2/24/2025
Mindfulness Center Administrator Harriet Whiting Harriet Whiting, who has been the administrator for the Mindfulness Center since 2018. Harriet has been the engine that has kept the Center running for…
2/24/2025
A Mindfulness Course Can Improve Professional Quality of Life among Emergency Medical Service Providers Emergency medical service (EMS) providers are regularly exposed to intense stimuli in their work that can…
2/24/2025
This will be the final issue of Mindfulness Matters. The previous issue highlighted the origin of the Mindfulness Center. As we mark this transition, this issue includes reflections from many of the teachers who have been instrumental in the Mindfulness Center’s success over the past nearly 30 years. Moving Through Endings and Beginnings (with Compassion) by Teresa Miller Last summer when I was visiting Toronto with my husband and granddaughter, we traveled around the city using the subway. At each station we were intrigued by triangle-shaped signs with three words: Mind the gap. We were to pay attention to the spatial gap at our feet between the edge of the station platform and the train doorway. Mind the gap meant slow down, take notice while crossing the open space between this and that. Mind the gap. What if we used this phrase to notice the gaps between? …between the in-breath and out-breath, between one feeling state and the next, between the ending and the beginning of particular sensations in the body, between the end of one thought and the beginning of the next one. If we examine our experience closely, we discover that we’re always in transition - at the end of one thing and before the beginning of the next - a “between” time. During every moment of our lives, something is ending, and something else is beginning. And in between is a knowable gap - between an ending and the next beginning. The between time may be large and life-changing, like the ending of a long relationship, the death of a loved one or a beloved pet or companion, the space between the end of one job and the beginning of the next one. As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear, at times eve unfathomable, what the beginning holds for us.
2/24/2025
In-Person Daylong Retreat for Current and Past Mindfulness Center Course Participants To Be Held March 1 All current and past participants in any course held through the UVA Mindfulness Center…
2/24/2025
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for the Treatment of Palpitations Benign palpitations are a common symptom which, while not associated with a serious cardiac condition, can be highly disturbing and may lead…
2/24/2025
As the Mindfulness Center moves through this period of transition from offering classes to both those in healthcare and those in the wider community to just focusing on the former, we will be devoting the next two newsletters to reflections from some of those who have been part of the Center over the almost 30 years since its founding. The Research Updates will also highlight several of the studies we have conducted. This issue’s Musing is from Allie Rudolph who co-founded the Mindfulness Center with Maria Tussi Kluge and who has been a teacher and mentor for many of us over the years. Some Reflections on the Beginnings of the UVA Mindfulness Center By Allie Rudolph I appreciate having been asked to share my reflections on how the UVA Mindfulness Center got started. My first reaction on being asked was: Wow!… I can’t believe it’s been 30 years! My second reaction was, and continues to be, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for the group of far seeing and dedicated people who got together not only to bring mindfulness to the University of Virginia, but to the Charlottesville community at large. As the clinical social worker who joined the faculty of the then nascent Department of Family Medicine in 1980, my primary role as a faculty member teaching residents, medical students and other students rotating through the Department, was to help integrate the behavioral sciences into the curriculum of the Medical Center. I thus became more focused on bridging the gap between evidence-based science and mind/body approaches and the healing arts in general, exploring both what healing means and how to offer tools to both doctors and patients that would facilitate the healing process.
2/24/2025
In-Person Daylong Retreat for Current and Past Mindfulness Center Course Participants To Be Held March 1 All current and past participants in any course held through the UVA Mindfulness Center…
2/24/2025
A Mindfulness Course Decreases Burnout and Improves Well-Being among Healthcare Providers Healthcare providers are under increasing stress and work-related burnout has become common. Mindfulness-based interventions have a potential role in…
2/24/2025
Transitions can be difficult. We often want things to stay as they are, and we can find ourselves resisting change. Yet change is inevitable. Everything is impermanent, although some things change more quickly than others. Mindfulness teaches us that the only moment we can be sure about is the one that we are presently experiencing. If this moment feels pleasant we tend to want it to continue, and we may resist it changing. We can notice this resistance, and the thoughts that come up about how we want things to stay as they are, with kindness. We can then see if we can let the thoughts go and just be with whatever is arising in this moment, without judgment, accepting that change is inevitable. With this in mind, the Mindfulness Center is about to go through a major transition, and will now be focusing just on offering mindfulness programs for UVA Health employees. We have been teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and other programs for anyone who was interested in taking them for 30 years, ever since the Mindfulness Center was founded by Allie Rudolph and Maria Tussi Kluge. At that time, it was one of the few Mindfulness Centers in an academic health center in the country. Allie and Maria were in the first class of MBSR teachers trained by Jon Kabat-Zinn and were pioneers in bringing mindfulness training to the University of Virginia.
2/24/2025
Space Is Still Available in the Mindful Eating Course Beginning in January The Mindful Eating course will be offered again on Mondays from January 13 – March 3 from 5:30…