About AHI
AHI is a non-profit organization established in Israel in 2011 in order to promote mindfulness, generate awareness, and integrate these qualities into the Israeli education and social services systems. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been in use for over 30 years, and was pioneered in 1979 by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and others at the Center for Mindfulness (CFM), University of
Massachusetts Medical School (UMass).
Mindfulness is a scientifically simple and proven technique used to teach concentration, attention, conflict resolution, and empathy. Its purpose is to achieve reductions in stress,violence, depression and anxiety. Mindfulness-based treatments are being practiced as a form of complementary medicine in over 250 hospitals and universities
throughout the world and are currently the focus of numerous research studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the National Institute of Health (NIH), just to name a few.
Integrating mindfulness-based programs in schools throughout the world has proven to be successful. In fact, they are reported to have made an immediate transformational change in both school environment and the community. Children who have less stress in their lives or who can better focus and handle the stress they face, regularly outdo their peers. If this is one cause of the achievement gap which continually widens as children grow, then why not address it at its roots?