MINDFULNESS AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

ABSTRACT: This article explores how the Buddhist concept of mindfulness and techniques for fostering it can, when expropriated by Western clinical psychology, play a valuable role in self-development in psychotherapy. Mindfulness practice expands the field of awareness, allowing for improved monitoring of somatic and affective experiencing, and thereby enhancing the capacity for self-regulation of arousal, affect, and behavior. It facilitates the development of a sense of embodiment and the capacity to tolerate and accept painful experience. It promotes the self-monitoring and decontextualization of automatic thoughts that serve to sustain pathological structures. Mindfulness also facilitates the development of inner resources that help stabilize affect and reduce impulsivity. Case examples of the use of mindfulness-based techniques in individual and group therapy sessions illustrate these points. Mindfulness is a skill derived from Buddhist meditative practice that the scientific literature suggests may be of benefit in the symptomatic relief of chronic pai