Does your child have a health condition that is caused or made worse by stress?

Join us for

Resilient Youth: A 6-Week Mind Body Program

This interactive, engaging, research-validated program gives teens, ages 12-18, the self-care skills they need to reduce physical and emotional symptoms and move through life’s challenges with greater resiliency. To register click HERE and select 6-session program:

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Your child will learn:

• How stress affects thoughts and feelings
• Meditation methods that can reduce symptoms and improve physical health, such as deep breathing, mindfulness and imagery
• How to foster positive thoughts and attitudes
• How to develop long-lasting positive habits that can build personal resiliency over the long-term

Leadership: This program is led by Rana Chudnofsky, Director of the BHI Education Initiative.

Parent Group: Parents can make a significant difference in helping their children reduce stress, while reducing their own stress by participating in a separate 6-session stress-reduction and resiliency building program in the same building.

Please call for current pricing.  These services are not covered by insurance.

For more information, please contact Marilyn Wilcher at 617-643-6035 or mwilcher@partners.org.

To register, click HERE and select 6-session program.

Amidst reports that rank teens among the most stressed generation in the country, a new study offers hope for helping kids effectively manage stress and build long-term resiliency.

A pilot study, published in the spring issue of the journal Advances, describes how the Benson-Henry Institute’s stress-reduction/resiliency-building curriculum helped a group of Boston-area high school students significantly reduce their anxiety levels, increase productivity and effectively manage stress over time.

This may be just the right treatment for kids who report feeling more stress than all other age groups. The 2014 annual survey of the American Psychological Association found that teens reported experiencing more stress than all other age demographics. The most significant sources of stress include financial insecurity, conflict at home and with peers.

Experiencing high levels of stress has surprisingly significant long-term implications, including everything from physical and psychological health problems, to poor academic performance and an inclination toward harmful lifestyle choices.

For over 30 years, the BHI has been working to prevent these short- and long-term consequences through its Resilient Youth (formerly known as the Education Initiative) program. Program directors Rana Chudnofsky and Laura Malloy train educators in a  curriculum that teaches on the science of stress and relaxation, as well as how to use relaxation strategies such as breathing and imagery, and positive psychology techniques such as reframing one’s thoughts.

In this latest study, 12 teachers from the Edward M. Kennedy School received six hours of training in the resiliency curriculum, which they then implemented with students over the course of six to eight weeks, depending on class schedules.

Students who received the curriculum reported significantly less perceived stress, less anxiety and a greater ability to manage stress and practice healthy lifestyle behaviors. This was true immediately after program completion as well as a year after the program, indicating that it is effective in both the short- and long term.

Researchers hope to build on this evidence with future larger studies. Specifically, Resilient Youth directors are interested in understanding which aspects of the resiliency curriculum are most effective, what stressors it’s most helpful for and how long students continue to use the skills they learn.

“It’s important for us to continue to expand our research- not only to help us continually refine and improve the program, but also to demonstrate to educational and political leadership that this work is worth investing in on a broad scale for the benefit of our children,” said senior program director, Marilyn Wilcher.

Amidst reports that rank teens among the most stressed generation in the country, a new study offers hope for helping kids effectively manage stress and build long-term resiliency.

A pilot study, published in the spring issue of the journal Advances, describes how the Benson-Henry Institute’s stress-reduction/resiliency-building curriculum helped a group of Boston-area high school students significantly reduce their anxiety levels, increase productivity and effectively manage stress over time.

This may be just the right treatment for kids who report feeling more stress than all other age groups. The 2014 annual survey of the American Psychological Association found that teens reported experiencing more stress than all other age demographics. The most significant sources of stress include financial insecurity, conflict at home and with peers.

Experiencing high levels of stress has surprisingly significant long-term implications, including everything from physical and psychological health problems, to poor academic performance and an inclination toward harmful lifestyle choices.

For over 30 years, the BHI has been working to prevent these short- and long-term consequences through its Resilient Youth (formerly known as the Education Initiative) program. Program directors Rana Chudnofsky and Laura Malloy train educators in a  curriculum that teaches on the science of stress and relaxation, as well as how to use relaxation strategies such as breathing and imagery, and positive psychology techniques such as reframing one’s thoughts.

In this latest study, 12 teachers received six hours of training in the resiliency curriculum, which they then implemented with students over the course of six to eight weeks, depending on class schedules.

Students who received the curriculum reported significantly less perceived stress, less anxiety and a greater ability to manage stress and practice healthy lifestyle behaviors. This was true immediately after program completion as well as a year after the program, indicating that it is effective in both the short- and long term.

