Reminded me instantly of my first Vipassana retreat. They were loath to accept someone with a "Hypnosis background" because, according to the then meditation instructor, Vipassana does NOT use "suggestion or in any such way influence the mind in one way or the other, it's about self-observation". Somehow I was accepted into the retreat though, and on the first day I lost count of how many hypnotic suggestions Goenka was using, but I was clear when he would use his 'hypnotic voice' and his 'usual voice'.

Michael Yapko drove the point home when he used the term ‘self-deception’. I think such deception in spiritual communities leads to further repression of other important experiences too, like Desire. But Desire is the motor force of any experience, including mindfulness meditation!

I don't think any conception of mindfulness would be complete without a discussion of Transference... A very important point was made about how the Buddha in the background, or any spiritual teacher, in and of itself can evoke expectancy from practitioners and potentially place the practice on a pedestal (positive transference). Transference is, of course, far more complex than that.

In my view a massive problem in psychotherapy is a reductionist attempt to commercialize methodologies (and make them out to be superior than others), whether it be hypnosis, mindfulness or CBT. My main practice is psychoanalytic psychotherapy and I am constantly hearing criticisms of CBT. But CBT is just as natural as hypnosis, or mindfulness, in its pure form, is it not (how many times a day do we change our view about something!)? I mean, the problem I have with specific methods is the way they’re advertised/marketed as the holy grail of mental health, as though it can somehow be separated from its original context (devoid of things like affect, personal history, relationships etc - as a medical model which reduces people into symptoms/parts)...much like mindfulness is being taken out of its broader context... which was never intended as a 'technique' alone...

Maybe mindfulness meditation and hypnosis are but ‘meta-rituals’ in that they can help open people up to deeper aspects of ourselves.

Another fascinating point raised in the talk: dissociation. I had previously assumed this was often pathological (except when used for say pain conditions). Some mindfulness teachers may argue that the aim is not to dissociate. I would like some clarity on this point. I heard an elegant description the other day: ‘therapists need to be BOTH in and above the transference.’ I think this could involve something other than dissociation, perhaps as a form of mind training to be both ‘in experience’ and ‘observing’ simultaneously?

Really like the idea of demystifying the therapy process upfront; talking about therapy. Not assuming that the client has the same theories of change as we do. Working psychodynamically I was trained not to disclose much in this regard in service of more clearly eludicating the transference, but I can appreciate Mary Jo's point. Adam