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Lt. Rich Goerling, Dr Michael Christopher, and I have been working to develop a program for mindfulness and officer wellness for about six years.  I have had the honor to work with Rich and the Hillsboro Police during that time on a number of brief trainings and presentations: Post Traumatic Stress & Returning Veterans Conference, a presentation at the International Scientific Conference at UMass Medical School, and more.

I will begin teaching the full 8-Week Mindfulness-Based Resilience Program here in our classrooms.   The training is aimed at long-term officer wellness and more effective service to our community.  It is based on my experience teaching the MBSR program, my work over the years with Lt Rich Goerling of HPD, and my on-going collaboration with my friend and colleague Dr. Rob Smith who teaches physician resiliency and MBSR.  This is to my knowledge the first police department in North America to begin training of their force with this sort of program.   The US Marine Corps has recently implemented this sort of program and the Army has also begun these trainings.  My hats off to HPD for showing leadership and for caring enough about their officers and community to step forward with this.  Read more in a Hillsboro Tribune article about Lt Goerling and the Resilience Program.  Officer Wellness Article.  Also, a recent national magazine article in Mindful Magazine.

Here’s to HPD!    Brant

My research papers are listed at the  U.S National Library of Medicine.

You may recall our recent post about the review/position paper coauthored by 15 of us local health care providers, teachers, and MBSR alumni.  The research we did here as a follow up to that review is now published in the Journal of Participatory Medicine: Mindfulness, Self-Care, & Participatory 
Medicine: A Community’s Clinical Evidence. (See the graphical summaries on the last pages if numbers, correlation matrices and ANOVA tables bore you!)

The paper catalogues and provides analysis of the clinical evidence we have found here in our programs for the long-term benefits of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program: physical and mental health, levels of self-care, stress-levels, continuity of mindfulness/yoga practice, health care provider observations of patients who took MBSR.  My friend and colleague, Dr. Michael Christopher, with the School of Professional Psychology at Pacific University here in Hillsboro helped with the research and authorship of the paper.  He and I have been invited to present our findings at the Annual International Scientific Conference at University of Massachusetts Medical School near Boston on Friday, April 19th. Reprint of Mindfulness in Participatory Medicine Conference 2013  My MBSR teaching intern, Zeynep Sunbay-Bilgen, helped with the research and paper as well. Our review and position paper about mindfulness in medicine was also recently published:  Mindfulness in Participatory Medicine.

Another paper based on research in my clinic published in 2012 detailed the relationship between self-care and mindfulness: Examining a Proactive Self-Care Index in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program.   In mid-2014 I helped author another paper in the journal Mindfulness about the relationship between global health, stress levels and mindfulness.

The program I developed here in cooperation with Dr. Christopher and Lt Richard Goerling of Hillsboro Police, the Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training, has been described in our recent research article in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology.

Many heart-felt thanks to the many MBSR participants in my programs who were willing to complete the testing and cooperate with followup surveys in this research.  This will make a huge difference in peoples’ lives as we continue to support folks in our community learning to take care of themselves, be healthier, and stronger in the effective and basic ways learned in our courses here.

Kindest Regards – Brant

  It’s remarkable that with so much attention to finding the ‘right shoes’ and the ‘right fit’ that Americans have so many feet problems. Three quarters of us have painful foot health problems at one time or another.  Problems here can translate to various maladies of the knees and ankles as well.

  We have been inspired by students who have found that as they begin yoga practice their feet, knees and ankles hurt less and feel stronger and more stable.  A few years ago we began periodic 2 hour clinics to help students learn more and this term Marie will teach an expanded 4-week special series starting Thursday, April 4th for a more in-depth experience of practices that may be helpful.

We have been delighted to meet a local podiatrist Dr. Ray McClanahan who has put together a system of foot care to correct problems, increase athletic performance, decrease injury, enhance balance, and improve strength. All of this is congruent with what we teach in our yoga classes.

In this special series Marie introduces you to a wide range of practices we have found helpful for students over the years.   She will also introduce you to some of Dr. McClanahan’s thoughts and how to find out more about him.  You might check out his wonderful video about how he developed his system.

  (Brant attempting to fly?)

Among the effects of the federal government’s budget sequestration are looming delays at airports.  Some air traffic controllers will be furloughed so air traffic may be a bit stymied.

Never fear.  Airports are setting up yoga rooms.  Oh my.  I first heard of the San Francisco Airports new yoga room from a student a few weeks ago.  (See the AP YouTube story)  Next there was the Burlington Vermont Airport’s yoga room (Read Lisa Rathke’s AP story).  Now even in conservative Texas the Dallas airport is making space for traveling yogis on gate D40 (See KTUU’s news story).

Shortly after 9/11 Mare suggested that she and I go to the Portland Airport to offer yoga classes for folks stuck during that terrible time for travelers.  Perhaps she had a intuition for what was to come.

Glad for this practical dimension practice to be visible and now available at airports.  Perhaps next there will be a yoga room available for the members of congress to help them get off the treadmill of confrontation and work with one another and our president toward a more functional government and get past the budget sequestration.