Mindfulness Skills Training

“To have control over the focus of your mind’s eye such that you are healing yourself by changing the activity patterns of your brain circuits is about as empowering as it gets! But what is mindfulness? or mindful meditation? or mindfulness-based intervention? Mindfulness is based on the Tibetan Zen Buddhist practice of meditation. It was adapted for modern psychology and integrated into therapy by Thich Nhat Hanh, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard Davidson. Mindfulness is focusing your attention on experiencing the present without judgment from the past or worries about the future. It is training the brain to focus on sensory perception and motor behaviors as you experience them. You learn to attend to sensations from the world around you and from within you. Focusing on breathing and body sensations like muscle tension and posture facilitates entering a mental state removed from internally generated emotionally charged repetitive thoughts. In this state, stream of consciousness thoughts can pass without emotional attachment and burden. Inner thoughts can be observed at a distance with self-awareness and detached perspective.”

–A neurobehavioral account for decentering as the salve for the distressed mind“, by Anthony King and David Fresco in Current Opinions in Psychology (2019) v. 28 pp 285-293