INSTRUCTORS:

Dr. Jacqueline Masson, MD, CM, FRCP(C) is a psychiatrist who has worked for the past 23 years at the University of Toronto’s Health Services.

Dr. Masson received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology in 1978. She then worked as a biologist in Northern Quebec. Subsequently she worked with children suffering from various forms of brain injury. She graduated from McGill University medical school in 1982. After a one year rotating internship at the Ottawa Civic Hospital Dr. Masson received her general licensce to practice medicine. Dr. Masson received her specialty certificate in Psychiatry from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1987.

Dr. Masson specialized in psychotherapy with young adults, couple therapy, and group therapy. Her responsibilities included a number of outreach teaching projects, consulting to the Health Service at Scarborough College and providing assessment and treatment services for the student population. She has also been a consultant for Oolagen (agency for adolescents), and has been a consultant to York university’s Counselling and Development Services. She became interested in the practice of mindfulness as a teachable alternative/addition to standard methods of medical treatment. 

In 1999 she completed the eight week MBSR course. She has attended several intensive training retreats with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli and has studied yoga at Esther Myers Studio in their two year “yoga teacher training” program. Her clinical time presently focuses on integrating mindfulness and yoga into her practice.

Dr. M. Lee Freedman, MD, CM, FRCP(C) is a psychiatrist with 29 years of practical clinical experience in her private practice with adults, children, adolescents, and families.  She graduated from McGill University with an Honours Bachelor of Science degree in Neurophysiology in 1978, received her medical degree from McGill University in 1982, completed her specialty psychiatry training at University of Toronto, and received her specialty certificate in psychiatry from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1987.  She has had experience on staff at the Hospital for Sick Children, as well as consulting positions with the Surrey Place Centre, The Muki Baum Association, and the Counselling and Development Centre at York University.  Over the past twelve years she has focused her clinical time exclusively on her private practice serving adults, adolescents, children and families with anxiety and stress-related mental and physical conditions.

Dr. Freedman was first introduced to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as a participant in the MBSR Clinic at St. Josephs Health Centre in 2002.  She has since been actively developing her own mindfulness practice and has attended numerous mindfulness workshops, conferences and retreats, including the foundational residential training retreat “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Mind-Body Medicine” with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli in 2007, and training intensive in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy with Dr. Zindel Segal, Dr. Patricia Rockman and Dr. Darren Higgins. 

Dr. Freedman has been gradually integrating mindfulness training into her psychotherapy practice with adults, children, adolescents, and families, and teaches mindful parenting programs for the general population and for parents of anxious children. She consults to schools,  providing parents and educators  with presentations on mindfulness training for children, families and school.  She will be co-teaching a 12 week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program for children with anxiety in 2012, and is developing and will be facilitating the Mindfulness for Families Sunday morning drop-in program offered by the Centre of Gravity, beginning November 6, 2011.

Dr. Freedman is a co-founder of Mindfulness Toronto, a community of professionals dedicated to bringing mindful awareness into the health, education and business sectors in Toronto, and the founder of Mindful Families and schools, a community of educators and health care professionals invested in creating a more mindful society for children in their families, schools and communities.

Dr. Freedman has special interests in  mindful parenting for parents of anxious children and children diagnosed with ADHD, mindfulness for children with anxiety, mindfulness in children's education, photography as a training tool and portal for mindful living, and the inter-relationship of neuroscience, mindfulness and health.  She is the mother of four sons, who she considers to be her most influential teachers.

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