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Do you ever find yourself eating or drinking too much because you’re feeling sad or anxious? Do you spend large swaths of time online without any real purpose? Do you judge yourself harshly, or worry yourself into procrastination and insomnia?
We all struggle with something. And anxiety, emotional eating, smoking, internet scrolling, self-judgment and other habits rob us of happiness, health, sleep, and connections with family, friends, and even ourselves. Habits are conditioned patterns of behavior that have become hard-wired default responses to life’s complexities.
In this workshop streamed live from Omega’s campus, join Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist, who has studied the science of habit change for decades. With a combination of ancient teachings, modern science and clinical experience, he has developed and tested a step-by-step approach to habit change. Multiple studies have demonstrated this model to be effective with smoking cessation, habitual eating, and anxiety.
Join Dr. Jud and psychologist Robin Boudette, PhD, to learn a tested, three-step model of behavior change. Through individual and group exercises, guided meditations and contemplations, dialogue, and inquiry, you:
- Learn the brain processes involved in habit formation
- Explore an evidenced-based model for changing unwanted habits
- Discover healthy, sustainable strategies to adopt healthy new behaviors and learn how to integrate them into your life
- Connect with a caring community
The workshop is suitable for a wide range of participants. It is relevant to individuals who want to change their relationship with anxiety and other habits, as well as health-care professionals seeking ways to assist clients and patients in managing anxiety and changing habits.
Want to attend this program in person at Omega’s beautiful campus in Rhinebeck, New York? Book your experience here.
Can anxiety and worry be perpetuated like a habit?
Neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist Jud Brewer and psychologist Robin Boudette have some good news: By understanding how the brain works, we can begin to change our relationship to anxiety and engage behaviors and mental habits that support our health and well-being.
Join Dr. Jud Brewer and Robin Bourdette, PhD for our three-day ‘Finding Freedom from Habitual Patterns’ workshop. You’ll gain practical tools to shed old habits and change your relationship to anxiety.
Drawing on Dr. Jud Brewer’s clinical work, neuroscience research, and evidenced-based digital therapeutics for habit change, the workshop will guide you to understand:
- Why anxiety and other habits are formed via underlying behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms
- How we can paradoxically tap into these very processes to uproot them
- A 3-step model of habit change accessible to anyone willing to attend to their direct experience
Join Drs. Brewer and Boudette and establish a new way of understanding your mind, along with practical tools for stepping out of old habits and building behaviors to support and sustain your well-being.
This workshop is appropriate for anyone wanting to change their relationship to anxiety and other habits, as well as for health-care professionals looking to deepen their understanding of the behavioral and brain mechanisms underlying habit formation so that they can apply these principles with their clients and patients.
See here for the course details, including structure, prerequisites, and costs.
Join Dr. Jud Brewer and Robin Bourdette, PhD for our three-day ‘Finding Freedom from Habitual Patterns’ workshop. You’ll gain practical tools to shed old habits and change your relationship to anxiety.
Drawing on Dr. Jud Brewer’s clinical work, neuroscience research, and evidenced-based digital therapeutics for habit change, the workshop will guide you to understand:
- Why anxiety and other habits are formed via underlying behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms
- How we can paradoxically tap into these very processes to uproot them
- A 3-step model of habit change accessible to anyone willing to attend to their direct experience
Establish a new way of understanding your mind, along with practical tools for stepping out of old habits and building behaviors to support and sustain your well-being. This workshop is appropriate for anyone wanting to change their relationship to anxiety and other habits, as well as for health-care professionals looking to deepen their understanding of the behavioral and brain mechanisms underlying habit formation.
See here for the course details, including structure, prerequisites, and costs.
Join Dr. Jud Brewer and Robin Boudette, PhD and learn how to accelerate behavior change in your patients and clients using a combination of digital guidance and in-person facilitation. Registration runs through March 1st, 2021 and program starts Wednesday, March 31th, 2021. See link for details.
Through a combination of conceptual learning and direct experiential exercises, this workshop will teach practical tools for anyone looking to bring together a deep understanding of how their mind works with tangible tools for habit change.
Integrating both ancient wisdom and discoveries from modern science, we will explore how habits are formed as well as how mindfulness practices can interrupt these processes. Come prepared to experience a range of practices that you can use in your own lives and with your clients to break these challenging cycles.
The workshop will also be an excellent fit to mindfulness practitioners interested in understanding their own minds and habit patterns and to mindfulness teachers who would like to gain understanding of ancient psychological and modern scientific underpinnings of mindfulness practices.
Join Dr. Jud Brewer and Robin Boudette, PhD and learn how to accelerate behavior change in your patients and clients using a combination of digital guidance and in-person facilitation. Registration runs through Sept 1, 2020 and program starts Wednesday, October 7th. See link for details.
We are all vulnerable to craving. Whether it’s a compulsion to check social media, binge eat, smoke, drink, feed anxious thought loops, or any other behavior we may find ourselves uncontrollably repeating.
