Mindfulness is a burgeoning field of study and practice within mental health care and medicine. Yet ethical codes, and the philosophy of the therapist-client relationship, differ greatly between disciplines, and even more between those disciplines and mindfulness-based approaches. The potential for ethical dilemmas is therefore significant. Donald McCown breaks new ground by taking a focused look at an ethics derived from contemporary clinical mindfulness practice itself. What does a secular ethics of mindfulness look like? Who is competent to work therapeutically with mindfulness, and how does one delimit areas and levels of competence? How do clinicians ethically understand the therapist-client relationship from the therapeutic position of mindfulness? And how do clinicians respond when the necessary restraints of their professional role and ethics code come into conflict with the mindfulness-based relationship and therapeutic position? This book makes a vital contribution to the understanding of ethics as the cornerstone of mindfulness-based practice, and will be of interest to all those involved in delivering mindfulness-based interventions, including psychologists, counselors, spiritual directors, occupational therapists, physicians, nurses, and educators.

This book focuses on the role of ethics in the application of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) and mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) in clinical practice. The book offers an overview of the role of ethics in the cultivation of mindfulness and explores the way in which ethics have been embedded in the curriculum of MBIs and MBPs. Chapters review current training processes and examines the issues around incorporating ethics into MBIs and MBPs detailed for non-secular audiences, including training clinicians, developing program curriculum, and dealing with specific client populations. Chapters also examine new, second-generation MBIs and MBPs, the result of the call for more advanced mindfulness-based practices . The book addresses the increasing popularity of mindfulness in therapeutic interventions, but stresses that it remains a new treatment methodology and in order to achieve best practice status, mindfulness interventions must offer a clear understanding of their potential and limits. Topics featured in this book include: • Transparency in mindfulness programs.• Teaching ethics and mindfulness to physicians and healthcare professionals. • The Mindfulness-Based Symptom Management (MBSM) program and its use in treating mental health issues.• The efficacy and ethical considerations of teaching mindfulness in businesses. • The Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) Program. • The application of mindfulness in the military context. Practitioner’s Guide to Mindfulness and Ethics is a must-have resource for clinical psychologists and affiliated medical, and mental health professionals, including specialists in complementary and alternative medicine and psychiatry. Social workers considering or already using mindfulness in practice will also find it highly useful.

This handbook explores the multifaceted ethical dimensions of mindfulness, from early Buddhist sources to present-day Western interpretations of mindfulness. It takes a modern ethical approach to the study of mindfulness, and traces contemporary mindfulness practice from solitary journey to the global whole. Noted practitioners, teachers, scholars, and other professionals lend diverse perspectives to the debate over the moral content of mindfulness and its status as religious, secular, or post-secular practice. Chapters offer new views on the roots of mindfulness in Buddhist moral teachings, ethical mindfulness in interpersonal relationships, and the necessity of ethics in mindfulness-based education and therapy. Chapters also discuss current debates concerning the ethics of mindfulness across the applied fields of education and pedagogy, business, economics, and the environment. Topics featured in this handbook include: · Mindfulness as the true foundation of a naturally ethical life. · Mindfulness and its impact on emotional life, interpersonal relationships, and forgiveness. · How Buddhist ethics informs spiritual practice across the three main vehicles (yanas) of Buddhism and its relation to mindfulness. · “McMindfulness”, or the mass marketization and commodification of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). · How an ethic of interdependence formed by Buddhist principles and mindfulness practices can help address the environmental crisis. The Handbook of Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in psychology, complementary and alternative medicine, and social work as well as occupational and rehabilitation therapy, nursing, philosophy, business management, and teachers of Buddhism and meditation.

With mindfulness initiatives currently highly topical in a range of academic, therapeutic and other domains, new applications of mindfulness have begun to appear in educational settings. This accumulation of twelve research-focused papers contributes to the nascent field of mindfulness in education by exploring practical implementations, as well as theoretical concerns within a range of educational contexts. The contributions in this volume reflect and capture the diversity of approaches to research-linked mindfulness programmes being implemented in contemporary education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Ranging across a number of disciplines, the chapters contribute to work on mindfulness in psychology, education theory, and Buddhist studies. From the evidence provided here, it is shown that the implementation of mindfulness in educational settings is certainly worthwhile, while appropriately rigorous research methods are still being developed.

Essential Resources for Mindfulness Teachers offers the reader a wealth of knowledge about the explicit and implicit aspects of mindfulness-based teaching. The book focuses on how to develop the craft of teaching mindfulness-based courses and is divided into three parts. Part I addresses the explicit elements of mindfulness-based courses, such as how to offer meditation practices and inquiry. Part II investigates the subtle but powerful implicit qualities needed within the teacher to convey the essence of mindfulness. Part III is a series of chapters on the underpinnings, considerations, and theories surrounding the teaching of mindfulness-based courses, and includes a new framework for reflective practice – the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching and Learning Companion (the TLC). The book is a core companion text for both trainees and established mindfulness-based teachers, and is a resource you will return to again and again.

