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Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Homework
Week 8
• Practice mindfulness formally for 45 minutes every day for 6 days this week
using Sitting Meditation CD and alternating every other day with the Body
Scan or one of the Yoga CDs.
• Read and reflect upon: “Mindfulness and Psychotherapy” article
• Continue to cultivate your intention to increase your level of awareness during
daily activities such as: eating, showering, brushing your teeth, washing dishes,
taking out the garbage, reading to the kids as well as awareness of the body and
opportunities to practice yoga and cultivate mindfulness during the day.
• Write out three short-term (3 months) and three long-term (3 years or more)
goals that come out of your direct experience in the program and with the
meditation practice. Attend the “MBSR daylong reunion retreats” when offered.
• Scan through the “Optional Readings” below and check out the list of articles,
links and resources on my website at: http://www.bemindful.org/art.htm
Mindfulness. . .
• is experiencing the body, mind and spirit in the same place at the same time.
• is an awareness of the present moment and of your activity in that moment.
• is being open to more than one perspective and living with an awareness that the ways of the
past may not always be the best for the present
• is learning to experience what is, instead of resisting what is.
• can help reduce stress, increase productivity, enhance relationships and be the basis of
creating joy in life.
• incorporates an awareness of breathing as the vehicle used to call attention to the present
moment, to renew the body and to quiet the mind.
• is knowing your purpose.
• is learning to “witness” rather than react.
• is coming back to the present moment by moment.
- Jerry Braza, PhD (author of “Moment by Moment”)
www.BeMindful.org Steve Shealy, PhD 813-980-2700
Riding the Dragon: The Synergistic Dance of Psychotherapy
and Meditation
by Steve Shealy, PhD
"These days... we are apt to seek out a therapist to... help us get the dragon back into its cave.
Therapists of many schools will oblige in this, and we will thus be returned to what Freud called
'ordinary unhappiness.' Zen (meditation), by contrast, offers dragon-riding lessons." - David
Brazier
How are Psychotherapy and Meditation related?
A wonderful fruit of my commitment to the practice and teaching of Vipassana (Insight)
meditation, is the opportunity to work with psychotherapy clients who also practice meditation.
From my experiences with these clients, I have come to appreciate the power and complexity of
the dance between these two practices. The more I examine this dance, the less confident I am in
reducing it to words. It seems to be a synergistic and dynamic process, not only one whose
product is greater than the sum of its parts, but one whose product varies across time and by
individual. Accepting that my investigation into psychotherapy and meditation may always be
incomplete, I will address this question by sharing what I have learned so far from my research
and personal clinical experience. I will begin with an examination of the limits of both and follow
with how each practice can support the other.
The Limits of Psychotherapy
In my psychotherapy (hereafter therapy) practice, I often work with clients who have been in
therapy on and off for a number a years, some for most of their adult lives, yet have not been
able to move into "full adulthood," into a life of integrated wholeness. Despite making significant
progress through the years with their psychological issues, some remnants of distorted
unconscious self image, anger, grief, or self-hatred still hold them hostage to some degree. The
ability to live out of their highest values and sense of purpose, or even to articulate clearly what
these are, is still beyond their grasp. They complain of a gnawing sense of emptiness and a
growing dissatisfaction with life.
These clients come back into therapy seeking a deeper understanding of reality and their place
in it. While some of the presenting symptoms remain the same, their focus of concern has become
more spiritual in nature. They sense that previous therapy helped prepare them for this spiritual
journey, yet there remains a lack of direction and necessary tools to complete it. It is clearly time
to go deeper. But how?
The Limits of Meditation
As a Vipassana meditation (hereafter meditation) teacher, a common complaint I hear from
students who have practiced for awhile is that psychological issues are arising and disrupting
the quiet peacefulness of their meditative space. One of the powerful fruits of meditation practice
is the establishment of mindfulness, the skill of simply being present with what's occurring to us
or within us at any moment in time without drifting into judgment, decision or internal dialogue.
Meditators learn to sit patiently, watching their internal experience (the only experience we
www.BeMindful.org Steve Shealy, PhD 813-980-2700
have) rise and fall without grasping or pushing it away and staying with the essence of the
experience without elaboration or emotional reactivity.
As the light of mindfulness is directed toward the workings of the mind, the layers of
conditioned thought and behavior patterns, the basic ingredients and underpinnings of our
psychological issues, are exposed. As the layers of the psychic onion are peeled away, deeper and
more subtle aspects of the mind's inner architecture are understood. Without corresponding
resolution, meditation practice will continue to be disrupted by the emotional disturbance
associated with this process. It is clearly time to bring resolution to these disturbing issues. But
how?
How Meditation Can Benefit Psychotherapy
One fruit of a disciplined meditation practice is the ability to sit and observe discomfort
mindfully without falling into the trap of emotional reactivity. This is a valuable resource for
anyone working through painful and anxiety-producing memories and issues in therapy.
Observing such feelings as panic, fear or rage without getting hooked by them allows the focus of
therapy to remain on the issues, not the client's reaction to them. This clear focus allows the
processing of emotionally-laden material to proceed more quickly to resolution and integration.
How Psychotherapy Can Benefit Meditation
The meditation students who are engaged in psychotherapeutic work seem better able to
progress with their meditation practice than those students who are less aggressive in resolving
their psychological issues. For the students not engaged in therapy, the same disturbing issues
keep coming up in the mind, blocking the meditation practice. The process of working through
issues in therapy defuses the emotional charge, rendering them less disruptive. Therapy can lead
to a shift in perspective to a larger, more skillful view of one's reality, both present-centered and
memory-based. Resolution of underlying psychological issues allows the still focus of meditation
to be safeguarded from the emotionality of the moment.
The On-going Dance
The dance goes something like this: psychotherapy leads to the resolution of underlying
psychological issues which allows meditation practice to deepen as the meditator is no longer so
easily pulled off center by emotionally disruptive images, thoughts and feelings. The deepening
of meditation practice allows deeper insight into how the mind reacts to such issues. With this
deeper insight, further progress can be made in therapy. . . this leads to a more settled and
focused meditation experience. . . which leads to deeper insight. . . and so on. . .. It goes full circle
with movement in one area allowing greater movement in the other.
Riding the Dragon
What I have seen in the past few years with some of my clients who engage in both insight
meditation and psychotherapy has been quite impressive. Moving through intense underlying
psychological issues quickly while reporting a deepening of their meditation practice, they move
along their spiritual path with less baggage and with more effective tools for the journey.
www.BeMindful.org Steve Shealy, PhD 813-980-2700
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