As an explanation of the therapist's role in guiding clients' emotional, physical and spiritual growth, this comprehensive manual offers the professional therapist the therapeutic procedures that facilitate inner-directed natural healing and recovery.

Core Principles of Meditation for Therapy: Improving the Outcome of Psychotherapeutic Treatment provides the multi-modal strategies and tools therapists need to guide their clients' adaptations of meditation into their lives. Complete with text, audio, and video content, this package introduces a variety of meditation routines and explains how, when, and why each technique should be used to reach specific goals. The availability of audio and video, as well as print, allows the therapist to customize each presentation to the client and the presenting problem. Meditation simultaneously engenders both relaxation and alertness, and regular practice can change brain function to permanently improve internal sensing. The three major meditation methods—focus (Yoga meditations and postures), open-focus (Mindfulness), and no-focus (clearing the mind Zen and Taoist flow)—are best suited to different kinds of problems. Core Principles of Meditation for Therapy explains them all, and details the most practical applications of each. This guide matches the meditation type to a therapeutic goal. Consistent with the positive psychology movement, meditative practice puts people on a positive path and offers distinctive techniques to actualize change. This package's multi-sensory approach makes it adaptable to the needs of therapists and clients, supports their initiation, practice, and mastery of meditation for improved mental health. For clinicians seeking to integrate meditation and therapy, Core Principles of Meditation for Therapy is a complete guide to both theory and practice.

Embodying mindfulness allows both therapists and clients to make the most of treatment sessions. More than just a guide to techniques and benefits, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of mindfulness meditation, and shows how to effectively incorporate mindfulness into every aspect of the therapeutic process. Mindfulness isn’t simply a therapeutic tool that can be used at a specific time. If you’re a psychotherapist interested in implementing mindfulness practices into your therapy sessions, you must first embody a mindful presence yourself. In Mindfulness Meditation in Psychotherapy, psychotherapist Steven Alper presents the mindfulness pyramid model, an easy-to-use reference approach for integrating mindfulness into the very fabric of your therapy sessions—in every action you take. A therapist’s mindfulness practice and the mindful activity during sessions forms the foundation of clients’ mindfulness practice. This practical guide will help demystify mindfulness meditation; elaborate on the psychotherapeutic benefits of practices such as body scan, breath awareness, sitting meditation, and lovingkindness; and offer helpful strategies for teaching formal and informal mindfulness skills to clients. This book conceptualizes and explores the applicability of mindfulness and delves into the many ways in which mindfulness can manifest in psychotherapy. This is a must-have resource for any therapist interested in honing their own mindfulness practice and incorporating mindfulness in treatment sessions.

“A warm, profound and cleareyed memoir. . . this wise and sympathetic book’s lingering effect is as a reminder that a deeper and more companionable way of life lurks behind our self-serious stories."—Oliver Burkeman, New York Times Book Review A remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could, and should, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. The divisions between the psychological, emotional, and the spiritual, he soon realized, were not as distinct as one might think. In The Zen of Therapy, Dr. Epstein reflects on a year’s worth of selected sessions with his patients and observes how, in the incidental details of a given hour, his Buddhist background influences the way he works. Meditation and psychotherapy each encourage a willingness to face life's difficulties with courage that can be hard to otherwise muster, and in this cross-section of life in his office, he emphasizes how therapy, an element of Western medicine, can in fact be considered a two-person meditation. Mindfulness, too, much like a good therapist, can “hold” our awareness for us—and allow us to come to our senses and find inner peace. Throughout this deeply personal inquiry, one which weaves together the wisdom of two worlds, Dr. Epstein illuminates the therapy relationship as spiritual friendship, and reveals how a therapist can help patients cultivate the sense that there is something magical, something wonderful, and something to trust running through our lives, no matter how fraught they have been or might become. For when we realize how readily we have misinterpreted our selves, when we stop clinging to our falsely conceived constructs, when we touch the ground of being, we come home.

