Online Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Course
for Stress, Anxiety, Low Mood and Depression
Now ACCEPTING PARTICIPANTS NOW FOR THE JUNE 4 - JULY 23, 2025 SESSION
MBCT & Mindful Awareness: A New Way of Relating to the Difficulties of Life
Do you find yourself ruminating on the same thing or things over and over again?
Do you feel disconnected from your body, or uncomfortable in it?
Do you tend to act impulsively, or move through life as if on autopilot?
Do you often try to numb, resist or avoid difficult thoughts, emotions and situations?
Do you experience depression, anxiety, high stress or low mood?
Would you like to try on a new perspective that gives you more choice in how you respond to what is going on within and around you?
If so, I invite you to join me for the next Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course.
A Little On MBCT
MBCT was developed by three clinical psychologists—Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale—who incorporated material from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s very well-known and highly effective Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, adapting it to focus on mood and thoughts. Merging mindfulness meditation with the principles of cognitive therapy, they created a gentle, structured path for people to step out of habitual thought patterns and connect with the present moment.
With an initial focus on recurrent depression, MBCT is now widely used to offer a new perspective and skills to anyone navigating depression, as well as anxiety, stress and low mood. MBCT encourages and supports a new relationship to whatever arises—providing you with a choice in how you respond, which is highly beneficial in helping us meet life's challenges. Its approach is different from most traditional therapies, in which the focus is on problem solving.
We all know that there is no endpoint to the problems that arise in our lives. This is why learning how to accept and be with (rather than try to fix, resist or avoid) our relationship to the thoughts and moods that arise, as well as to the impulses and the situations themselves, is so effective. Through the MBCT course, we gain an increased awareness of the many ways we can respond to what greets us each day. This choice offers us a more expansive, robust and freeing way of living our lives. As we practice and literally change the neuroplasticity in our brains, we live with less stress, anxiety and depression.
In this 8-week online MBCT course, you’ll learn how to:
Become more aware of thoughts, feelings and body sensations—moment-to-moment.
Develop a different way of relating to thoughts, feelings and sensations.
Gently and mindfully acknowledge and accept unwanted thoughts and feelings rather than resort to habitual routines that tend to perpetuate difficulties.
Relate to thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses to act as events passing in the mind and body, rather than identifying with them.
Choose the most skillful response to unpleasant thoughts, feelings or situations.
Experience your body as an ally and the key place through which you can learn to relate differently to your experience.
Live with more choice, freedom and ease.
Over the course of eight 2-hour weekly sessions and one full-day online retreat, you’ll learn, explore and develop new, empowering and effective skills. Some of the themes and topics covered include:
Awareness & Automatic Pilot
Kindness & Self-Compassion
Living in Our Heads & Gathering the Scattered Mind
Recognizing Aversion
Allowing & Letting Be
Thoughts Are Not Facts
Taking the Best Care of Ourselves
Maintaining & Extending New Learning
Mindful Practices
Develop a New Relationship with Yourself, the World, and You in the World
This 8-week Online MBCT Course is designed to help you tap into your heart, body and mind with mindful practices that help you listen to and honor your inner experience. MBCT offers a new place to stand in which you have choice about how you respond to life’s difficulties. In doing so, you literally begin changing the neural pathways in your brain while cultivating a different, more empowered and gentler relationship with depression, anxiety, low mood, and stress.
Integrating current developments in neuroplasticity with ancient wisdom, this course offers powerful tools and techniques to break free from prolonged periods of suffering. You’ll learn how to turn your mind into a skilled ally that supports you in both long-term health and healing, and in managing the ups-and-downs of everyday life.
As an MBCT practitioner and certified facilitator, I provide teachings, inquiry and guided meditations, assisting you in gently turning toward what you tend to resist, numb or avoid. Over the course of the program, we’ll practice supportive meditations and cognitive behavioral strategies that are specifically designed to help you access inner wisdom and connect with and cultivate your inner healer. As you become friendlier toward your thoughts and feelings, and kinder with your inner self, you’ll gain invaluable resources to navigate life’s inevitable challenges and become a trusted partner to your Self.
