MINDFULNESS

Are you interested in developing a mindfulness practice but worry that you won’t be “good at it”? Do you have an existing meditation practice and want to learn to use it to work skilfully with stress or illness?

Dr. Irving specializes in teaching people mindfulness meditation when it may be the most challenging to learn: during periods of illness, transition, acute stress, or following an episode of depression. Traditional contemplative philosophies and recent neuropsychological research have taught us that it is at these very times that mindfulness holds tremendous protective value.

Dr. Irving has a 20 + year mindfulness practice and first began pursing the study of meditation within clinical psychology in 2005 as the focus of her doctoral dissertation. She has been mentored by leaders in the field such as Dr. Zindel Segal, Susan Woods, and Dr. Patricia Dobkin. Dr. Irving continues to attend meditation trainings and travels to Japan regularly to study contemplative philosophy in a traditionally situated context. She is a certified MBCT teacher and has facilitated trainings for clinicians learning MBCT and MBSR in Canada and the United States.

At Mind Balance she provides evidence-based mindfulness-based programs such as:

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT): an 8-week program for individuals in remission or partial-remission from depression seeking skills for relapse prevention

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR): an 8-week program for individuals coping with chronic stress or illness

Mindfulness-Based Medical Practice (MBMP): an 8-week program for physicians and clinicians working in high-burnout areas of medicine

These programs are currently provided in an individualized format to allow for a personalized approach. For excellent group treatments available at a lower cost, please see the resources section for information on the Centre for Mindfulness Studies and McGill Programs in Whole Person Care for their group program offerings.