Mindfulness

• What is it?

  ·         A psychological approach focused on being in the moment rather than the future or the past

  ·         It can be used to treat both addiction and stress.
• Main features of mindfulness:

  1-      Attending to and regulating thoughts, feelings and emotions. You monitor your present thoughts and feelings so you can step back from them, observe and accept them. Therefore, negative thoughts and feelings do not take over and control you.
• Main features of mindfulness

  2-      Being in the present- Having a moment to moment awareness of body sensations, sights, smells, sounds etc.
• Main features of mindfulness:

  3-      Promoting healthy behaviour- Mindfulness can be development through training and practicing certain techniques. These techniques are then applied to everyday life. They can make positive changes to the lives and behaviour because they experience the presence more clearly.
• Mindfulness and stress: 1

  Jon Kabat-Zinn: devised mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR), a structured programme of standardised techniques based on Buddhist meditation. Some of the elements are:

  ·         Mindful focus- turn your attention inwards and observe your own thoughts without judging or evaluating them (becoming more aware of your breathing can help)

  ·         Body scan- lie on your back and become aware of different parts of your body, from your feet upwards. Focus awareness on any tense or painful areas until they relax.
• Mindfulness and stress 2:

  ·         Mindful stretching- slowly change the position of your body and focus on the physical sensations as you do it (you can take this technique further with yoga)

  ·         MSBR reduces stress because you are less troubled by stressful thoughts as they pass through your mind (promotes distraction by focusing attention away from sources of stress).
• Mindfulness and addiction:

  Eric Garland (2013)- developed programme for addiction recovery called mindfulness-orientated recovery enhancement (MORE)

  MORE helps an addict person more aware of their behaviour (mindful rather than mindless)

  One technique- chocolate exercice. A client holds piece of chocolate under their nose and experience their automatic cravings, linking this with cravings for their addictive drug/behaviour. The client switches their attention from their cravings to their breathing and eventually the cravings subside, reducing the power of addictive cues.
• Evaluation: Strengths

  ·         + Mindfulness has wide application to a variety of settings including education, medical related stress, sport. It is a very flexible treatment option.

  ·         + A metanalysis of MORE found mindfulness to be an effective treatment option
• Evaluation: Weakness

  ·         - Mindfulness may be overhyped, however, the research rarely contains a control group