A221 Enhancing Your Effectiveness Through Mindfulness

But these approaches require much more than technical skill--they depend on the therapist's own experience with mindfulness meditation practice to have the deepest impact. This course will guide participants in developing their own, regular mindfulness practice, and integrating it with their therapeutic work. You'll also learn how mindfulness practice can prevent burnout, enhance satisfaction, and increase professional longevity.

Meet The Instructor

Instructor: Steven Alper, L.C.S.W., is adjunct clinical instructor of psychiatry at UCSD Medical School in San Diego, California, and director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, California. He's practiced mindfulness meditation for 23 years.

Course Contents

Session 1: Overview of the Course • Introduction to mindfulness in psychotherapy • Introduction to mindfulness meditation • Guided breath awareness and body scan • Home practice: Daily 30 min. body scan, 5 min. breath awareness

Session 2: Home Practice review • Bare attention, relaxed concentration, radical acceptance in the body scan • Guided eating meditation, guided body scan with expanded breath instructions • Home practice • Structured exercises for integrating mindfulness into doing psychotherapy

Session 3: Psychotherapy as a Mindfulness Practice • Home practice review • The healing power of presence • Friendliness, curiosity and empathic attunement • Guided sitting meditation with expanded instructions • Home practice: Alternate guided sitting with guided body scan • Structured exercises for doing therapy as practice

Session 4: Developing Equanimity, Clarity, Wisdom, and Compassion • Home practice review • Turning towards the difficult • Sustained awareness and embodied insight • Guided equanimity practice • Home practice: Alternate equanimity practice with body scan • Mindfulness in psychotherapy exercises

Session 5: Radical Acceptance, Friendly Curiosity and Clear Seeing • Home practice review • Guided loving-kindness practice • Home Practice: Alternate equanimity practice with loving-kindness practice • Mindfulness in psychotherapy exercises

Session 6: Resources for further practice and study • Home practice review • Course review • Discussion of experience of doing therapy as practice • Closing Meditation

Learning Objectives

1. Define mindfulness practice: what it is and isn't.
2. Develop and/or cultivate a personal discipline of practice.
3. Explain the importance of the therapist's own practice for the efficacy of mindfulness-based treatments.
4. Describe the benefits of mindfulness practice for burnout prevention and professional development.

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