Mindfulness Meditation, Based on Buddha’s Teachings, Gains Ground With Therapists – NYTimes.com

For years, psychotherapists have worked to relieve suffering by reframing the content of patients’ thoughts, directly altering behavior or helping people gain insight into the subconscious sources of their despair and anxiety. The promise of mindfulness meditation is that it can help patients endure flash floods of emotion during the therapeutic process — and ultimately alter reactions to daily experience at a level that words cannot reach. “The interest in this has just taken off,” said Zindel Segal, a psychologist at the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where the above group therapy session was taped. “And I think a big part of it is that more and more therapists are practicing some form of contemplation themselves and want to bring that into therapy.”

(Mindfulness Meditation, Based on Buddha’s Teachings, Gains Ground With Therapists – NYTimes.com)

This is a good overview of the history and current state of mindfulness in therapeutic practice. It gives a fair showing both to the proponents of mindfulness as part of therapy and to those who are skeptical.

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