoughts, emotions, and low mood. Research finds MBCT to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and stands as a validated alternative to medication. 

In this course, you will be able to understand the traits of mood disorders and cultivate a new, heartful relationship to them by turning towards habitual patterns of thinking that keep you stuck and spiraling down. With practice, you will be able to build your capacity to respond to life’s challenges in more mindful and attentive ways. 

Participants will be required to meet with the instructor before the program starts. You will receive more information on this closer to the start date.

Join us and unlock your inner resilience and embrace emotional balance by joining this transformative 8-week course!

What You’ll Learn

• Attend to patterns of thought, emotions, behavior
• Raise awareness of and reduce identification with negative states
• Build skills to prevent relapse using mindfulness meditation techniques
• Learn to respond rather than react, using the element of choice

Who Should Participate

If you often worry about the future or dwell on the past, experience low mood, or have a history of anxiety and/or depression, this is the class for you. A commitment to attendance of 80% of the full series and home practice activities is required. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend the daylong silent retreat.

Helpful Resources

• The Mindful Way Workbook: An 8-Week Program to Free Yourself from Depression and Emotional Distress — John Teasdale, Mark Williams, and Zindel Segal (Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn).
• Video: Zindel Segal speaks about MBCT
• Kuyken (2016): Individual patient data meta-analysis of randomized trials (MBCT and relapse prevention).

Objectives

At the completion of this activity, participants should be able to:

• Articulate the key aspects of mindfulness as it relates to coping with negative moods and preventing relapse of depression and anxiety.
• Differentiate MBCT from and other CBT techniques that may seem similar but are quite different in contending with negative mood states.
• Practice the key aspects of mindfulness to manage symptoms and to prevent relapse of depression and anxiety.
• Apply mindfulness and cognitive therapy techniques when managing difficult situations and emotions in both personal and professional settings.
• Explain the potential benefits mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (and mindfulness) to family and friends
• Create plans to continue and deepen personal practice of mindfulness.

Note: This course does not train facilitators; it is for participants wishing to learn MBCT tools for themselves.

If you are interested in this program, please fill out this form to be added to the interest list. We will contact you once this program is scheduled.

Embark on a transformative journey with our unique course, seamlessly blending mindfulness training and education on the science of psychedelics. Discover the power of mindfulness as a foundation for navigating professionally led psychedelic experiences--learning to approach your experience with clarity, presence, and intention. Explore the depths of consciousness, guided by ancient mindfulness practices and modern insights.

Mindful Preparation and Integration for Psychedelic Interventions course offers a comprehensive understanding of both mindfulness and psychedelic science, providing tools for stress reduction, inner exploration, and personal growth. Gain practical skills to prepare for and integrate profound psychedelic experiences, harnessing their potential for healing and self-discovery.

Join a supportive community and expert-led sessions, unlocking a holistic approach to well-being that combines mindfulness practices and the transformative potential of psychedelics. Begin your journey toward inner harmony and expanded consciousness.

Legal Statement: Please note that our course strictly adheres to all relevant local, national, and international laws regarding the use, possession, and distribution of controlled substances. We do not condone, facilitate, or engage in the use or procurement of illegal substances. The educational content provided about substances such as psilocybin is for informational and academic purposes only and does not constitute encouragement or promotion of their use in any form that would contravene existing laws.

Ethical Statement: We uphold a strong commitment to ethical practices and responsible education. Our curriculum aims to provide factual, evidence-based information regarding substances like psilocybin, focusing on their historical, cultural, psychological, and therapeutic aspects. We prioritize the safety, well-being, and legal compliance of our students and do not endorse or advocate the use of any illegal substances. Our intention is to foster informed discussions, critical thinking, and ethical decision-making in the realm of psychedelics and related topics.

Outcomes

Short-Term:

• Improved Integration: Participants will demonstrate an increased ability to integrate psychedelic experiences, making meaning from insights, and applying them to personal growth and positive life changes.
• Emotional Well-being: Participants will report improved emotional regulation, resilience, and the ability to navigate difficult emotions both during psychedelic experiences and in daily life.
• Ethical Engagement: Participants will show an increased understanding of ethical considerations, harm reduction practices, and responsible use of psychedelics, promoting safety and integrity in their engagement with plant medicine.

Long-Term:

• Personal Transformation: Participants experience profound personal growth, healing, and positive life changes resulting from the integration of contemplative practices and psychedelic experiences.
• Community Impact: Graduates of the course become advocates for the synergistic application of mindfulness-based interventions with the safe and intentional use of psychedelics, actively supporting others in their integration journeys and contributing to the destigmatization and responsible use of psychedelics.
• Cultural Shift: The course contributes to a broader cultural shift towards recognizing and valuing the transformative potential of classical psychedelics and contemplative practices, leading to increased acceptance, research, and accessibility to psychedelic therapies.

Target Audience

• People interested in mindfulness-based interventions and their synergistic relationship with classic psychedelic plant medicine.
• People contemplating psychedelic assisted therapy and looking for skills to manage perceptions and emotions associated with the process.
• People wanting to sustain the impact of psychedelic-assisted therapies—further integrating these transformational experiences into their daily lives.

