Keynote: Mark Epstein, MD, author of the acclaimed Thoughts Without a Thinker, The Trauma of Everyday Life, Going on Being, and The Zen of Therapy
Acclaimed psychiatrist and mindfulness writer, Mark Epstein, MD, reflects on a deeply personal inquiry weaving together his Western psychology training with mindfulness. Using powerful client stories, he reveals how a therapist can cultivate wonder and trust in therapy, no matter how fraught our clients may seem. Participants who attend this presentation will be able to determine how the essentials of Buddhist psychology can practically apply to their clinical work and the relationship between mindfulness and mentalization – our ability to understand ourselves and how that underlies our behavior. Finally, participants will be able to distinguish between mindfulness and insight practices and how the concept of “emptiness” can help clinicians better understand themselves and how it applies in their work with clients.
Objectives
You want to reduce your clients’ suffering due to anxiety, depression, and even trauma. But where do you even start? Mindful breathing is the answer you’ve been looking for. In this session, award-winning pulmonologist and mindfulness teacher Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang will help you discover the synergy between science and experiential practical application and learn how to teach and empower your clients by adding mindful breathing practices to their self-management techniques.
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What if the root of addiction isn’t in the substances itself, but somewhere deeper? While addiction can be difficult to overcome, mindfulness may offer a promising step forward in treating it. Through his clinical work and neuroscience research studies, as well as by developing digital therapeutics for habit change, Judson Brewer will discuss the elementary mental mechanism that promotes cravings and addictions which dates back to prehistoric days. He will explain how our brains employ reward-based learning and intermittent reinforcement to construct habits gradually; these habits are hard to break. In this session, Judson will describe why habits form and simple ways that we can break unhealthy ones ranging from smartphones to stress eating and even anxiety. He will also show how we can use these to build our natural capacities of awareness, kindness, and curiosity.
Objectives
The deep shame and self-loathing that many of your traumatized clients experience can be difficult, if not impossible, to address. How can you get clients to shift their mind-set and begin healing when traditional therapies fall short? Susan Pollak, MTS, MEd, EdD, will give you practical skills for mindfulness meditation and self-compassion that will transform your clinical practice and help you guide clients through the healing process.
Objectives
Ethnic and race-based traumatic stress is a worldwide phenomenon. Regardless of race and ethnicity, from those who are harmed to those who intentionally or unwittingly do harm, we are all impacted by its damaging effects. No one is immune. To remain relevant the therapeutic community needs to be prepared to address this form of stress and trauma. Therapists who lack critical awareness of race and racism, who have not lived the experience of being directly impacted, have not adequately dealt with their own racial hang-ups, and who are uncomfortable dealing with issues of race and ethnicity, become part of the problem. Unexamined racialized attitudes, and adherence to racial stereotypes within the clinical setting have the potential to negatively impact the quality of the experience of those seeking help. Compassionate self-study, a mindfulness based practice, is a necessary first step in preparing to deal effectively with clients experiencing ethnic and race-based stress and trauma. This session invites clinicians interested in doing this work to begin preparing themselves emotionally by exploring their relationship to their own racial and ethnic orientation.
Objectives
A review of over 200 studies found Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) as effective as antidepressants for reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. MCBT uses mindfulness practices combined with exercises drawn from Cognitive Behavior Therapy to help clients be present to the experiences that overwhelm their window of tolerance. This experience of being here and now invites the opportunity for more skillful response and allows clients to find new ways to be with, and release difficulties, that seem to repeat over and over. This introductory session will give your clients (and yourself!) the indispensable tool for on-the-spot stabilization of mind and mood through the use of MBCT. Honing this ability to become a curious observer of all experience allows for the possibility of on-the-spot stabilization of mind and mood, an indispensable tool for our clients and within your own clinical work.
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What do you do when medication and traditional therapies stop working for your clients struggling with ADHD? Utilizing the practice of mindfulness and specific exercises based in neuroscience can help you break through your roadblocks and help clients regain their focus. This session will give you an in-depth look at the truths and misconceptions of using mindfulness to help treat ADHD, as well as the neuroscience that informs the practice and the evidence-based treatments that are available for your clients, from children to adults and even parents.
Objectives
Mindful Writing is an expressive practice that focuses on the present moment and silence, introspection, discernment, and other contemplative means. Grief and loss are ubiquitous; sooner or later, we will experience them. We will apply MW as a therapeutic means to examine the gifts within grief and loss. MW uses all the senses without judgment to express true-to-life depictions of our inner and outer experiences. This therapeutic approach aids in the cultivation of more in-depth relationships with clients as they traverse grief. The process moves in three cycles, the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and the spiritual, offering skilful means to hold the therapeutic space with compassion and kindness.
Mindful Writing provides pathways to wholeness. “Wholeness” includes all aspects of our lives, not just the desirable and the positive, but the neutral, negative, or dislikable. Looking at wholeness as just made of positive experiences is incomplete and creates aversion. This approach sees grief and loss as part of wholeness.
By the end of our time together, you will be able to apply the teaching of compassion and facilitate intrapersonal growth in your clients by using simple practices to get in touch with grief and loss. Additionally, you will employ this knowledge in day-to-day living as you investigate your responses to loss and grief. It is easier to teach what we experience first-hand. You will assess and apply Mindfulness, with its four foundations, to the practice of writing as a therapeutic means of navigating grief and loss. You will see how “Our tendency for self-protection leads us to store the conflicting emotions of grief in some dark, cramped corner of the mind or body. But avoidance or resistance to grief only intensifies the pain.” Fran Ostaseki
You will extrapolate the universal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the collective grief that is ensuing and how to improve clinical outcomes by facilitating MW as a preventative measure.
Objectives
So many people have trouble with sitting meditation, and complaints range from not having time or finding it hard to sit still. Dr. Susan Pollak, Harvard Psychologist, has watched her students struggle with seated meditation for years but research shows that informal and brief meditation is very effective. In this session, she will share her most accessible and practical mindfulness exercises – all of which don’t require formal seated practices. Informal practices, like walking meditation, caregiving and parenting, and loving kindness in the midst of chaos will be explored.
Objectives
More and more people are seeking effective ways to reduce anxiety and manage overwhelming stress. The Think Act Be approach to mindfulness-centred cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) offers three research-proven ways to cope with these challenges:
This session will begin with a brief overview of the Think Act Be approach and the research to support its effectiveness. It will then describe a method of integrating mindfulness-centred CBT practices into one’s daily routine, from the first moments after awakening until going to bed at night. These straightforward and practical exercises can help to keep stress and anxiety within a manageable range while increasing self-efficacy to handle challenging emotional states.
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Over the years, worldwide awareness and understanding of autism spectrum disorder has grown to the point where children are more likely to be identified and diagnosed at a much earlier age. What this means, additionally, is that an increasing number of adults are also being identified for the very first time in their lives.
As a spectrum diagnosis, the symptoms and presentation of autism can fly easily under the radar and you may find yourself with autistic clients just forming their initial understanding. With close to 50% of autistic individuals reporting co-occurring anxiety disorders, clients have likely struggled with self-esteem & belonging, rigid thinking and confusion about social interactions. Mindfulness exercises have been shown to help autistic clients reduce anxiety, increase social/emotional reciprocity, reduce rumination and increase emotional regulation.
This course will provide an in-depth look at social and emotional impacts for adults living with level one ASD and how mindfulness interventions can provide a useful shift. Specific mindfulness exercises will be provided for use in your clinical practice.
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