Mindfulness Based Symptom Management

The Mindfulness Based Symptom Management is an 8-week/ 8 session + one day Retreat program in accessing Mindfulness in a secular and psychological context and especially as a tool for anti-oppression. 

Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs) have become a popular intervention over the last two decades in the field of psychology and psychotherapy (Purser, 2019).

Quantitative studies around first-generation programs have proliferated in numbers, resulting in the understanding that Mindfulness is an effective modality for emotional regulation, stress management, and psychological flexibility.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, a first generation MBI, to be effective as medication management for those who experience recurrent depression (Tickell et al., 2020). However, the shadow side of the practice has been the development of what is known as McMindfulnesss (Purser, 2019).

This is a reactionary term used by traditional and contemporary Buddhist practitioners and psychologists who noticed that oppressive systems have taken to the use of mindfulness to fix issues of low productivity and absenteeism; and promote increased focus, productivity, and hustle culture among individuals, instead of questioning the systems in place and their ableist, patriarchal, violent structures that impose conditions of anxiety, stress, and other disabilities upon people.

To ensure that Mindfulness does not become co-opted into oppressive systems of power, second generation MBIs have been developed such as the Mindfulness Based Symptom Management (MBSM) program, created at the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic in Canada (Monteiro et al., 2010). MBSM incorporates explicit practices of ethics within the program as well as in the development of the mindfulness trainer; distinguishing the program from other MBIs currently practiced.

MBSM was developed to counter the co-option of Mindfulness into oppressive systems (Monteiro & Musten, 2017). The developers believe that incorporating an explicit ethical component into the MBI facilitates a welcome frame upon which people’s agency can rest.

MBSM is a tool for anti-oppression, we practice mindfulness by centring its psychological and subaltern, socio-political and indigenous versions of its roots.

The program is designed to step away from the pathology paradigm of mental illness, that frames mindfulness as a viable way to “fix” or manage mental “illnesses” without actually challenging or addressing the systems of capitalism and White [upper caste] cis heteronormative patriarchy that are responsible for the supposed mental illness (Purser, 2019).

Mindfulness takes on a social justice based stance at Pause, that centres working with body, emotions, sensations and thoughts from a perspective of listening in to intentionally affirm ways in which our body is already navigating the world that work for us and our communities.

The MBSM program thus offers tools in anti-oppression that helps us listen in, and move towards what we really want for ourselves and the world.