Break the cycle of anxious thinking and rumination that keeps you up at night. With this much-needed guide, you’ll learn to quiet your mind, relax your body, feel less tense, and finally get the sleep you need. Sleep plays a crucial role in our waking lives. While we sleep, our bodies are recharging with energy, damaged tissue is repaired, and our memories are stored. When we don't get enough sleep, we are tired, less positive, less motivated, less focused, and more likely to feel depressed. We may even experience more intense cravings for high-fat, sugar-rich foods. And yet, despite the myriad advantages of getting a good night's sleep, countless people suffer from chronic insomnia. If you’re one of them, this book can help. In this guide, a trained mindfulness expert teams up with a behavioral sleep specialist to offer evidence-based meditations and an innovative four-week protocol to address the emotional stresses and anxieties that lie at the root of sleep issues. You’ll learn practices grounded in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindful self-compassion (MSC), and guided mindfulness and acceptance for insomnia (GMATI) to alleviate the mental, emotional, and physical suffering caused by insomnia. You’ll also learn to identify both internal and external factors that may be compromising your sleep, and develop a plan to address these issues. There is nothing we can do to “make” ourselves fall asleep. In many ways, this is why insomnia can be so maddening. But what we can do is help create the conditions necessary for healthy slumber. The mindfulness tools in this book will help you do exactly that.

This simple, step-by-step guide to the art of meditation offers ways of using this timeless practice to relax, to focus and to clarify thoughts. It explores the roots of meditation in the Eastern tradition and explains how to apply its principles to everyday life.

What would it look like to turn to the Christian faith to cultivate meditation practices? Presenting Christian meditation as an alternative to Buddhist-informed mindfulness, this workbook from Dr. Joshua Knabb offers a Christian-sensitive approach to meditation in clinical practice, focusing on both building theory and providing replicable practices for Christian clients and their therapists.

Millions of people meditate daily but can meditative practices really make us ‘better’ people? In The Buddha Pill, pioneering psychologists Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm put meditation and mindfulness under the microscope. Separating fact from fiction, they reveal what scientific research – including their groundbreaking study on yoga and meditation with prisoners – tells us about the benefits and limitations of these techniques for improving our lives. As well as illuminating the potential, the authors argue that these practices may have unexpected consequences, and that peace and happiness may not always be the end result. Offering a compelling examination of research on transcendental meditation to recent brain-imaging studies on the effects of mindfulness and yoga, and with fascinating contributions from spiritual teachers and therapists, Farias and Wikholm weave together a unique story about the science and the delusions of personal change.

With beautifully designed mandala patterns for you to add colour to, this gorgeous coloring book provides not only a wonderfully creative outlet, but also a way of focusing attention away from external stress, thereby encouraging a sense of relaxation and increased wellbeing. Used for centuries across different cultures and religions, a ‘mandala’ is a spiritual symbol used in Buddhist and Hindu traditions to represent the universe, and is often used as an aid to meditation. Mandalas can therefore be spiritually healing and help to create a peaceful state of mind. Although sometimes basic in design, they are often extremely intricate. Traditionally, the mandala consists of an outer circle, sometimes shown on fire to represent the universe and the dangers it holds, and an inner ‘palace’, housing deities and the enlightened. With 100 patterns based on Tibetan and Hindu traditions, as well as some original designs, this beautiful art book will enable you to relax and rediscover the pleasures of being creative.

"Responding to growing interest among psychotherapists of all theoretical orientations, this practical book provides a comprehensive introduction to mindfulness and its clinical applications. The authors, who have been practicing both mindfulness and psychotherapy for decades, present a range of clear-cut procedures for implementing mindfulness techniques and teaching them to patients experiencing depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and other problems. Also addressed are ways that mindfulness practices can increase acceptance and empathy in the therapeutic relationship. The book reviews the philosophical underpinnings of mindfulness and presents compelling empirical findings. User-friendly features include illustrative case examples, practice exercises, and resource listings"--