Mindfulness: Method and Process

Understanding the processes and principles that underlie mindfulness is a needed step, because this method enters into the armamentarium of empirical clinical psychology. Mindfulness is closely related to several procedures, including acceptance, cognitive defusion, and exposure. Although each of these procedures seems to target different behavioral processes, they are all interrelated, because ultimately all of them target the domination of the literal and evaluative functions of human language and cognition. Because these methods are constructional, not eliminative, their rise may ultimately have a more profound impact on the field than is currently supposed.     

Effective Psychotherapy for Asian Americans: From Cultural Accommodation to Cultural Congruence

[Clin Psychol Sci Prac 18: 242–245, 2011] Hall, Hong, Zane, and Meyer present mindfulness and acceptance psychotherapies as promising treatment modalities for Asian Americans, address possible cultural discrepancies, and propose to adapt the diverging elements into culturally syntonic ones. In this commentary, we discuss how the heterogeneity among Asian Americans suggests the existence of a wide variation of individual differences despite group similarities. We point out the importance of cultural accommodation in psychotherapy, where the therapist accommodates for differences in beliefs, values, and norms implied in the existing theory. Finally, we propose that the underlying principle of effective psychotherapy with ethnic and racial minority clients is cultural congruence, or identifying and selecting culturally congruent processes and therapeutic elements by incorporating both cultural and individual variations.     

Mindfulness: A Promising Intervention Strategy in Need of Further Study

Baer (2003 ; this issue) has provided a thoughtful conceptual and empirical review of mindfulness-based clinical interventions, emphasizing the need for further research. In this commentary we elaborate on some of the areas needing further study. The promising initial data suggest a need for basic experimental and treatment outcome research in order to determine active ingredients and mechanisms of action in mindfulness-based interventions. In addition, questions remain regarding the optimal mode of delivery of this treatment, as well as how to integrate the non-striving aspect of mindfulness into clinical intervention.     

Perils and Promise in Defining and Measuring Mindfulness: Observations From Experience

As mindfulness research advances on a variety of fronts, it has become increasingly important to carefully define and measure the construct. In this commentary, we draw from our recent research experience on these topics in addressing four issues of primary concern to Bishop et al: The nature of mindfulness, the role of acceptance in the phenomenon, the relation between mindfulness and meditation, and the measurement of mindfulness in meditative and other contexts.     

Acceptance, Mindfulness, and Science

The inclusion of technologies drawn from spiritual and religious traditions into empirical clinical psychology is a positive step forward, but it also helps reveal problems in the technological model of treatment development. The technological model does not necessarily lead to a more coherent, innovative, and progressive discipline, which requires the development of more adequate theory, not merely more adequate technology. If technologies drawn from spiritual and religious traditions are to be included in modern scientific psychology, the field must be free to interpret and transform them theoretically, without being limited by their religious and spiritual past.     

The Sisters of Mindfulness

This article introduces the issue of Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session entitled “Beyond Meditation: Mindfulness‐Related Clinical Practices.” In the article, I describe how the “sisters of mindfulness”–forgiveness, gratitude, loving‐kindness, compassion, acceptance, and best‐self visualization–are each interconnected and important forms of mindfulness as well as tenets of Buddhist psychology. Each of these practices reflect mental strengths that are being integrated into the brain's neuroplastic development as a function of modern day psychotherapy.     

Expanding Our Conceptualization of and Treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Integrating Mindfulness/Acceptance-Based Approaches With Existing Cognitive-Behavioral Models

Generalized anxiety disorder (CAD) is a chronic, pervasive disorder for which we have yet to develop sufficiently efficacious interventions. In this article we propose that recent research and theory regarding this disorder supports the integration of acceptance-based treatments with existing cognitive-behavioral treatments for CAD to improve the efficacy and clinical significance of such approaches. The bases for this proposal (from both the CAD and the acceptance-based treatment literature) are reviewed, and a new treatment stemming from this conceptual integration is described.     

Mindfulness and experiential avoidance as predictors and outcomes of the narrative emotional disclosure task

This randomized study examined whether narrative emotional disclosure improves mindfulness, experiential avoidance, and mental health, and how baseline levels of and changes in mindfulness and experiential avoidance relate to mental health. Participants (N=233) wrote repeated traumatic (experimental condition) or unemotional daily events narratives (control condition). Regression analyses showed neither condition nor gender effects on mental health or experiential avoidance at a 1‐month follow‐up, although the control condition significantly increased in one component of mindfulness. Decreased experiential avoidance (across conditions) and increased mindfulness (in the experimental condition) significantly predicted improved mental health. Narrative disclosure thus did not improve outcomes measured here. However, increasing mindfulness when writing narratives with traumatic content, and decreasing experiential avoidance regardless of writing content, was associated with improved mental health. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 65: 1–18, 2009.     

Loving‐Kindness in the Treatment of Traumatized Refugees and Minority Groups: A Typology of Mindfulness and the Nodal Network Model of Affect and Affect Regulation

This article discusses how loving‐kindness can be used to treat traumatized refugees and minority groups, focusing on examples from our treatment, culturally adapted cognitive‐behavioral therapy (CA‐CBT). To show how we integrate loving‐kindness with other mindfulness interventions and why loving‐kindness should be an effective therapeutic technique, we present a typology of mindfulness states and the Nodal Network Model (NNM) of Affect and Affect Regulation. We argue that mindfulness techniques such as loving‐kindness are therapeutic for refugees and minority populations because of their potential for increasing emotional flexibility, decreasing rumination, serving as emotional regulation techniques, and forming part of a new adaptive processing mode centered on psychological flexibility. We present a case to illustrate the clinical use of loving‐kindness within the context of CA‐CBT.     

The Role of Mindfulness and Compassion in Enhancing Nurturing Family Environments

The application of mindfulness and compassion to evidence‐based parenting programs (EBPPs) offers a novel approach in enhancing nurturing family environments. The proposed framework offers an opportunity to re‐focus behavioral parenting interventions from primarily reducing problematic behaviors to instead increasing pro‐social caring behavior. This article aimed to extend the knowledge base on EBPPs by (a) reviewing the current role of EBPPs; (b) discussing the potential of mindfulness and compassion to enhance EBPPs; (c) reviewing current EBPPs that integrate mindfulness and compassion; and (d) providing recommendations for EBPPs in order to help enhance their impact on building nurturing family environments.