Researchers hope to build on this evidence with future larger studies. Specifically, Resilient Youth directors are interested in understanding which aspects of the resiliency curriculum are most effective, what stressors it’s most helpful for and how long students continue to use the skills they learn.

“It’s important for us to continue to expand our research- not only to help us continually refine and improve the program, but also to demonstrate to educational and political leadership that this work is worth investing in on a broad scale for the benefit of our children,” said senior program director, Marilyn Wilcher.

Simply paying attention to the sensations of breathing is one of the most popular forms of meditation, and one of the easiest to grasp.

As babies, we naturally breathed from our bellies, not our chests. Belly breathing is the most healthful method of breathing because it corresponds with the greatest amount of oxygen exchange.

Click HERE for this months diaphragmatic breathing meditation.

Fertility Program Helps Reduce Stress, Enhance Resiliency and Optimize Chances for Success
Schedule your pre-course consult today!

• Regain a sense of control and well-being
• Develop coping strategies to better manage treatments
• Be part of a supportive group sharing similar experiences
• Optimize your chances for success

Read Tara’s story.

8-week sessions are held from 5:00 – 7:00 at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine
151 Merrimac Street, Boston. The next class begins January 30, 2017.

To register or for more information, call Richard Jennette at (617) 643-6055 or email rjennette@partners.org

This groundbreaking program, offered by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, has helped hundreds of woman and couples through their struggles with infertility.
Facilitator: This program is led by Leslee Kagan, MS, FNP, an expert in the field of women’s health and director of women’s health programs at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

New PLOS ONE study shows significance of BHI’s approach in patients with IBD/IBS

A pilot study by BHI researchers and colleagues at Mass General and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center shows that patients with irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease experience symptom improvement and changes in inflammation-related gene expression after participating in BHI’s Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program.

This pilot study was just published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, and is the first to examine the use of the relaxation response in these disorders; it is also the first to investigate the genomic effects of the relaxation response in individuals with any disorder.

Co-lead author of the study, Braden Kuo, MD, of the Gastrointestinal Unit in the MGH Department of Medicine said about the study, “Our results suggest exciting possibilities for further developing and implementing this treatment in a wider group of patients with gastrointestinal illness. What is novel about this study is demonstration of the impact of a mind/body intervention on the genes controlling inflammatory factors that are known to play a major role in IBD and possibly IBS.”

Both IBS and IBD are chronic conditions that produce abdominal pain and changes in bowel function, such as diarrhea. Stress seems to make both conditions worse, and symptoms themselves can increase stress in patients, so finding ways to break that cycle can have significant clinical benefits.

Both patients with IBS and IBD experienced significant improvement in symptoms, anxiety and overall quality of life, not only by the end of the program, but after just 3 weeks in the program. Changes in gene expression related to inflammation were changed as well, most significantly in patients with IBD.

In both IBS and IBD, the pathway controlled by a protein called NF-kB emerged as one of those most significantly affected by the relaxation response, which confirms the findings of previous genomic studies.

Co-senior author Johnn Denninger, MD, PhD, of BHI notes, “One interesting clinical impact was a decrease among patients in what is called pain catastophizing- a negative cognitive and emotional response to pain or the anticipation of pain. In other words, participants became more resilient in the face of the pain they were experiencing.”

According to Denninger, the next step will be to conduct a longer, randomized trial with a control group and enough patients to identify statistically significant results.

This study enrolled 48 patients who were diagnosed with either IBS or IBD. After 9 weeks of participation in the SMART program

An Interview with BHI Trainee, Juna Bobby, MD

BHI: What drew you to the field of mind-body medicine?

Bobby: As a radiologist, I spent all my time looking for disease inside people’s bodies, and a lot of what I saw was related to lifestyle behavior. For example, I was seeing more and more fatty liver, most commonly due to alcohol and obesity. Sadly, we’re seeing this more frequently, in younger people, even in children.
I was also a women’s imaging specialist. My patients were at high risk for cancer and they were understandably anxious so I spent most of my time counseling them on lifestyle prevention strategies of exercise, nutrition, and how to handle medical anxiety. Over time, I came to realize that my passion was empowering people with knowledge about how to stay well.

BHI: How did you first become connected with BHI?

Bobby: I was in a bit of a crisis 5 years ago when I lost one of my dearest friends to breast cancer and my mother to suicide within 6 months of each other. Fortunately, I stumbled upon an amazing physician, Dr. Morton Kramer, whose therapy was rooted in compassion.
I was feeling pretty lost in my personal and work life. Dr. Kramer encouraged me to explore new directions through taking courses on topics that inspired me. Specifically, he said “look at Harvard- they always have amazing courses.” I saw the BHI Harvard CME course online and it reminded me of my research in neuroscience and my first love, behavioral psychology. I’ve always had a “preventer” personality and it intensified when I became a parent so BHI’s focus on self care deeply resonated with me. I signed up immediately!

