Growing Our Mindful Community:

Celebrating our beginnings and looking to the future

On November 17, 2023, we will call together our team of founders and teachers along with our graduates and community supporters to applaud the accomplishments of the Center for Mindfulness over the last 22 years. Together, we will acknowledge the teaching team that has brought us here, the programs we have developed and the many lives we have touched. We will celebrate the leadership of the past and welcome our new leadership. Together we will launch our vision of the future.

A joint venture of the Departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry, the Center for Mindfulness offered its first program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, in September 2002. We have been offering this program in-person, multiple times a year in a variety of locations in the Lehigh Valley since. And how the world has changed in these 22 years!  

As we grew our program, we trained our teaching team.  We are proud of what our teachers have accomplished.  Our teachers have been giving back to the community by previously offering monthly and now twice monthly groups for graduates to provide continuous support of their mindfulness practice.

Key amongst our supporters has been the Betty A. and D. Walter Cohen Foundation. Their generous support in the past enabled us to expand our programming from our flagship program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, to include several abbreviated formats. These new programs expand the accessibility of mindfulness training in our hospital system and community. They include:

      Growing Resilience with Mindfulness, an introduction to mindfulness, self-compassion and informal practice;

      Mindfulness in the Workplace: An on-demand educational format to introduce mindfulness and LVHN colleagues; and

      Mindfulness On-the-Spot, a brief mindfulness experience to begin the practice of mindfulness for working teams.

The pandemic challenged us to move our programs into a virtual format. Since the pandemic, the strain and complexity of providing healthcare has increased significantly. Staff shortages and cost increases pushed hospitals and their healthcare workers beyond their limits. The need for strategies to build resilience has expanded dramatically as evidenced by many health care professionals leaving their jobs. At this moment in our history, we find ourselves with ever-growing needs for our programs and an expanded teaching team to offer them.

Now, the Betty A. and D. Walter Cohen Foundation has stepped up again with a major donation to expand our teacher training and assure the excellence of our teaching team well into our future.

Your generous support will help us to grow our team of excellent teachers and broaden our impact on the wider community.

Please join us on November 17 as we transition to new leadership and commence with our future. We welcome and depend upon your ongoing support! Whether or not you are able join us at the celebration, please consider contributing to our future by making a gift.