Behavior Change

Food as Medicine at Home offers hands-on cooking classes streaming from the comfort of your own kitchen. Classes apply plant-based nutrition principles to support balanced healthy eating habits.

Participants learn about key nutrients—fat, protein, carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, and minerals—as well as therapeutic approaches for managing body weight, blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, gut health, inflammation, hormones, and longevity.

Course Highlights

• Learn the benefits of functional ingredients, food combinations, and dietary patterns
• Apply therapeutic nutrition principles to common health challenges
• Experience plant-based recipes that are easy to prepare and delicious
• Develop cooking skills for menu planning, bulk cooking, and batch cooking
• Live Q&A with an integrative registered dietitian each class

Class 1 – Natural Detox Support

Gentle detoxification to combat chronic disease, inflammation, and aging.

• Culinary focus: Cooking methods for nutrient preservation; reducing toxin exposure
• Health focus: Supporting natural detox pathways
• Activity: Habit Tracker
• Recipes: Collard Wrapped Chickpea Tapenade, Tahini Dipping Sauce, Quick Pickled Vegetables, Ginger Peach Iced Tea

Class 2 – Anti-Inflammatory Super Foods

Functional foods with anti-inflammatory benefits.

• Culinary focus: Preparing pulses and whole grains; batch cooking
• Health focus: Fiber and microbiome health
• Activity: Meal planning
• Recipes: Herb and Citrus Baked Salmon (or Tofu), Forbidden Rice with Ginger Turmeric Dressing, Miso Glazed Bok Choy, Triple Berry Apple Chia Compote

Class 3 – Fiber & Natural GLP-1 Boosters

Foods that naturally support satiety, digestion, and the body's innate GLP-1 production.

• Culinary focus: Pulses, whole grains, batch cooking
• Health focus: Satiety, digestion, metabolic health
• Activity: Meal planning + probiotic food take-home recipes
• Recipes: Lentil Bolognese, Go Green Buckwheat Risotto, Sparkling Green Tea with Basil Seeds

Class 4 – Ayurvedic Nutritional Healing

An introduction to Ayurvedic cooking: achieving balance among mind, body, and "dosha."

• Culinary focus: Cooking to sustain a healthy diet
• Health focus: Macronutrients, micronutrients, and functional foods for disease
• Activity: Menu and recipe adaptations
• Recipes: TBD

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is each class?
Each class is 1.5 hours via Zoom. Plan 30–60 minutes before and after for grocery prep and cleanup.

Is this a vegan cooking class?
Yes, all recipes are 100% plant-based. The broader approach focuses on whole-food, plant-based eating; animal proteins may be discussed in context.

Will food allergies be considered?
Yes. Please indicate any food allergies at registration so the instructor can offer substitutions.

Can my family members participate?
Immediate household members are welcome to cook along. Those outside your home should register separately.

What technology is needed?
All classes are held via Zoom. You'll need a Zoom-compatible device. Links are sent weekly before class.

Can I contact the instructor outside of class?
Yes — email CINinfo@health.ucsd.edu.

This training provides clinicians with a structured introduction to Mindfulness-Integrated Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MiCBT) and its application in clinical practice. It is the first step in developing competency in the clinical application of MiCBT. Training progresses through the four stages of MiCBT: attention training and emotional regulation; development of interoceptive awareness and equanimity targeting the co-emergence of sensation and reactivity; application of these skills within interpersonal contexts; and consolidation through compassion-based processes to support maintenance and adaptive responding.

MiCBT offers a structured, evidence-based framework for working with attention, interoception, and reinforcement processes that maintain psychological distress (Cayoun, 2011; 2015). Training focuses on the development of attentional stability, metacognitive awareness, interoceptive sensitivity, and equanimity, and how these capacities are applied within clinical contexts to support behavioral and emotional regulation.

This program is designed for clinicians/health professionals seeking a clear and reproducible method for integrating mindfulness within cognitive behavioral therapy. It is suitable for those beginning formal training in MiCBT and does not require prior experience in mindfulness practice. Emphasis is placed on direct experience, clinical application, and the development of skills that can be implemented within ongoing treatment.

Course Structure

This is a 10-week live online training, with weekly 2-hour sessions. Sessions integrate practice, theory, and clinical application.

Each session includes:

• Guided mindfulness practices aligned with MiCBT principles
• Experiential exercises, including interoceptive exposure
• Didactic teaching focused on mechanisms of change
• Home practice instructions

Participants are expected to engage in daily practice, as skill acquisition in MiCBT is dependent on repeated experiential learning.

Materials

Participants receive structured materials to support learning and integration, including guided audio practices, worksheets, and selected readings aligned with the MiCBT framework.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the training, participants will be able to:

• Apply attention training techniques in clinical settings
• Identify and work with interoceptive processes underlying distress
• Support clients in developing equanimity toward internal experience
• Integrate MiCBT principles within treatment planning
• Translate mindfulness-based skills into ongoing clinical work

Make an Inner Difference.

In partnership with UC Irvine - Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute (SSIHI), this highly interactive 8-week course will support you to:

• Understand the current state of our planet and the role you want to play in making a difference.

• See the world through new eyes and feel connected to yourself, others, and the planet.

• Learn evidence-informed, mindfulness and self-compassion practices that lead to a shift in awareness.

• Work skillfully with feelings of overwhelm, climate anxiety, and worrisome thoughts.

