You can learn mindfulness and meditation in a MasterClass

We’ve written a few stories on mindfulness and meditation and stress. After all, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. But if you aren’t sure what all that means or how it works, you might not even try it.

Well, now you can take a class, a MasterClass, actually.

MasterClass, the streaming platform where you can learn from the world’s best across a wide range of subjects, announced Thursday it’s adding a class on mindfulness and meditation led by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn.

“As the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and a professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Kabat-Zinn pulls from more than five decades of experience to teach members how to cultivate an everyday mindfulness practice to reduce stress and contribute to the well-being and healing of the world in the face of what he calls the full catastrophe of the human condition, after Zorba the Greek,” MasterClass wrote in a press release.

“Jon is internationally known and revered for his work in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society,” said David Rogier, founder and CEO of MasterClass. “In his MasterClass, he teaches members how to optimize their mind and body for meditation including how to incorporate the practice into daily life, how to work with thoughts while meditating, and how to bring mindfulness to physical activities like yoga.”

It’s easy to shut down or go on autopilot, especially in a high stress job. Kabat-Zinn will share suggestions for reducing barriers to a daily meditation practice, including how to meditate in a range of different positions, how to tame and befriend the restless or unhappy mind, and how to bring mindfulness to everything from yoga to exercise as part of a well-rounded practice.

“Through a series of six guided meditations, he illuminates how mindfulness can be used to reduce stress, pain and suffering and help move toward greater levels of health and well-being,” the press release reads.

“There has never been a moment in human history when it’s been more important for us to come to our senses as human beings, and the only way I know how to do that systematically and dependably is through the cultivation of mindfulness,” Kabat-Zinn said. “I hope this MasterClass ignites passion in others for living life fully and taking care of what most needs taking care of while we have the chance. I hope it also demonstrates how powerfully inclusive mindfulness can be when it is engaged in as a radical act of both sanity and love.”

Kabat-Zinn holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded its Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979. In 1995, he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.