Mindfulness, which features focused awareness training, is increasing in popularity among mental health professionals. Mindfulness training emphasizes focused attention to internal and external experiences in the present moment of time, without judgment. While mindfulness interventions have been used in treatments for stress, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, and addiction, researchers suggest that this type of training also can be beneficial in everyday life.
Most research and writing on mindfulness training has been about adults. In this paper, the authors argue for adapting mindfulness techniques for work with children. The authors propose that training in mindfulness has the potential to enhance children's attention and focus, and improve memory, self-acceptance, self-management skills, and self-understanding. Specific exercises to teach children to be mindful are presented in progression, beginning with awareness of the external environment, then awareness of the self in the environment, awareness of the body, and finally, mindfulness meditation exercises that feature attending to cognitive processes. Suggestions are made for incorporating mindfulness into school curricula.
He who lives his life in genuine realizing knowledge, must perpetually begin anew, perpetually risk all anew; and thus his truth is not a having, but a becoming. (Martin Buber, 1913/1964 90) I consider myself an integrative therapist. This chapter describes my training and experiences in four different therapy modalities spanning the 4 decades that have formed the foundation of my work. My original training as a graduate student in the late 1950s to mid-1960s featured a Freudian psychoanalytic orientation. From the mid-1960s to 1970s, following postdoctoral training and beginning work as a therapist,I learned behavior therapy and cognitive therapy while continuing psychoanalytic training. In the mid-l970s, I began integrating a feminist approach with cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) and brought to this integration an experiential-gestalt focus from the 1980s on. Each phase of my training and work as a therapist has enriched my growth and provided me with an integrative framework to make meaning of the many changes in my own life and the broader culture.
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