BHI: How has the work of mind-body medicine influenced your professional life?

Bobby: In medical school, you learn a lot about what’s wrong with people, but not much about how to build on what’s right, or the role of the mind in physical health.  The basic science research at BHI made sense to my physician mind and motivated me to try mind-body skills in my own life. So I experienced first hand, how powerful it was. I learned and will continue to learn, how to train and strengthen my innate ability to create health, both physically and emotionally.
It was life changing and I couldn’t get enough of the trainings. I attended the four-day Science of Resiliency conference a few times, the intensive trainings with Peg Baim and Rana Chudnofsky, and the online course offerings. I will go back again, as the program always features dynamic new speakers and cutting edge research. I also love that martial arts is incorporated into some of the programs. I first learned to meditate through Kung Fu, what my teacher, Shifu Shi Yan Ming calls “action meditation”.

After finding BHI, I started attending every lifestyle, behavioral psychology, mindfulness, and complementary medicine conferences I could find.
Finally, two years ago, I decided to switch tracks completely. I started a company called MindBodySpace LLC. I taught anyone who was interested – law students, business students, parents, teens, musicians, and business professionals. This year, I’m excited to have taught a successful year-round wellness curriculum to students at New York University School of Medicine thanks to the support of their Student Affairs team Dr Buckvar-Keltz and Dr Hubbard. It’s been incredibly rewarding to work with these intelligent and altruistic students – really beautiful people working so hard under very stressful conditions.

BHI: In what ways does MBM help your clients?

Bobby: We used to believe that if you were born into a certain situation, or if you grew up a certain way, that was who you were- it was permanent. In a sense, you were stuck with what you were. What mind-body medicine and neuroscience is showing us is that we can actually change our behaviors, our relationships, our health, and our lives. We can really become the driver and that gives us hope to always get better. Ancient contemplative practices have known this for thousands of years, but the scientific validations are now making it accessible to everyone.

BHI: Where would you like to see the field go next?

Bobby: I think people are ready to absorb these ideas. If we could just integrate and infuse these ideas of valuing mind body medicine, including healthy relationships, clean eating, exercise, and sleep into our culture, and I believe this is happening, slowly but surely, we could have a massive impact on quality of life. In my workshops I have people experience and practice mind body exercises, so they can see that even a 2-minute meditation or a 2 min exercise burst can have an impact and that it can easily be infused into their daily lives. Participants also practice thought patterns that connect to our deepest core values to train the brain to serve us, rather than being at the mercy of impulsive emotions and habitual reactions. I am in the process of uploading web-based multimedia support for the participants to start their own culture at work or home.
I made up this acronym KHSS- Keep Health Super Simple to remind us that health shouldn’t be a separate to-do item. Instead, infuse it into our moments and thoughts by integrating it into the workplace and schools. This will culturally normalize healthy behaviors so we don’t think it’s weird to see a spontaneous group meditation or wall squats before we start a meeting or while waiting on a line.

BHI: What advice do you have to offer health care professionals who are considering training in mind-body medicine?
Bobby: Start with the live or online programs at BHI. The advantage here is that the program includes not only the science of meditation, but healthy eating, relationships, exercise, and sleep. Although it’s a lifelong practice, you’ll experience the powerful changes immediately and that will filter into your work and personal life. It’s the opposite of taking a pill or drinking alcohol to regulate mood; the effect is real but smaller at first, increases over time, and the side effects are all positive. Healthcare professionals tend to be high achievers and a lot of times we use toxic stress as a motivator to keep us going. But this is a recipe for burnout. To learn that you can use compassion and self-care as a sustainable approach to health care is extremely empowering.

Reprinted in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review, and originally published in that publication’s November 2005 issue.

An interview with Dr. Benson by Bronwyn Fryer

Managers apply pressure to themselves and their teams in the belief that it will make them more productive. After all, stress is an intrinsic part of work and a critical element of achievement; without a certain amount of it, we would never perform at all.

Yet the dangers of burnout are real. Studies cited by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) indicate that some 40% of all workers today feel overworked, pressured, and squeezed to the point of anxiety, depression, and disease. And the problem is getting worse, thanks to intensified competition, rapid market changes, and an unending stream of terrible news about natural disasters, terrorism, and the state of the economy. The cost to employers is appalling: Corporate health insurance premiums in the United States shot up by 11.2% in 2004—quadruple the rate of inflation—according to survey figures from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Today, the American Institute of Stress reports, roughly 60% of doctor visits stem from stress-related complaints and illnesses: In total, American businesses lose $300 billion annually to lowered productivity, absenteeism, health-care, and related costs stemming from stress.

