Too stressed? Try this
UBC Okanagan is offering a course that will help tame the monsters that threaten modern (wo)man: stress, anxiety, depression and frustration.
Jeanette Vinek and Corinne Crockett, both nursing instructors at UBCO, will facilitate the eight-week course called smartUBC — Stress Management and Resiliency Techniques.
The secular program was developed from decades of research on mindfulness, neuroscience, cognitive theory and emotion theory.
Vinek was a hard-driving workaholic who couldn’t sit still for even a few minutes. She spent 20 years learning and practising meditation and mindfulness while searching for stillness, and then she found smartUBC.
“I have attended hundreds of retreats and seminars. I took every opportunity I could to do a meditation or mindfulness retreat.
“I’ve done five- to eight-week sessions. I enjoyed them all and I learned a little about myself in each one, but there was something that happened to me when I really dove into the Smart curriculum.
“I think it is the additional components they brought in around emotion theory and forgiveness training. It helps with the science of it, it helps me understand how and why it works.”
Even before UBCO was given the Smart program in 2013, Vinek had taught mindfulness to the nursing students, and then convinced her faculty to make it part of the curriculum.
“The beauty of this (Smart) curriculum is that it has all the foundation of those well-established mindfulness program like MBSR, but it has some additional components of emotion theory and compassion and forgiveness training.
“There is something that clicks for the students and you can see them taking a collective breath and settling in.”
Vinek said students who took the Smart program felt healthier and were less anxious than students not in the course.
Those are not just anecdotal observations, but the findings of a research study completed by Dr. Mary Jung, a professor in the school of health and exercise science.
“The common themes included that the individuals were less reactive, calmer, less stressed/more relaxed, more focused, and reported heightened awareness of self,” Jung wrote in her evaluation report.
Program evaluations done by Vinek on several community sessions agreed with Jung’s findings.
“The whole purpose of Smart is to build our capacity of resiliency,” Vinek said. “Life is stressful, that’s not going to go away any time soon.
“But how are we managing that stress? How are we adapting, how are we responding? What are we noticing about what is going on around us, and our response to it?”
She said success occurs when we are aware of our stress, but don’t let it consume us. The quality of life and health remain positive even when faced with adversity.
“You change the way you process information and what’s happening around you. You problem solve better, you prioritize better.
“What we know from the decades of research is that it can a positive impact on depression and bipolar disorder — not in all cases, but in enough cases that it is a pretty significant finding.
“I think it is a good complementary practice if you are experiencing mental-health challenges.”
The program is such a success at UBCO that Vinek has taken it into the community, to Kelowna General Hospital, Okanagan College and Baptist Housing.
Diane Hockey, an accountant and a minister at the Centre for Spiritual Living, has taken a community course and highly recommends it
“The most profound light that went on for me was when I learned that I could interrupt my tendency to react, when I would prefer to respond,” she said.
That knowledge wasn’t new, but she hadn't honed the skill/tools necessary to recognize the cues that showed up in her body.
The whole purpose of Smart is to build our capacity of resiliency. Life is stressful, that’s not going to go away any time soon.
Facilitator Jeanette Vinek
“Now, I am able to use the techniques I learned in the course, and (most days) keep myself from saying or doing something that won't serve me or anyone else.
“What I have done is develop a more mindful, day-to-day ‘way of being.’” Vinek agrees. “Life feels so much better and this mantra runs through my head: patient, gentle, kind.
“Am I busy? Yes! Do I have a lot of balls in the air? Yes! Do I have many hats? Yes!
“But there’s this gentleness to it that feels good.”