Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Course – October 15th 2025
Our highly trained class leaders will take you through the world famous MBSR curriculum and help you move towards more happiness and well-being and a life with decreased stress, anxiety and improved immune function.
Sign up now to reserve your spot in our course.
Benefits of Your Participation in the MBSR Course
This course will help you become less stressed and anxious. It will also help improve your mood, energy, physical health and ease of well-being. Participants worry less, become less reactive to stress, and feel calmer and more self-accepting. Participants with chronic pain learn how to live a better quality of life, function more and not suffer as much with their pain. Participants will learn to live in the present each day with less worries about the future, and less ruminations of the past.
Peer-reviewed research on mindfulness meditation supports that there can be tremendous improvements in physical and mental health, including improved stress management, from regular mindfulness practice. Research findings from participants going through our course are consistent with the gains found in the world-wide research on the UMass curriculum.
We have collected pre-post outcome data on our classes using the questionnaires UMass suggests their Certified teachers use to evaluate the quality of their programs. These questionnaires measure levels of anxiety, stress, worrying, depression, physical health, self-compassion, and mindfulness in day-to-day life. We have analyzed all of the data and the analyses have strong positive results. That is, participants are experiencing a reduction in all negative measures (e.g., anxiety, stress) and improvement on positive measures (e.g., physical health and mindfulness in daily life). It has been very rewarding to see the participants experience these gains.
What to Expect When You Are in the MBSR Course
In each class, under the guidance of our warm and empathetic teachers, Dr. Susan Williams, Ph.D., C.Psych. and Andre Mech, P.Eng. MBA, you will be guided through different meditations and some gentle yoga. There will be an opportunity for discussion and there will be information provided on stress and anxiety management as well as some brief information provided on the neuroscience of meditation and mindfulness.
You will be given the recorded meditations and yoga practices we do throughout the class to practice at home. Experiential learning is a key part of the course to ensure you transfer what you learn about stress reduction into your life. There are accompanying handouts (a short 5 minute read per week) and there are also many educational practices we do in class. Sometimes you will feel joyful, other times calm, and other times you will feel yourself tapping into your own wisdom, compassion and inner resilience.
For additional information and videos of the MBSR class, visit the UMass website.
Origins of the MBSR Course
Our class is modelled on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) curriculum developed almost 40 years ago by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMass) and now taught world-wide. Over these 40 years, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues have continually revised the curriculum based on feedback from teachers, participants and research findings. The latest revision of the class curriculum was made in 2017. Our teachers remain in contact with UMass so they remain up to date with the changes as they are made. Therefore, this MBSR class run by the Halton Centre guarantees to always teach the latest and best gold-standard curriculum.
Our teachers, Dr. Susan Williams and Andre Mech, P.Eng. MBA, have attended years of extensive training led by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues. There are only 18 teachers in Canada who are Certified by UMass to lead the MBSR class. Both Dr. Susan Williams and Andre Mech are Certified teachers. For further information on mindfulness and on our teachers , please go to our What is Mindfulness? and About our Teachers pages.
How our MBSR Course Compares to Mindfulness Programs Run at Other Centres
There are mindfulness programs at other centres, calling themselves MBSR, that are of differing length (e.g., more or less than 8 weeks as the course should be) and of varying quality (e.g., teachers have limited training or have not undergone the rigorous 5 years of training required for Certification). UMass intended for MBSR to be a reserved name used by Certified teachers who teach a course that adheres to the researched 8-week UMass curriculum.
Many other centres are also moving their courses to an online format. We understand the value of running these courses in person.
Many other programs compared to ours also tend to be more conceptual and scientific (i.e., participants are provided with many readings and handouts on neuroscience and mindfulness). These other programs rely more on this conceptual training and are less experiential. Reading about mindfulness alone is not going to assist you in living mindfully. You need to learn how to experience mindfulness.
Similarly, mindfulness meditation programs and short classes offering quick tips and mindfulness tools and techniques typically have a minimal impact on your life and stress reduction. Mindfulness is in right now.
Participant Satisfaction with the MBSR Course at our Centre
Our client satisfaction surveys indicate 99% of the participants are “extremely satisfied” with our MBSR course.
MBSR Class Dates
A mandatory Orientation will be held on Wednesday October 15th 2025 at 6:30 pm.
The MBSR Class starts Wednesday October 22nd and runs to December 10th 2025.
The class will run in-person on Wednesdays from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm on the following dates:
October 15th – Orientation
October 22, 29
November 5, 12, 19, 26
December 3, 10
The all-day silent retreat will be held on Saturday November 29th from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm.
Location of the MBSR Classes
A lovely room located at Trinity United Church, 1250 McCraney Street East, Oakville (1 minute from QEW and Trafalgar).
To Register in the MBSR Course
Our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course is highly regarded so we suggest you sign up quickly to secure your spot. We will create a waitlist once the course is full. Most of our courses have been full.
To enroll, please contact our centre’s client care coordinator, at info@haltoncentre.ca or call 905-901-0597.
Your private health insurance plan may cover this class. Please speak about this when you contact the centre.
Drop into your life. Your life depends on it!
