In the past 20 years, an emerging field of research has demonstrated how dysfunctional circadian rhythms underlie a host of chronic physical and mental disorders, including inflammation and neurodegeneration.

Every cell in our body has its own innate circadian clock, organized by the master circadian pacemaker housed in the suprachiasmatic nuclei in the brain. When synchronized, the organism functions effectively at the cellular, tissue, and systemic levels in its ability to adapt to change. Cellular metabolism, epigenetic modification, gut microbiome function, immune response, and cognition all depend on our connection to the rhythm of day and night.

For over 2,000 years, East Asian Medicine has based its understanding of health on our deep connection to the dynamic processes of circadian and seasonal cycles described as Yin and Yang. Light and dark function as fundamental mediators of organ function that promote immune resilience, mental health, and longevity.

In this presentation, Z’ev Rosenberg, LAc, and Stephen Cowan, MD, co-authors of A Ring without End, will discuss an ecological medical approach to improving circadian rhythm regulation. Through case discussions and clinical examples, they will explore the implications of circadian health in the treatment of hospitalized patients.

Agenda

9:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Presentation and case discussion

12:15 – 1:30 PM
Q&A, book signing and lunch break

1:30 – 2:30 PM
Optional clinical session

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. 

Growing Into the Heart of Teaching MBSR

Dharma, Embodiment and the Refinement of Intention

An advanced MBSR teacher training, qualifying on the UCSD Certification Pathway, and open to all MBSR teachers with all levels of experience for personal enrichment and community building. While MBSR is emphasized, this training is also open to MBCT teachers and will count towards certification as well.

The experience of teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is unlike most other experiences in life, and the opportunities for growth, expansion and transformation are almost limitless. This advanced training is intended to enrich and deepen this journey of teaching MBSR through practice, learning, reflection and sharing. Intended for those who have taught at least two full MBSR courses, this program will draw upon your own experiences, challenges, breakthroughs and insights within a community of fellow teachers as a means of learning from each other — for the good of our participants, and of ourselves.

Key Components of This 6-Week Training

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Description
 

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is an empirically validated program designed to prevent depressive relapse and reduce the impact of mood disorders more broadly. Developed by Drs. Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale, MBCT integrates the clinical application of mindfulness meditation with the tools of cognitive therapy. Self-knowledge grounded in sustained meditative awareness is its central tenet.

The heart of MBCT lies in acquainting participants with the modes of mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously inviting them to develop a new relationship to these modes. Participants learn to view thoughts as events in the mind, independent of their content and emotional charge — not to be disputed, but held in a more spacious awareness.

MBCT TTI Training
 

The MBCT TTI is an intensive professional training that provides clinicians with the knowledge, skills, and experiential foundation needed to deliver MBCT. Registration is limited in order to cultivate an intimate, personal, and highly interactive training environment.

This training emphasizes the importance of the clinician's own meditation practice and self-inquiry. The intensive blends didactic teaching, experiential practice, and small-group learning.

Across the training you will:

• Experience the MBCT program from the inside, as a participant.
• Role-play client-practitioner encounters in a simulated MBCT group.
• Gain hands-on experience delivering the core elements of MBCT, including leading meditations and guiding inquiry.
• Deepen your own meditation practice.
• Learn to work with what arises in your own practice, so your teaching goes beyond scripts and techniques and rests on direct experience.

Through role-play, simulated classroom and patient-practitioner encounters, the MBCT TTI explores the actual application of mindfulness practices in working with clients. The curriculum integrates didactic, experiential, and small group learning, and includes daily meditations, yoga/mindful movement, and periods of silence.

The curriculum explores our capacity to clearly experience, in the midst of our everyday lives, the interplay of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, the experiential phenomena known to contribute to depressive relapse. Participants examine how awareness of these domains can accurately inform or distort our capacity to understand ourselves and work with others. The content and curriculum of each MBCT session is explored in detail, and descriptions of session themes, curricula, and samples of client handouts are provided.

Who Should Attend

This training is for licensed mental health and healthcare professionals who want to bring MBCT to the people they serve. It is well suited to psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, social workers, family physicians, nurses, and allied clinicians who work with depression, anxiety, and mood regulation.