So the question is: When does stress help and when does it hurt? To find out, HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer talked with Herbert Benson, M.D., founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Benson has spent more than 35 years conducting research in the fields of neuroscience and stress. He is best known for his 1975 bestseller, The Relaxation Response. He first described a technique to bring forth the complex physiologic dance between stress and relaxation, and the benefits to managers of practices such as meditation, in “Your Innate Asset for Combating Stress” (HBR July–August 1974). His most recent book is The Breakout Principle (Scribner, 2003) with William Proctor.

Benson and Proctor have found that managers can learn to use stress productively by applying the “breakout principle”—a paradoxical active-passive dynamic. By using simple techniques to regulate the amounts of stress one feels, a manager can increase performance and productivity and avoid burnout. In this edited conversation, Benson describes how managers can tap into their own creative insights, boost their productivity at work, and assist their teams to do the same. He is quick to acknowledge the large part Proctor’s thinking has played in the ideas he discusses here.

To read the rest of this article, please click HERE

BHI is pleased to report on the following advancements in the realm of research:

* BHI research colleague Ana-Maria Vranceanu, PhD, received a clinical research award to test the BHI Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program with adolescents ages 12-18 who have neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes tumos to grow along various types of nerves. If the program demonstrates significant benefits,  Dr. Vranceanu plans to extend the program to develop similar services for children and for deaf patients.

*  Psychiatry residents Deanna Chaukos and Tom McCoy, and in internal medicine resident Laura Byerly, along with Darshan Mehta and John Denninger of our BHI staff have been awarded an MGH Education and Teaching Grant to implement and study the long term benefits of the SMART program for psychiatry and internal medicine interns. We are hopeful that the BHI program can provide long-term resiliency skills to these young physicians that they can use to help sustain their own busy medical careers, while also providing stress-reduction and resiliency building tools that they can use with their patients.

The extreme weather in New England this winter has tested even the most resilient among us. Hours-long commutes, weather-related closures, and bitter cold has translated to a lot of added stress. I usually find shoveling snow to be relaxing but even I have had my fill. Even before this tough winter, however, the American Psychological Association’s 8th annual Stress In America survey reported that Americans are feeling more stress than we believe to be healthy, with women and millenials (those age18-35) experiencing more stress than anyone else.

Not surprisingly, money tops the list of stressors, with 64 percent saying it is a significant source of stress. Work, the economy, family responsibilities and personal health concerns are also high on the list.

From a broad perspective, this survey reinforces the need to address the growing income gap, gender inequality, and the difficulty that young people face in finding good jobs and paying off college loans. But at a more personal level it spurs us to consider how much we might be able to reduce our experience of stress, improve health and quality of life simply by improving our ability to better cope with life’s stressors.

The unfortunate irony is that the more stress we feel, the less likely we are to do things that help us cope with stress. No matter how well we understand that healthy lifestyle and feeling socially connected are important in relieving stress, it’s also true that these helpful behaviors are just the things that fall by the wayside when we are overwrought with challenges. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed said that finances or lack of money prevent them from living a healthy lifestyle, or even making necessary visits to a doctor. Stress leads to increased social isolation, which itself leads to an increased sense of stress, creating a downward spiral of stress-inducing behavior that results in increasingly intractable problems.

Our mission at BHI is to invert this downward spiral to an upward one, in which shifting to positive thoughts and behaviors reduces stress, improves health and builds long-term resilience. We seek to disseminate this knowledge and to encourage good mind body health practice in our patients, their families and in the doctors, nurses and professional caregivers who provide care every day in stressful settings. Toward this end we were excited to learn recently that residents in psychiatry (Deanna Chaukos, Tom McCoy), and in internal medicine  (Laura Byerly) along with Darshan Mehta and John Denninger of our BHI staff have been awarded an MGH Education and Teaching Grant to implement and study the long term benefits of our SMART program for psychiatry and internal medicine interns. Internship is a stress “trial by fire” and we are hopeful we can have a positive lasting impact on the lives of these young physicians.

While studies consistently show that mind-body practices significantly improve health and quality of life, like anything that’s good for you, the practices are only as good as our ability to stick with them.

