Sunday, November 19, 2006

Mindfulness and psychotherapy

I came across a blog today called "Health Psych: Current issues in clinical health psychology". I was particularly interested in a posting entitled simply "Mindfulness". Here's part of it:
There's increasing interest in the so-called "third wave" of development of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Just as behavioural therapy was expanded by the inclusion of cognitive approaches, there is a further movement towards the incorporation of mindfulness and other more spiritually-based approaches into cognitive-behavioural therapy.

Based on a combination of Eastern meditation and Western psychology, mindfulness based cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques are used in the context of both physical and psychological health problems.

Mindfulness involves developing the ability to pay deliberate attention to the experience of life from moment to moment. Using relaxation, an awareness of the breath and a gentle focus of attention, individuals learn to observe their thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations in a non-judgemental way.
The shrinks are discovering what meditation teachers have known for a long time and that is that experiencing emotions without judgment actually helps with emotional regulation. I'll tell you again, folks, what I've told you so many times before: This stuff really works!

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