MBCT encourages active engagement from all participants. If this sounds like it would be beneficial to you, my hope is that you’ll join. Each person’s experience, wisdom and compassion is a valuable aspect, inherent to the overall experience.
MBCT Course Details
The next offering of this course will begin in June 4, 2025 and run weekly for 8 weeks. The class is on Wednesday evenings, 7 - 9 pm EST.
My intention is for this course to be accessible to all who feel that they could benefit and are committed to attending. The fee options are: $300 or $550 or $725. This cost includes eight 2-hour weekly classes and one full-day retreat, which will specifically focus on learning and practicing mindfulness practices.
I offer this “pay what you can” fee structure, trusting in your honest assessment of your circumstances. Please pay more, if possible, to help support those with fewer financial resources, and please contact me directly if needed to discuss other options for working with your current needs.
For people who are/have been members of the Monday night online Meditation Group, there is a 20% discount.
Bring a friend (taking this course with a friend or spouse is a great way to deepen your experience) and receive a 10% discount for both you and your friend, no matter what level of entrance you choose.
Participants who are returning for MBCT, having completed a previous 8-weeks, will also have a 20% discount.
Before the course begins, I’ll meet with each of you individually over Zoom for us to get to know each other. This will also be a good time for you to ask questions and express any thoughts, goals or even reservations that you might have about the course.
The core focus of the program is intensive training in mindfulness meditation and its applications to the challenges of working with patterns of mood and thinking that perpetuate suffering and distress. Participating in the course does require an ongoing commitment to yourself. You will be asked to attend all of the classes, including the all-day session, and practice daily home assignments for 40 - 60 minutes per day. The class link and materials will be provided to you before the first class.
Contact me directly at karen@drkarenwalant.com to register.
Some shared experiences from others who have taken this course…
“MBCT allowed me to better understand my state of mind while strengthening my state of being. Through awareness and practice, I am better able to accept my thoughts instead of trying to change them. This was an amazing class and I liked that it was 8 weeks long. There would have been too much information to absorb if it had been any shorter. A week in between each session gave me time to practice and gather a better understanding of my body sensations as opposed to just thoughts.”
-Bethany Z.
“The structure of this course, the required consistent and constant practice, is the key to successful completion of this course. I could not learn this material on my own even though it was available to me. The group setting and weekly homework kept me focused but I never felt pressure - only kindness and support - and this made all the difference in helping me stick with the practice. The result is a greater awareness of your triggers and an overflowing toolbox of methods to ease stressful moments , big and small.”
-Sue J.
I” can't recommend this course highly enough. Karen led our group through the material with such warmth and insight, and I learned so much from her and from those in the class with me. I made so much progress in my journey to "feel my way through" stress and anxiety.”
-Josh W.
“This class helped me recognize that there is a way to move beyond the automatic routines of our lives that we create, and into a place where we can be more present and available to experience things in a different way.”
-D.M.
“Through the consistent practice of MBCT, both during the class, and on my own, I’ve discovered an inner reserve of ability to respond rather than react.”
-Joanne L.
“With excellent lectures and various forms of meditations MBCT has modeled for me foundational resources to address behaviors that might otherwise spiral.”
-Thelma BW.
“An invaluable experience during a time of high stress in my life.”
-Anonymous
Dr. Karen Walant has been a practicing psychotherapist for almost three decades and holds a MSW and PhD in Clinical Social Work from New York University. Karen supervises other clinicians in private practice and has given lectures around the country on issues related to attachment, mindfulness, meditation, addiction and recovery; deepening the therapeutic relationship; parenting with kindness; and fostering compassionate relationships. She is the author of Creating the Capacity for Attachment: Treating Addictions and the Alienated Self. A long-time meditator, Karen is a 2021 graduate of the 2-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program (taught by meditation experts Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield). She has a Certificate in Meditation and Psychotherapy from the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy in 2022, is certified as a Mindfulness Meditation Mentor by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and is certified as a Level I Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Teacher through Brown University.
