m i n d f u l n e s s
first off, what is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention to what is going on in this moment. Then noticing where our awareness goes in the next moment, and then the next moment. This 'particular way' is the process of being fully present with our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations and, as best as possible, doing so with curiosity, openness, and kindness. It also means becoming aware of when we are being unkind to ourselves. This practice of intentional, nonjudgmental moment-to-moment awareness is found in being with these experiences without trying to do something about them. This is the work.
In therapy, mindfulness-based practices often add another layer to this process in service of cultivating awareness or relieving discomforts or suffering. Meditation, for example, begins and ends in an awareness of our body. It also often relies on an awareness of and focus on our breathing, as a sort of anchor that can be used when our mind (inevitably) wanders to that meeting from yesterday or planning what's for dinner.
While mindfulness-based practices do have Buddhist roots, it is a secular practice.
If you are curious, here is a five-minute breathing meditation to cultivate mindfulness.
mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr)
The primary aim of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction is to develop skills that can be flexibly applied in everyday life to address stress, pain, and illness. It is designed to help you approach your life with more composure, energy, understanding and enthusiasm, as well as cultivate the ability to cope more effectively with both short-term and long-term stressful situations. MBSR was founded by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
By learning and using MBSR practices such as meditation or the body scan in therapy, and processing these experiences together, you will learn to access and nurture your natural capacity to actively engage in caring for yourself and find greater balance, ease, and peace of mind.
To learn more, visit the Center for Mindfulness. An in-depth read on the standards of practice for the 8-week MBSR program can be found here. (Note: these standards are part of the eight-week program, not necessarily what is required in individual counseling)
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct)
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is designed to help people who experience repeated bouts of depression and chronic unhappiness. It combines the ideas of cognitive therapy with meditative practices and attitudes based on the cultivation of mindfulness. The heart of this work lies in becoming acquainted with the modes of mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously learning to develop a new relationship to them. MBCT was developed by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale, based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.
Research has shown that people who have experienced clinical depression three or more times (sometimes for twenty years or more) find that these skills help to considerably reduce their chances that depression will return. If you'd like to read more about how MBCT works, visit www.mbct.com
the neuroscience of mindfulness
Studies show that the ways we intentionally shape our internal focus of attention in mindfulness practice induces a state of brain activation during the practice. With repetition, an intentionally created state can become an enduring trait of the individual as reflected in long-term changes in brain function and structure. This is a fundamental property of neuroplasticity—how the brain changes in response to experience. Here, the experience is the focus of attention in a particular manner.
This movement from intentionally created state (e.g, meditation) to enduring trait (structural brain change) has been shown in studies on attention. As a result of meditative practices, improved attention seems to last up to five years after mindfulness training, suggesting trait-like changes are possible.
Practicing meditation has also been shown to lessen the inflammatory response in people exposed to psychological stressors, particularly for long-term meditators. According to neuroscience research, mindfulness practices dampen activity in our amygdala and increase the connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Both of these parts of the brain help us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it.
As another example, with MBSR, a “left-shift” has been noted in which the left frontal activity of the brain is enhanced following MBSR training. This electrical change in brain function is thought to reflect the cultivation of an “approach state,” in which we move toward, rather than away from, a challenging external situation or internal mental function such as a thought, feeling, or memory. Naturally, such an approach state can be seen as the neural basis for resilience.
Both MBSR and MBCT have been scientifically shown to be an effective complement to a wide variety of medical and psychological conditions. Below are short lists of conditions with citations of some of the benefits of mindfulness practice. Clicking on the headings will take you to pages with more extensive listings of research articles.
MBSR Journal Articles & Research Publications
Anxiety (Hoge, Bui, Marques, Metcalf, Morris, Robinaugh, et. al., 2013)
Mood Disorders (Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010)
Stress Disorders (Kearney, McDermott, Malte, Martinez, & Simpson, 2012)
MBCT Journal Articles & Research Publications
How Does MBCT Work? (Kuyken, Watkins, Holden, White, et al, 2010)
Depression Relapse (Dimidjian, Beck, Felder, Boggs, Gallop, & Segal, 2014)