In the Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory and Psychotherapy: Bridging Psychotherapeutic and Cultural Traditions, the editors bring together a wide variety of therapeutic approaches in order to demonstrate how Dialogical Self Theory functions as a bridging framework crossing boundaries between countries and cultures. The basic message is to facilitate a theory-informed dialogue between different perspectives: cognitive therapy, psychoanalytic therapy, gestalt therapy, emotion-focused therapy, Eastern, Indian-American and transpersonal approaches. The chapters present the theoretical notions, qualitative methods, and practical implications of the presented projects with attention to their common dialogical foundation. With its bridging approach and interdisciplinary aims, the Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory and Psychotherapy will be essential reading for psychotherapists and counsellors in practice and training and for those who are interested in the common factors underlying a wide variety of psychotherapeutic schools and traditions.

This master-class-in-a-book is designed to guide teachers of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) in continuing to develop more competence while raising global standards of practice and pedagogy. Starting with the central yet elusive concept of stewardship, it then expands upon the core components of MBI pedagogy. A series of reflective essays by MBI teachers from around the world foregrounds differences and challenges in meeting participants “where they are.” Such reflections are both inspiring and thought-provoking for teachers —wherever they are. The book also provides practical guidance and tools for adjusting teaching style and content for special populations, from chronic pain patients to trauma survivors, from health care professionals to clergy, and including many others. Detailed scripts and practices, ready to adopt and adapt, offer opportunities to explore new directions in the classroom, and to continue the life-long development of the teacher. Included in the coverage: Deepening teachers’ skills of guidance of meditation practices Insights into the essential practice of inquiry and dialogue with participants New practices that allow participants to explore mindfulness together in a spoken encounter How to keep up with, review, and make clear to participants the range of scientific evidence supporting the MBIs The breadth of practical insights and hands-on strategies makes Resources for Teaching Mindfulness a unique developmental asset for a wide range of practitioners around the world. Among those who will benefit are physicians and other medical practitioners, health and clinical psychologists, marriage and family therapists, nurses, clinical social workers, physical and occupational therapists, health educators, and organizational development specialists.

Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks whether religion is truly left out of the equation in the context of public-school curricula. An expert witness in four legal challenges, Brown scrutinized unpublished trial records, informant interviews, and legal precedents, as well as insider documents, some revealing promoters of "Vedic victory" or "stealth Buddhism" for public-school children. The legal challenges are fruitful cases for Brown's analysis of the concepts of religious and secular. While notions of what makes something religious or secular are crucial to those who study religion, they have special significance in the realm of public and legal norms. They affect how people experience their lives, raise their children, and navigate educational systems. The question of religion in public education, Brown shows, is no longer a matter of jurisprudence focused largely on the establishment of a Protestant Bible or nonsectarian prayer. Instead, it now reflects an increasingly diverse American religious landscape. Reconceptualizing secularization as transparency and religious voluntarism, Brown argues for an opt-in model for public-school programs.

This book proposes a new approach to mindfulness-based interventions, presenting them not as individual, but as relational practices. In the last decades, mindfulness has exerted a growing influence on many fields of research and activity, but always as an individual practice. The authors in this volume believe that the strong development of mindfulness today implies considering a dialogue between this individualistic approach and the perspective of relational mindfulness based on social constructionism. The volume is organized in two parts. The first part focuses on the theoretical foundations of relational mindfulness. The second part presents possibilities of applications of relational mindfulness in clinical and organizational settings to promote mental health and personal development. Relational Mindfulness: Fundamentals and Applications will be of interest to a wide range of professionals interested in applying mindfulness-based interventions in mental health care and productive organizations, such as clinical and health psychologists, public health professionals and human resources analysts and consultants, among others. "It is true that the metaphor of mindfulness has been enormously fruitful in its invitation to innovate. By removing meditative practices from their ancient roots, practitioners were free to create practices especially relevant to context. (...) At the same time, there was also a recognizable loss in the profoundly rich heritage that was left behind. For many of us, the greatest loss resulted from the absorption of such practices into Western individualism. What had once been an orientation to practice emphasizing our fundamental inter-being, had become a gateway to silent separation. It is in this context that the present volume bursts into significance. With special appreciation to the editors of this book, we are treated to a multi-dimensional exploration into the relational dimensions of mindfulness practices. Bringing ideas, experience, and wisdom from across professions, and across continents the contributors open an exciting path to the future." - Excerpt from the Foreword by Kenneth J. Gergen