Mindfulness-Based Interventions

Mindfulness-based interventions incorporate Eastern mindfulness practices into psychological treatment and emphasize the benefits of mindfulness practice for one's mental and physical health. Such interventions focus on helping clients direct their attention to their present moment experience without judgment. Present moment experiences can include one's physical sensations, thoughts, feelings, and external environment. Rather than approach their internal and external experiences with judgment and a lack of awareness and attention, clients are encouraged to take an open, curious, and accepting stance towards these experiences. Mindfulness practices have been found to help people be less reactive to difficult thoughts and feelings, and better able to cope with mental and physical health challenges, emotional concerns, and/or unproductive thought patterns.

Mindfulness-based interventions have become increasingly popular in the mental and physical health fields and offer an alternative to mindlessly going through one's life and daily activities on "autopilot" and to engaging in ways of processing one's thoughts and experiences that are self-critical, ruminative, and maladaptively future-focused. Research demonstrates that mindfulness-based interventions are effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression and positively impacting a variety of other outcomes associated with well-being, including chronic pain, emotional distress, quality of life, and interpersonal effectiveness. Mindfulness-based principles are at the core of such treatment protocols as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), as well as incorporated into other therapeutic approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).