Today, the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness are widely accepted and have been repeatedly documented by researchers. This Reading Course is designed to help you bring more mindfulness and presence into your work as well as offering concrete clinical ideas about applying mindfulness in the consulting room. Jon Kabat-Zinn examines common misconceptions about meditation and explains why spirituality is one of his least favorite words. Both Christopher Germer and Lorne Ladner demonstrate the advantages and pitfalls of using meditative techniques in practice. Jay Lebow offers a detailed overview of what science tells us about the value of mindfulness practice. Michael Ventura explores what therapy might have to each us about the experience of soul.
Course Readings
The Power of Paying Attention: What Jon Kabat-Zinn Has against Spirituality by Richard Simon & Mary Sykes Wylie
You Gotta Have Heart by Christopher Germer
Mindfulness Goes Mainstream: Research Is Proving the Value of Awareness Practices by Jay Lebow
Bringing Mindfulness to Your Practice: When Meditation Helps, and When It Doesn’t by Lorne Ladner
The Experience of Soul: Listening for Life’s Transformative Moments by Michael Ventura
Learning Objectives
1. Discuss the impact of mindfulness meditation on stress
2. Develop interventions that encourage loving kindness in clients
3. Identify clients who benefit, and don't benefit, from meditation




By Rich Simon As therapists, many of us practice in two different worlds. In the first, we see polite, well-behaved, articulate clients with solid values. They engage fully in therapy, talk cogently about their problems, listen attentively to our responses, make reasonably good-faith efforts to follow our suggestions, and sooner or later get better. No wonder we genuinely like these people!
By Rich Simon A thousand years ago, during the palmy days of generous insurance reimbursement, therapists could maintain the illusion that, since therapy was paid for by an unseen hidden hand, clinical practice was somehow untouched by the tacky subject of money. Even the style of therapy reflected this disjunction: 