Where This Training Fits
 

The MBCT TTI is the foundational professional training in the UC San Diego Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute (MBPTI) certification pathway for teachers of MBCT. Completing the MBCT TTI satisfies the professional training requirement for Phase 1: Teacher Qualification, which establishes a basic level of training and proficiency sufficient to offer MBCT to the general public.

The UCSD MBPTI certification pathway proceeds as follows:

Phase 1 — Teacher Qualification

• Completion of the MBCT TTI (this training)
• Enrollment in the MBPTI as a Teacher in Training
• Completion of an 8-week MBCT program (as participant/observer)
• Teaching at least two 8-week MBCT groups under mentorship (minimum 20 hours)
• Application to the Teacher Qualification and Certification Committee

Phase 2 — Teacher Certification

• Completion of the MBCT ATTI (Advanced Teacher Training Intensive)
• Additional mentorship (minimum 10 hours beyond Qualification)
• Established personal mindfulness and mindful movement practices
• Attendance at annual silent teacher-led meditation retreats
• Application to the Teacher Qualification and Certification Committee

For full details on the certification pathway, requirements, mentorship, and fees, see MBCT Teacher Qualification and Certification.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an empirically-supported 8-week psycho-educational group intervention that teaches mindfulness meditation as a health intervention. Created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, MBSR offers participants the possibility to develop a different relationship to stress resulting from chronic physical and psychological illnesses, and the daily indignities experienced as a result of racism and other forms of oppression. Research outcomes have demonstrated positive improvements in physical and psychological symptoms, as well as changes in health attitudes and behaviors.

This teacher training will provide trainees the opportunity to study and experience the foundational underpinnings, mindfulness meditations and specific exercises that are the framework of the MBSR program. The themes, rationales, intention and practice skills of each MBSR class session will be reviewed, discussed and practiced. Participant screening guidelines will be covered, and samples of client handouts will be provided. There will also be home practice for personal mindfulness practice.

This online teacher training is highly interactive. Trainees will move between experiencing MBSR sessions and practicing teaching components of the program in small groups under supervision. The training emphasizes the necessity of a personal mindfulness practice as the foundation for teaching, along with embodiment of non-judgmental present-moment awareness, kindness, compassion, and equanimity.

The training integrates didactic and experiential modules, including large and small group learning, role-play, and simulated patient-practitioner encounters. Ethical considerations in teaching MBSR are also addressed.

PREREQUISITES: You must have taken the 8-Week MBSR program and the 5-7 Night Silent Retreat before registering for this MBSR TT program. These prerequisites cannot be taken at the same time as taking this program.

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.

Suggested Readings

Mindfulness-integrated CBT for Well-being and Personal Growth

The Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behavior Therapy

This training brings together MBSR/MBCT teachers to contemplate and engage in practice around their wishes for wellbeing and healing for our planet Earth.

The six sessions of the training cover all 10 MBSR/MBCT class sessions. The sessions are divided approximately in half: the first half is dedicated to Earth Awareness practice and time for sharing personal reflections and experiences; the second half allows time for considering and sharing ways of inviting Earth Awareness into the curriculum and MBSR/MBCT classroom. Teachers can share both their established ways and their discoveries around new possibilities for bringing Earth Awareness into their teaching. Together, we can engage in the challenge and the benefit of holding the Earth as a fully worthy recipient in the circle of MBSR/MBCT care, compassion and embodied action.

Teachers prepare for each meeting by engaging with practice and self-reflection prompts, reviewing selected materials, and reviewing the MBSR/MBCT curriculum for the sessions to be discussed. Teachers are encouraged to write and share between meetings and contribute to a collection of resources to support Earth Awareness. Each teacher will leave this training with a range of materials for continued inspiration.

Sessions include community building, Earth-based practice, reflection and sharing, curriculum review, and exploration of ways to bring Earth Awareness into MBSR/MBCT teaching.

This teacher development training is for MBSR and MBCT teachers. Some teaching experience is recommended.