Health and the Mind - Mindfulness-Based Therapies

Welcome from Mitchell Ginsberg (Jinavamsa).
..... comments invited: see email, below .....

For an overview of comments here, go to Mental Health.
For a more general introduction, go to my Home Page.
On mindfulness, see mindfulness practice or insight (vipassana) meditation, as well as the brief description of my orientation related to Buddhist Mindfulness Practice, found listed at San Diego Buddhism (scrolling down to the listings of "Buddhist Therapists").
(There is more on Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapies, below.)
For more on The Far Shore, including some selections and reviews, go to The Far Shore directory.
And, similarly, for more on The Inner Palace, go to The Inner Palace directory.

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The systematic cultivation of mindfulness and insight, a practice known as mindfulness practice or insight (vipassana) meditation, born some 2600 years ago out of the Buddhist tradition, has inspired in the West an ever-growing constellation of innovative mindfulness-based therapy modalities such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (the original Buddhist idea was the elimination, not the mere reduction, of torment), Mentalization-Based Treatment, Short-term Mentalization and Relational Therapy, Reflective Functioning, Mentalization and Resilience, Affect Phobia Therapy, Experiential (or Emotion-based) Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness and Acceptance Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (among others). There are a number of concepts that have been introduced in the literature (focusing on the mind and psychotherapy) that reflect the state of mindful awareness that notices each sensation and each thought, in a way that gives us the space not to take our momentary state of consciousness as defining reality for us once and for all. This gives a much greater sense of freedom and spaciousness. (One set of such concepts are those of meta-cognition, meta-thinking, and meta-processing.) Links to these are given below. On meditation and mental health (psychotherapy), see the essays found at Dayamati on therapy.

In Japan, Europe, and elsewhere, these matters have been discussed as Transcultural Clinical Meditation, described as based on a Wisdom Traditions' perspective and a New Buddhist Psychology. (Related to this is my 2-volume work, The Inner Palace: Mirrors of Psychospirituality in Divine and Sacred Wisdom-Traditions, 2002; 5th edition, 2008).

Speaking of integrations of cultures, in what is less whimsical than we might at first suppose, we may look here at the relationship between mindfulness activity as understood in the sister perspective to mindfulness practice, that of Zen, with its application in a second domain (that of dancing, and in particular, that of dancing the tango), as discussed in Tango Zen, by Chan Park. Another investigation of the relationship of mindfulness (in terms of the tao) and life in general to the tango is The Tao of Tango, by Johanna Siegmann.

One interesting article (by Jack Kornfield) looks more directly into the relationship between mindfulness meditation and psychotherapy, and discusses that relationship; its subtitle is Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal. A counterpoint (by Patrick Kearney) to this is at Still Crazy after all these Years: Why Meditation isn't Psychotherapy. Complementing these is an article (by Jon Kabat-Zinn) with the playful title Meditation -- It's Not What You Think.

Books by this same author, Jon Kabat-Zinn, that have made an impact on Mindfulness-Based Therapies include Full Catastrophe Living and Coming to Our Senses. Of interest here would also be Thoughts Without a Thinker, by psychiatrist Mark Epstein, and a set of talks given by theoreticians and practitioners at a professional psychotherapy conference in 2002, published as Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition.

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Links to some of the traditions of therapy mentioned above:

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction - Jon Kabat-Zinn - Univ. of Massachusetts

Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) - Anthony Bateman & Peter Fonagy - The Anna Freud Centre, London

Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) - Jon Allen & Peter Fonagy - The Menninger Clinic, Topeka/Houston

Short-term Mentalization and Relational Therapy (SMART) - The Anna Freud Centre, London

Reflective Functioning (RF)

Mentalization, Attachment, and Resilience

Affect Phobia Therapy

Experiential (or Emotion-Based) Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (E-STDP)

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) - Univ. of Oxford

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) - Britain

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) - Australia

Mindfulness and Acceptance Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) - Marsha Linehan - Seattle

Meta-cognition, Meta-thinking, and Meta-processing" TARGET="_blank">On meta-cognition


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email: jinavamsa@yahoo.com
C 2009