So how do we get those helpful behaviors to become habits? It turns out that enjoying an experience is a key factor in our ability to commit to them. And a key to enjoying an experience is doing it with mindful awareness. If it’s exercise we’re talking about this means being fully present in the activity, whether biking, hiking walking or whatever. Rather than staring at the clock until your 20-minute workout is over or drifting off into thoughts of what to make for dinner, you are gently alert to the sights and sounds around you, the sensations in your body, your breath entering and leaving your mouth and nose. While exercise isn’t always comfortable, when done mindfully, it becomes more enjoyable, and thus easier to keep to a routine.

Once we learn to approach one component of our lives with this sense of attention and calm curiosity, we can more easily translate it to other aspects in a process that is truly transformative.

In this issue of BHI News, we explore the application of mindful awareness and other relaxation response elicitation techniques in the workplace with a reprint a 2005 interview with Dr. Benson that appears in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review. We look at the research that is moving the field of mind-body medicine ahead as seen from the perspective of Research Director John Denninger, and we get a sneak peak at some of the research and educational programming with which BHI is currently involved.

A conversation with BHI’s Director of Research.

Q: What drew you to the field of mind-body medicine research?
Denninger:

Well, I’ve always been interested—even back when I was in high school—in the mind, brain and behavior, but it wasn’t until I went to China on the Boston-Hangzhou Sister City program right after I graduated from Boston Latin School that I had any exposure to what we think of now as mind-body medicine. While studying at Hangzhou University, we had daily sessions with a tai chi master. Although my 18-year-old self was a little thick about the focus on breathing, intentionality and chi (I think I had been expecting something a little more martial arts and less meditation), I like to think that I internalized some of the wisdom in that practice and have carried it with me since.

When I was getting my MD/PhD at the University of Michigan, my dissertation work focused on the kind of science where we looked at one protein—one enzyme—at a time in a test tube. After my psychiatry training here in the MGH/McLean Psychiatry Residency Training Program, I decided that I really wanted to shift my research to something that would be more directly applicable to helping patients. I spent four years at MGH’s Depression Clinical and Research Program, doing both clinical and research work with patients struggling with depression. Coming to BHI, I was excited by the idea of being able to integrate research on mind-body medicine at a number of levels—from public health to individual patients to understanding the molecular details of how mind-body approaches work.

At BHI we are clinician-researchers, so we combine expertise in developing and delivering mind-body programs with expertise in conducting scientific research. Both of these areas inform and complement each other so that we can improve both over time. One example of this is our current work to identify outcome measurements that will be most useful for future mind-body medicine research.

It’s also tremendously exciting to be able to work collaboratively with a some of the top researchers in the field, whether in genetics, neuroimaging or in the clinical application of the work. There are over 600 integrative medicine researchers at Harvard alone who are making tremendous advancements in the field, and Boston continues to evolve into a truly international hub for this work.
Q: What areas of research are leading to new understandings in the field?

Denninger: I’m always excited by research into the biology underlying the approaches that we teach. Being able to say something very specific on a molecular level about what happens when people practice meditation is important to me, to the institution and to the field in general. It’s some of the most exciting work that we do.

For the past several years, we’ve been exploring with Dr. Towia Libermann and Dr. Manoj Bhasin, our partners at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the effect of the relaxation response and BHI’s mind-body intervention on how genes are turned on and off. We’ve already established that the regulation of NF-B, an important molecule in the immune system, is altered by the mind-body approaches. Our focus now is on higher level questions; for example, can BHI’s resiliency program improve patient outcomes and potentially prevent development of disease by directly affecting physiology.

Along with collaborators here at MGH, at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Newton-Wellesley Hospital, we are about halfway through a study of patients who have conditions that are precursors of multiple myeloma (a cancer of plasma cells—a type of white blood cells—which accumulate in the bone marrow) to see whether the BHI’s mind-body program can help these patients become more resilient in the face of the stress of having these conditions’ physiology and possibly—and this would be the home run—alter gene regulation in a way that might help slow the progression of these conditions.

In the larger field, there have been great strides in neuroimaging and meditation. The October 2014 Scientific American magazine does a nice job of summarizing some of that exciting research.

We’re also starting work to get at costs—answering the question of how much our program can save money for the system. That’s important research to do, but it takes time and can be difficult to do well.

The reality is that we still have a long way to go in the research arena before policymakers and planners are ready to recommend mind-body approaches to patients with the same universality that they recommend exercise and eating right. But I think that day will come: The fact is that the science continues to lead us toward further integration into mainstream healthcare. It’s an incremental process, but eventually, as I see it, mind-body medicine will be widely perceived as an effective tool in the healthcare tool belt.
Q: Do you have a personal practice?

Denninger: Yes, but it’s taken me a while to really integrate it into my life. I came to BHI attracted by the science; over my years here I’ve fallen in love with the practice. Now my daily meditation—okay, almost every day—is one of the things I look forward to most.