Objectives

• Increased Knowledge: Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of classical psychedelics/plant medicines, contemplative practices, integration techniques, the benefits and risks of psychedelic use, as well as the legal and ethical guidelines associated with psychedelic use.
• Enhanced Skills: Participants will acquire practical skills for self-reflection, emotional regulation, mindfulness, and integration of their psychedelic experiences -- enabling them to safely and effectively navigate, integrate, and benefit from the transformational potential of these practices.
• Increased Self-Awareness: Participants will learn evidenced-based mindfulness practices for deepening self-awareness, gaining deeper insight into their conditioned emotions, beliefs, and behavior patterns, and develop a greater understanding of the impact their psychedelic experiences may have on their psychological, emotional, and behavioral health. Participants will also develop an understanding of their choice to take plant medicine and how it is determined by many factors: including, but not limited to, culture, society, gender, race, experiences of personal and generational trauma, spirituality, and many more.
• Supportive Community: Participants will be given the opportunity to develop and foster a sense of community and connection with others on a similar--a safe and non-judgmental space for sharing, learning and compassionate support.

What would happen if, in moments of shame, you could care for yourself instead of going small, attacking yourself, or shutting down?

We are excited to invite you to Self-Compassion for Shame: Returning Home to Yourself, a groundbreaking 8-week program developed by Dr. Chris Germer, Natalie Bell, and the SC-Shame development team. In this course, we take a unique, non-pathological look at shame through the lens of mindful self-compassion—and learn why self-compassion is the antidote to shame.

Who Should Participate

Prerequisites: This course is suitable for everyone who has completed either the 8-Week MSC, the 5-Day MSC Intensive, or the Short Course in MSC-along with a personal self-compassion practice of 1 year or more. You should be able to recognize that shame may be limiting your full potential—and want new resources to be able to work with it in a healthy balanced way.

SC-Shame is a resource-building program (like MSC), not psychotherapy. Because we’ll be touching shame with self-compassion, challenging emotions may arise. Our teaching team is committed to co-creating a safe and rewarding learning environment together with participants.

“Self-Compassion allows us to see through shame—to see our inherent worth and value.”

What You’ll Learn

You will build practical resources to meet shame with greater acceptance and authenticity so you can stay connected, think in a balanced way, and make wise, healthy choices. The course weaves together talks, experiential exercises, meditation, and group discussion, alongside theory and research on shame and self-compassion. Special topics include:

• Mindfulness of shame
• Origins of shame
• Self-criticism
• Body shame
• Self-forgiveness
• Hidden parts
• Social justice

“Shame makes us want to go small, go silent, or go away. Self-Compassion shows us how to be strong and have a voice.”

Why This Course

Prior participants of the SC-Shame 8-week course reported:

• 96% would recommend the course
• 96% said their experience of shame changed as a result of the course
• 89% would consider taking the course again
• 85% had better mental and emotional wellbeing after the course

Program Structure

• 8 weeks, 28 hours total (20 hours class time plus 8 hours optional practice group)
• Weekly classes: 2.5 hours each
• Optional practice group: 1 hour weekly, facilitated by SC-Shame teachers
• Class size: maximum 30 participants

Free Orientation Session

Join us for a free orientation session as a preview of the upcoming 8-week course starting in April 2026. Register here.

In today’s world, teens and pre-teens are under more pressure and experiencing higher levels of stress than ever before. Increasing demand in technology, academic preparation, and life transitions often result in physical and emotional stressors, such as:

• Irritability
• Anxiety
• Depression

These stressors can affect your child’s well-being and happiness. A crucial skill in managing stress effectively is to be able to deal with change whenever it occurs.

In This Course Students Will Learn To:

• Sharpen their ability to focus and pay attention
• Experience life situations with less emotional reactivity
• Learn effective strategies for making better choices
• Increase kindness and compassion for themselves and others

Learn skills for self-care

The Practice

• Gentle stretching and yoga
• Mindful meditation practices to support relaxation and awareness
• Self-reflection through journaling, activities, and group discussion

Reduce overwhelm and restore balance with an evidence-based 8-week MBSR course that helps you reclaim calm, resilience, and a better quality of life.

Before you begin to read the information below about the Mindfulness-Based Courses at UC San Diego, we invite you to take a moment to pause and consider what brought you to this point. What is in your mind and heart and body that caused you to bring this web page on to the screen of this computer? You might pause for 10 or 20 seconds to get a clear sense of what led you here.

More than likely, you quickly identified a “problem” or “challenge” that you face in your life. This is something that causes you to suffer in some way, physically, emotionally or spiritually. Among the difficulties people report when they come to our mindfulness classes are such things as:

• Chronic pain
• Stress
• Anxiety and worry
• Chronic or life-threatening medical illnesses
• Depression
• Relationship difficulties
• Problems with substances
• Sleep disturbance
• Hypertension
• Headaches
• Grief and loss

Now, take a moment to step back from your definition of the problem or problems and notice that there was also an aspect of you that was aware of this difficulty and was open to working with such challenges in a different way. After all, if you were satisfied with how you were dealing with the things you face in your life, would you have sought out a program about stress reduction? Perhaps that “inner voice” was seeking peace, balance, equanimity or a sense of control.

