Over the past few weeks, I have been working my way through a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program offered by Tracy Kiss Coaching. I did receive this coaching program free of charge in order to facilitate this review. However, as always, you can trust that I am sharing my honest experience.
It is my goal to help you determine whether or not this program would be a great fit for you. So I will be discussing what was covered, accessibility, and how it worked for me personally.
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Just a quick bit about me — I tend to seek out natural ways to manage my stress so that I can be as productive as possible. When I get super stressed out, my acid reflux becomes a problem again, I get cranky, and I eventually just shut down. NOT GOOD. And if I go a long period of time in that stressed-out state, it really takes a toll on me — as it does most people.
With that being said, this program could indeed be quite beneficial to me so I figured I’d give it a try.
What is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction?
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a method that incorporates meditation and mindfulness to help calm your mind and body. It actually uses many of the techniques we use in yoga to help us be more present — including focusing on the breath.
Why I Chose to Join This Program
The truth? I wanted to give this program a try so I could introduce my audience to another method to help them manage stress and cope with anxiety and other mental and physical health challenges. I had been hearing and seeing a lot about MBSR training but I hadn’t tried an actual training program. While I am a certified yoga teacher, I never took any MBSR teacher training and I didn’t want to share such a program with you if I hadn’t tried it myself.
I wanted to see if the techniques included in this program really did help with my own stress levels before mentioning it here.
A Quick Breakdown of Tracy Kiss’ MBSR Program
- Week 1- Autopilot: Observing our thoughts in a detached manner
- Week 2- Dealing With Barriers
- Week 3- Mindfulness of the Breath & Body in Movement
- Week 4- Staying Present
- Week 5- Acceptance & Allowance or Letting Go
- Week 6- Thoughts Are Not Facts
- Week 7- How Can I Best Take Care of Myself?
- Week 8- Using What Has Been Learned to Deal With the Future
Each lesson is compiled into a simple video of around 10 minutes or less. There ARE, however, activities you will need to complete each week. Each video also begins with the following note:
- Use a notebook to take notes and reflect upon your thoughts and feelings at the end of each lesson.
- Keep hold of these notes as we will return to them at the end of the course.
- Pause the video after each technique as demonstrated to practise it yourself for as long / often as necessary.
- Try to apply the techniques from this course to your everyday life.
- Take time, be patient with yourself and enjoy this process of positive transformation.
My Personal Experience
I began this program with an open mind. Again, I am a certified yoga teacher so I assumed I would cover a lot of the material that I had covered in my yoga training –and I did.
BUT, there were a couple of concepts that I have not actually practiced yet and I really did enjoy so I will keep them in my toolkit from this point forward. I will not discuss those concepts in much detail as I don’t want to reveal too much about the inner workings of each weekly session. But yes, there were some really great things I rediscovered throughout this MBSR program that I can use to build even better habits.
Is it Worth it?
I didn’t learn anything new throughout this program. I am a certified yoga teacher so a lot of these techniques I am already knowledgeable on. HOWEVER, this program did encourage me to be more mindful each day.
As I’m grinding throughout the week- running my businesses, running a household, being Mommy, being a wife, etc. I can get so caught up in my daily activities that I don’t even stop to just BREATHE mindfully.
So one benefit of this program is that it actually made mindfulness part of my to-do list.
I will also say that for those of you who don’t spend much time practicing mindfulness, this program can be so very beneficial. And it gives you key tools that you can use throughout your entire life. So in my opinion, it is worth it for this reason alone.
This program is probably NOT a good fit for you if you’ve recently taken an MBSR training (it would likely be quite repetitive in this case).
Please feel free to drop any questions you may have about this Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program in the comments below and I will do my best to answer.
