Open Mind

Open Mind The practice of Therapeutic Mindfulness Josef Gorny University Counselling Centre The Mind Body Connection A study in 1998 at the U Mass Medical Centre showed that patients undergoing UV treatment for psoriasis – a chronic skin disease – healed four times faster if they were meditating while receiving the UV treatment. Meditation also reduced the incidence of skin cancer caused by the treatment. Right side – Left side fMRI images show that: • When people are emotionally distressed, the most active sites in the brain are the amygdala, part of the brain‟s emotional centre, and the right prefrontal cortex, important for the hypervigilance typical of people under stress. • When people are in positive moods – upbeat, enthusiastic, energized – the activity is in the left prefrontal cortex. Left-Right ratio • People have a typical left to right ratio for them. • Experienced meditators have a predominantly left sided value. • A controlled experiment with workers in a high-stress biotech company who were taught mindfulness meditation for two months showed that their ratio went from right to left and they also reported improved mood, more energy, and less anxiety. • The immune systems were shown to have improved. The Emotional Brain Stress and the brain There is evidence that chronic stress shrinks the hippocampus and expands the amygdala, making us more prone to anxiety and aggression and less able to moderate it. While the brain shapes our thought, thoughts also shape the brain – it‟s more plastic than we once thought Self-regulation “Mindfulness promotes the integrative function of the pre-frontal cortex” ie the self-regulation function which enables one to face “life‟s vicissitudes with some measure of emotional calm, flexibility, self-awareness and reason.” - Dr Daniel Siegel Meditation • Concentration, “one-pointed” meditation eg Calm Technique, Relaxation Response, Transcendental Meditation • Mindfulness meditation eg “Insight” meditation, Vipassana, Contemplation Mindfulness The non-judgemental awareness of the present moment. Choiceless awareness. Being relaxed and alert to your own present moment experience, including your thoughts, feelings, and sense experience. Being awake. Characteristics of Mindfulness Thoughts, feelings, sensations, are observed in a way that is • Allowing not censoring • Curious not avoiding • Evaluative not judgemental • Decentered not indulging • Choiceless not purpose driven The Shadow The mental states we tend not to focus on because they are so difficult can be the very source of ideas and energy to solve our difficulties. This is the concept of the „shadow‟ – that fertile but „dirty‟ ground that may need to be traversed to get to where we would like to be. The quality of awareness • It‟s not about achieving a blissed-out state, or an empty mind, or peace of mind; it‟s about the stance you take to all that occurs, the easy and the difficult. • Allowing, not avoiding, the difficult mental states does not mean liking them, or condoning them, or being passively resigned to them. It‟s an active opening to experience. Open Mind, Spacious Mind Paradoxically, without having the goal in mind, different perspectives open up, more can be seen, new ideas emerge, different responses are possible. Limitations of Mindfulness Jack Kornfield, doyen of mindfulness teachers, has claimed that many mindfulness teachers are now, or have recently been, in psychotherapy. In fact, mindfulness practice can be used to avoid difficult of painful areas. Psychotherapy The technology of change • A therapeutic alliance • A systematic way of looking at difficulties • Empirically based • An array of procedures and techniques • An outcome, a change focus Mindfulness and Psychotherapy • • • • A paradox – a dialectic A new perspective A new response A new solution Mindfulness and Anxiety • Mindfulness challenges the hypervigilance and/or the avoidance at the heart of the difficulties anxiety can cause. • Anxiety surfing – a different attitude towards the presence of anxiety. Mindfulness and Stress • Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at University of Massachusetts Medical Centre. • A different approach to chronic pain. • 1000 research studies in peer reviewed journals show that MBSR can reduce chronic pain, high blood pressure, serum cholesterol levels and blood cortisol. Mindfulness and Addiction/Self-harm • Mindfulness can be a useful tool in the management of addictions, self-harming practices, eating disorders, etc. • Dialectical Behavioural Therapy teaches mindfulness skills as the platform for creating opportunities for the client to intervene with other skills, such as distress tolerance skills or social skills. Mindfulness and Depression • Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (MBCT) • Mindfulness can be an important part of interrupting the ruminative pattern characteristic of depression. • At very least, a mindfulness program has been shown to be helpful in preventing the relapse of depression. Practising Mindfulness • Religiously based programs • Books, CDs - see references • Open Mind Group Program – Starting Thursday March 17, 11.00 12.30 – Register at the Counselling Centre. – Loosely based on the MBSR program and the MBCT program