That awareness can be thought of in many ways, but we like to consider it your inner wisdom. You have had that sense of what feels right or wrong for you as long as you can remember, even though there have probably been times when you could not hear it, or you ignored or misunderstood it. That inner wisdom knows the fundamental principle upon which the foundation of mindfulness programs are built, that there is more right with you than wrong with you.

Our Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course (and other mindfulness programs) are unlike any sort of program you may have encountered before. They involve cultivating a different relationship between you and the things that challenge you in your life, and relies completely upon the tools you already have. Specifically, mindfulness helps you access the ability to be non-judgmental, compassionate, patient, present and aware. You wouldn’t have come this far if these qualities did not exist in you somewhere.

However, just because you have the inner wisdom and resources to contend differently with your life and all its aspects, does not mean that you routinely use them. Most of us are on “auto-pilot” much of the day and tend to react much more than we respond to the decisions and situations we face. Our courses are intended to develop the innate ability to cultivate mindfulness over “mindlessness”, with which we are all familiar. Those moments when we are unaware of where we are, what we are feeling and why we are doing what we are doing. Quite frequently, those are the moments that contribute most to our suffering. Just a few examples are: eating foods that we know we would be better off not eating; spending time with people that cause us great difficulty or emotional pain; or engaging in activities that are stressful, harmful or unnecessarily distracting.

More information about our “flagship” 8-week MBSR program is detailed elsewhere on our website, but the overriding focus and intention of it is to reconnect you with that inner wisdom and deep knowing that resides within you. Mindfulness-based groups have a huge and growing body of research supporting their usefulness to address the kinds of problems we have described. 

This is an opportunity to rediscover yourself and to access the qualities and strengths you possess deep inside. Sit back, take a moment to become aware of the surroundings you are in, the sensations in your body, the thoughts in your mind and the feelings in your heart:

• Are you feeling curious, excited, skeptical, nervous, hopeful or bored?
• Are you aware of physical sensations of tension, pain, warmth or numbness?
• Can you hold all of the amazing and varied things in your awareness for a moment without having to change them, extinguish them or get lost in them?
• Can you experience this very moment for the precious, fleeting and beautiful thing that it is?

You have just tasted some of your own ability to be mindful, and we invite you to cultivate it further through participation in the UC San Diego Mindfulness-Based programs.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the 'Stress Reduction Clinic' and the 'Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society' at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the author of many books including Full Catastrophe Living.

MBSR All-Day Session (Included in our registration):

As part of the MBSR course, we offer an All-Day Session of Mindfulness, typically held between weeks 6 and 7. This teacher-led silent retreat is a chance to experience mindfulness practices you have already been learning—such as sitting meditation, mindful movement, walking meditation— in a supportive and spacious way. You'll also have the opportunity to reflect and share your experience at the end of the day and during the following class

Free Online Consultation Request

Interested in talking with a member of our teaching staff about MBSR or other programs? We offer free consultations with our staff over email or over the phone in order to provide advice on which of our Mindfulness Programs (such as MBSR and MSC) may be right for you.

If you are interested in acquiring information regarding our professional training programs, please email us at mindfulness@ucsd.edu.

There are many moments in life that shape our destiny, sending ripples into the future, influencing how we perceive the world in the moments that follow. These unfolding moments can be uplifting and positive, dark and chaotic, or simply mundane. But what if we could identify these moments before they seize control of our lives? What if we could harness them to chart a course toward a wiser and brighter future? What if every moment, no matter how insignificant, held this potential?

"Deeper Mindfulness," an innovative 8-week course presented by one of the pioneers of mindfulness, Oxford Professor Mark Williams, takes mindfulness practice to new heights. This program blends mindfulness meditation with neuroscience to unveil the deeper, hidden layers of mindfulness known as the 'feeling tone'. Feeling tone is what sets the 'background color' that tinges your entire experience of life. It is also the tipping point from which you can reclaim balance in a frantic world. Proven effective in alleviating anxiety, stress, and depression, this course caters to those seeking to deepen their mindfulness journey beyond Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), or any other Mindfulness-Based programs. Deeper Mindfulness will further equip participants to rediscover serenity and regain control amidst life's chaos.

This course caters to those seeking to deepen their mindfulness journey after graduating from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), or any other Mindfulness-Based programs, and includes a home practice: 10-30 min daily guided meditation. Instructions for everyday mindfulness to help you bring mindfulness practice into the real world.

We recommend that if your schedule will not allow you to attend the first session, or prevents from attending any two sessions of the course, that you consider waiting until the next offering of the program.

Note: A minimum of 10 registrants is required to run the program. Programs with fewer than 10 registrants will be cancelled and refunded.