הפחתת מתח מבוססת מיינדפולנס
שָׂפָה:
הפחתת מתח מבוססת מיינדפולנס
I recommend for all of the patients that I see with bothersome tinnitus to have a look at an online course found at MindfulTinnitusRelief.com. It's based on research that I conducted at UCSF years ago on a course that I created called Mindfulness-Based Tinnitus Stress Reduction.
Now, the foundation of it is the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. In 1979, he created an eight-week course called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction that helps people suffer less with whatever is in front of them.
And this eight-week course I've modified to help the person who specifically is suffering with tinnitus.
Now, the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course has been shown to be incredibly effective and helpful with reducing anxiety, chronic pain conditions—I mean, anything from psoriasis to cancer to all kinds of medical ailments. This eight-week program has been shown to reduce that, and that is what we found with Mindfulness-Based Tinnitus Stress Reduction and the research that's been published on it that I have linked to these videos.
But this Mindfulness-Based Tinnitus Stress Reduction eight-week course has three components to it that are necessary for helping a person with bothersome tinnitus, over time, shift it from bothersome to non-bothersome, which ultimately is our goal here.
So there are three components that each section of the class, the eight-week course, touches on.
Number one is reducing anxiety around tinnitus.
Number two, each and every week and each and every lesson has specific information on tinnitus education, accurate tinnitus education.
Okay, human beings are meaning-making creatures, right? When we understand things, we become less anxious. And so understanding tinnitus in its fullness can help us with the anxiety reduction that's necessary to help us be able to take this benign body sensation, put it into the non-bothersome category, and then habituate to it.
And number three, of course, this eight-week program starts you off on a mindfulness meditation program that helps you tune your orchestra. It helps reduce stress so that you can start to reappraise tinnitus for what it is—a benign body sensation—and unlink it from the trauma or the fear that has kept the person locked and loaded on it to begin with.
And so, what is involved in this eight-week course?
So after doing research and getting amazing results, I was thinking, "My gosh, how can I get this out to the masses?" Right?
So I flipped it into an online course found at MindfulTinnitusRelief.com.
And so you simply go to this website and you can look at the introduction and register for this course.
And what you'll find is that it is sectioned off into an eight-week period. You can't take it, you know, in a shorter period. It has to be at minimum eight weeks because it takes eight weeks in order to learn a new skill, or at least the beginnings of a new skill.
And this meditation practice is no different. It is a skill that can be learned. And much like going to the gym and building up a muscle, when we consistently develop a meditation practice and train our brain—you know, do this awareness-building exercise that we do with mindfulness meditation practice—what we end up seeing is that the brain strengthens itself around being able to keep its attention, keep our attention, where we choose it to go, and bringing awareness to where the mind is at any given time.
So, going back to what is involved in the course, each week, starting in week one, there is about an hour-and-a-half lesson.
Now, each weekly lesson touches on reduction of anxiety around tinnitus, education, accurate education about what tinnitus is, and each week has different themes and different topics that are addressed that relate to tinnitus.
And then each week has meditation exercises, activities that are all geared towards the person with bothersome tinnitus.
And so then, every day in between each weekly lesson, there's about 30 minutes of meditation practice that you would do from the privacy of your own home, every day for about 30 minutes.
And then you start week two, again from the privacy of your own home.
And so, in week two, you spend another hour and a half with the main lesson, and then every day in between you do this practice, and then start week three.
And we do assessments throughout the course—one at the very beginning, one at three weeks, or in the mid-course area, and then again at the end, but then also at three months and then six months.
Because, you know, we want to see, or we want you also to see, that the changes that you're making are enduring over time.
I mean, it's not just you feel better about tinnitus in just eight weeks, but that your brain has made these necessary changes for you to live tinnitus-free, bothered or non-bothered by tinnitus, even three months, six months, 12 months out into the future, and for a lifetime.
And so between the sixth and seventh week, we have what I call a "Day of Mindfulness."
And so during that Day of Mindfulness, we put together all the different meditations that you've tried, all the different lessons that you've learned, and we bring it together for you to complete all in one day.
And you set aside about four or five hours to complete them all. And it's a way of helping you to see how you can take mindfulness and bring it into your day-to-day life, whether it's through eating mindfully, taking a shower mindfully, speaking to somebody mindfully, whatever the case may be.
And so also in the course, we have mindful movement. It's called yoga. There are certainly some moves, but it's really gentle yoga. They're just movement exercises to help us see—you know, feel our body moment to moment through movement.
And so it takes you through all different types of meditations: walking meditations, body scans, sitting meditations, gentle yoga—all these different ways that we can help tune our orchestra so that we can see tinnitus, or appraise tinnitus, reappraise it for what it is, take it out of the bothersome category, put it in the non-bothersome category, and push it into the background.
But what I think you'll find with this eight-week course is that you will realize that it's not about tinnitus at the end of the eight weeks.
What we found in the research, actually, is that even after three weeks, people have reduced their tinnitus bother significantly. But after eight weeks, it's gone down even more.
So I would never recommend somebody just to take it for three weeks when they're going to see even more results after eight weeks.
But what ends up happening over this eight-week period, and then certainly beyond—for you could say, for the rest of your life—is that you can apply these skills that you've learned over this eight-week period to any pain in life.
There's that saying, "Pain in life is inevitable, but suffering is optional."
And so, essentially, that's what the course is teaching you: how to suffer less with the pain that is inherent in this life we live.
Pain in life is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
And what we've found through research and through experience with the course over the years is that people are able to suffer less, not only with tinnitus, but with whatever their brain is getting locked and loaded on.
Instead of feeling like they spot problems and latch on and can't let go until they figure it out, they start to see that they have choice and freedom, where they can open their palm and start to see whatever is in front of them with a little bit more equanimity, with a little bit more ease.
And what ends up happening is it allows the wave of moment-to-moment life to just keep on moving by, and we realize that in any given moment, we can handle whatever the moment brings.
And so through this eight-week course, we end up quieting the stories that so tightly wrap around tinnitus and the anxiety that we place around tinnitus, and it ends up reducing that anxiety so that we can start to live life in more balance.