• Strengthen emotional balance, personal resilience and ecological awareness.

• Listen to nature’s wisdom and what she has to teach us through experiential nature walks on your own time.

• Collaborate with like-minded people and work on a purposeful "handprint" project.

This 8-module mindfulness-based program helps participants navigate climate anxiety and transform it into meaningful, sustained action. Experience the power of inner resilience, connection, and shared purpose in facing today's ecological and social challenges.

Human well-being is inseparable from the integrity of Earth's natural systems. This course supports the development of emotional balance, personal resilience, and ecological awareness, and helps you to remember your deep interconnectedness with nature. Experiential sessions with mindfulness and self-compassion practices including interpersonal meditation will equip you with practical tools for self-awareness, emotional regulation, and collaboration. Themed nature walks between sessions will deepen your sense of embodied rationality within systems. You will experience the support of the group's wisdom and design a personal, purposeful initiative towards more ecological responsibility and connection with self and others. 

Please feel free to watch the Nature Awareness Information Session HERE.

Why might I take this course?

Shift to a Greener Mindset.

• The intention of this course is to offer a transformational process for a mindset shift leading to long-term and systemic thinking and acting, fostering a transition towards more green and fair societies.

• This course is open to anyone who wants to strengthen their relationship with nature, is drawn to meeting like-minded people, worries about the state of our planet, and wants to turn feelings of helplessness into a sense of agency and meaningful action. 

Are you a mental health therapist seeking to take your expertise to another level? A transdiagnostic approach such as Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behavior Therapy (MiCBT) integrates mindfulness training in the Burmese Vipassana tradition with well-established cognitive and behavioural methods.

MiCBT has been shown through research to reduce symptoms across a wide range of psychological disorders, including complex comorbidities. This integration is considered a second-generation mindfulness-based intervention, incorporating transformational skills from Buddhist psychology.

Through the MiCBT Foundation course, participants deepen understanding of mindfulness insights and behavior reinforcement, explore neuroscience findings related to behavior maintenance and change, and learn to engage clients in treatment.

The course includes didactic, practical, and experiential learning, including daily meditation practice, training in mindfulness techniques, implementation of the four stages of MiCBT, and role-play of core skills in breakout sessions.

Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behavior Therapy (MiCBT) is a sophisticated integration of mindfulness training and cognitive-behavioral science. Grounded in evidence-based principles, MiCBT offers a four-stage, transdiagnostic treatment model that can be applied across a wide range of mental health conditions and client populations. Drawing from the Burmese Vipassana tradition of Ledi Sayadaw and U Ba Khin, MiCBT blends traditional mindfulness practices with the rigor of behavioral and cognitive methods.

This one-day workshop provides an engaging overview of the theoretical framework that underpins MiCBT. Participants will deepen their understanding of operant conditioning and explore the neuro-behavioral mechanisms that explain how mindfulness and CBT complement one another.

Join an international community of clinicians in this learning opportunity to discover how MiCBT can enrich both your clinical work and your personal mindfulness practice—and to consider whether further training in this empirically validated approach may be right for you.

The experiential workshop will involve learning material through various modalities, including guided mindfulness meditation practices as taught in MiCBT, live demonstration of delivery of Diary of Reactive Habits, guided mindfulness interoceptive exposure tasks and experiential ownership, video demonstrations of MiCBT skills with a client during real-life therapy sessions, and live question and answer through chat.

What’s included: access to online pre-workshop content, 14 days access to the recorded workshop, and membership to the North American Chapter of the MiCBT Institute.

For the introductory workshop, no prior knowledge of mindfulness is assumed, but basic skills in cognitive and behavioral techniques are helpful. The workshop is geared toward professionals with a foundational understanding of the concepts, as the workshop is delivered at a higher psychological level.

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.

The UC San DIego Center for Mindfulness offers a transformative 6-week online program designed specifically for workplace professionals in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. The Mindful Performance and Resilience @ Work program equips participants with practical tools to combat burnout and restore balance in their professional and personal lives.

Through highly experiential, interactive sessions, you'll learn to sharpen focus and manage distractions, and break free from autopilot reactions to make goal-aligned decisions.

With self-awareness, you can recognize your limiting judgments and cultivate curiosity to shift from a fixed mindset to one of growth and innovation.

Develop self-compassion and empathy for yourself and colleagues. Learn strategies for having more mindful, compassionate conversations that enhance workplace relationships.

Grounded in neuroscience and designed for immediate application, this program empowers you to build sustainable resilience and perform at your best while maintaining well-being.

Objectives

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

• Session 1: Strengthen Focus & Awareness Learn the science of mindfulness and practical techniques to manage distractions, reduce multitasking, and enhance attention in high-demand environments.
• Session 2: Move from Autopilot to Intentional Action. Recognize automatic patterns, clarify your values and goals, and make conscious decisions aligned with what matters most.
• Session 3: Shift Perspective & Reduce Bias Cultivate curiosity over judgment, recognize unconscious biases, and develop a growth mindset that fosters innovation and collaboration.
• Session 4: Build Self-Compassion & Empathy Practice treating yourself with kindness during challenges and extend genuine compassion to colleagues and team members.
• Session 5: Communicate with Mindfulness & Compassion Develop skills for clear, empathetic communication that strengthens relationships and navigates difficult conversations effectively.
• Session 6: Integrate Practices into Daily Work Life Create a sustainable personal plan to maintain mindfulness and resilience practices in your everyday work routine.