Why are bad habits so hard to overcome? When and how does willpower fail? Is there a key to conquering the cravings we know are unhealthy for us? Can we hack our brain’s learning circuitry to break bad habits, and cultivate behaviors and mindstates that support our health and happiness?
Join psychiatrist and neuroscientist Judson Brewer and psychologist and behavior-change expert Robin Boudette to explore how our minds work and how we can tap into the processes that encourage habitual behaviors in order to break unhealthy patterns. Learn how the mind works to form habits and pragmatic ways to engage this very same brain process to change habits.
In very accessible ways, we learn how awareness, curiosity, and mindfulness practices can interrupt habits, and discover how to build our natural capacity for awareness, kindness, and curiosity. Weaving together patient stories, mindfulness practice, and the latest scientific findings, this workshop offers a path for moving beyond cravings, reducing stress and anxiety, increasing self-compassion, and living a fuller life.
This program is helpful for mental health professionals looking to deepen their understanding of the behavioral and brain mechanisms underlying addictive and habitual behaviors and individuals hoping to break habits such as emotional eating and anxiety.
We engage in experiential exercises, including writing and guiding our own meditations in small groups. We learn through feedback and, always, mindful attention to our own experience. As we get clearer about how to share meditation, our own practice deepens immeasurably.
We all are vulnerable to the pull of craving (and the push of aversion). Craving is at the very heart of Buddhist teachings, beginning with the Four Noble Truths and permeating nearly every aspect of theory and training. Yet, how does this manifest in modern life? Why do we seemingly get more and more hooked in our current existence, from drinking alcohol or using drugs, to checking email, to reading the news headlines, to yelling at someone in a fit of self-righteous indignation?
Understanding the core underpinnings of how habitual behavior is formed and perpetuated is critical for helping us break out of these cycles. Ancient Buddhist teachings are now lining up surprisingly well with modern-day psychology and neuroscience in their descriptions of the mechanistic underpinnings of samsaric existence–the habitual perpetuation of suffering driven by craving and aversion. Additionally, insights from these “sciences” clearly point to pragmatic tools for awakening, whether waking from a daydream or breaking lifelong addictions. In this course, we will combine lecture, discussion, and experiential practices to carefully unpack our lived experience of craving and how we can step out of our own cycles of suffering that are fueled by it. Topics will range from dependent origination to operant conditioning, to the neuroscience underlying these processes. A key focus of the program will be to learn how ancient wisdom is brought together with modern science and technology in order to develop practical tangible tools that we can use in our own lives, and step out of our own cycles of suffering. Recommended reading: The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Addicted and How We Can Break Unhealthy Habits by Judson Brewer.
Learning Intentions:
To understand the links and parallels between ancient Buddhist models of suffering (e.g. dependent origination) and modern psychological models of habit formation (e.g. reinforcement learning); to learn current behavioral and brain mechanisms underlying how mindfulness training changes habitual and addictive behavior (e.g. smoking, stress eating, anxiety); to learn core elements of what makes a substance, behavior or technology (e.g. social media) “sticky” or addictive;
and to experience linking conceptual learning with direct practice in working with cravings, urges, and habitual behaviors.
We are creatures of habit. We often find ourselves repeating habits uncontrollably, whether constantly checking social media, binge eating, smoking, excessive drinking, worrying, or getting caught up in other self-defeating behaviors that disconnect us from ourselves and others.
Why are bad habits so hard to overcome? Is there a key to conquering the cravings we know are unhealthy for us? How can we cultivate habits that support our health and happiness?
Join us for a unique experiential workshop on the science of habit change co-taught by Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and Robin Boudette, PhD, psychologist, behavior-change expert, and mindfulness teacher.
The workshop will deliver practical tools for clinicians and therapists looking to deepen their understanding of the behavioral and brain mechanisms underlying habit formation, as well as individuals hoping to break stress-producing habits.
During this powerful 2-day workshop:
• Physicians and primary care providers will learn practical steps and simple solutions to help patients address unhealthy habits such as smoking, overeating, and anxiety
• Psychologists and psychotherapists will learn how to bring this evidenced-based model into sessions with clients seeking habit change
• Nutritionists and life coaches will learn how the behavior change model can assist clients in following lifestyle and nutritional guidance for developing and sticking to new, healthy behavior patterns.
The workshop will also be relevant both to mindfulness practitioners interested in understanding their own minds and habit patterns and to teachers of mindfulness who would like to gain understanding of Buddhist Psychology and the scientific underpinnings of mindfulness practices.
We are creatures of habit. We often find ourselves repeating habits uncontrollably, whether constantly checking social media, binge eating, smoking, worrying, or doing other self-defeating behaviors that disconnect us from ourselves and others. Why are bad habits so hard to overcome? Join us for a unique experiential workshop on the science of habit change co-taught by Dr. Judson Brewer, renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and Dr. Robin Boudette, psychologist, behavior change expert, and mindfulness teacher. Whether you’re a clinician or an individual looking to deepen your understanding, you’ll learn the keys to conquering the cravings we know are unhealthy for us. Discover how to cultivate (and teach) habits that support your health and happiness. Learn more here.