Collection: Mindfulness in Therapeutic Practice

Mindfulness is a form of self-awareness training adapted from Buddhist meditation practices which has been described as a state of being in the present moment and accepting things for what they are. Increasingly, it is taking the world of therapy by storm, demonstrating effectiveness in a fast-growing array of therapeutic contexts. The courses in this collection reflect the broadening interest among mental health professionals in exploring the multiple therapeutic benefits – and challenges - of incorporating mindfulness into therapeutic practice: looking into, for example, which disorders mindfulness can best treat, and which therapies are best equipped to do it. We see how mindfulness as a clinical intervention has been able to help clients prevent relapse into major depressive disorder, while another course explains how mindfulness practice can induce post-traumatic growth, rather than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), after trauma. Some therapies, such as ACT, DBT, and MBCT, are based on mindfulness and it can be effectively combined with CBT as well, but therapists intending to use these therapies with clients need to know that there is a catch, acknowledged in several courses: using mindfulness with clients is not a “do as I say, not as I do” proposition. Therapists must have their own mindfulness practice!

Theoretical models of mindfulness are also beginning to emerge. The co-emergence model, for example, implicates mindfulness relative to notions of making sense of things according to their importance, and further work has begun to question whether mindfulness is always a good thing. One course makes a plea for trauma-sensitive mindfulness in order not to harm trauma survivors, given the trauma-engendered interoceptive/exteroceptive incongruence for some clients after trauma. Another course suggests that we may not always want to be “in the present moment” of mindfulness; rather, there is a good case for strategically switching between mindfulness and the mind-wandering ways of the default mode network, whose association with off-task, free-floating mind may serve previously unknown functions for our health. As always, some of the work reported by the course lecturers addresses mindfulness for particular populations, such as adolescents.