About Mindfulness

Mindfulness refers to attention that can be directed inside as well as outside of ourselves. For example, attention to feelings, body sensations, thoughts, or emotions is directed inward. Attention to a conversation with a friend, trees in a forest, sounds, or a book, for instance, is directed outward.  Mindfulness refers to attention in the here and now. Attention to the things that are happening at this very moment. This may sound easy, but how often is our attention redirected by our thoughts? Although thinking is undeniably convenient, as it allows us to make plans and solve difficult problems, at the same time, it often triggers many problems. Our minds can get easily lost in endless thinking (worrying and rumination). Our thoughts create emotions and feelings like fear and sadness. We lie awake at night because we worry about what might happen tomorrow. We cannot stop thinking about that mistake we made last week. In our minds, we are constantly busy with the things that need to be completed. These are only a few examples of how our minds can make life difficult. Mindfulness teaches us to deal with these problematic thoughts by focusing our attention on the here and now. Mindfulness helps us create a different relationship with our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Mindful attention means attention without judgment. Often, sensations like tension or fear are automatically labeled as “bad,” “inappropriate,” or “unwanted.” When we judge a certain feeling (“I experience fear, this is bad, I don’t want to feel this way”), we automatically create a conflict, a conflict between the current feeling (“bad”) and the expected or ideal feeling (“good”). Any attempts to resolve this conflict, for instance by suppressing a negative feeling, require a lot of energy (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998) and paradoxically cause us to feel even worse (rebound effects; Wegner, 1994).

Acceptance plays a key role in mindfulness. We allow every feeling, emotion, sensation, or thought to be there through mindful attention and acceptance. They are there anyway. Instead of fighting against feelings or thoughts, mindfulness fosters a willingness to acknowledge, allow, and accept these internal states. By letting go of this struggle and fight, we save energy (Alberts, Schneider, & Martijn, 2011) and realize that the things we fight against often fade away automatically, often sooner than when we actively fight against them. As soon as we acknowledge the emotion, one can experience it as a temporary state; in other words, the emotion comes and goes. In this way, one becomes an observer of one’s own inner state (through observing the self; Deikman, 1982). One is no longer identified and completely lost in the content of thoughts or feelings but becomes an observer. This observer can still experience emotions or feelings but can now also decide whether he/she wants to be fully taken by them. By observing thoughts without judgment, one can experience their transient nature. In addition, we learn that not everything we think is true. Mindfulness can help us identify less with feelings, emotions, or thoughts.

In other words, we are not our emotions or thoughts, we can simply be aware of our emotions or thoughts.

The Training

All our training is based on positive psychology.  In summary, positive psychology has been described in many ways and with many words, but the commonly accepted definition of the field is:

“Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008).

To push this brief description a bit further, positive psychology is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal” (Peterson, 2008). Positive psychology focuses on the positive events and influences in life, including:

As a field, positive psychology spends much of its time thinking about topics like character strengths, optimism, life satisfaction, happiness, well-being, gratitude, compassion (as well as self-compassion), self-esteem and self-confidence, hope, and elevation.

These topics are studied in order to learn how to help people flourish and live their best lives.

Mindfulness Syllabus

Session 1 – Attention & Now
Session 2 – Automaticity
Session 3 – Judgment
Session 4 – Acceptance
Session 5 – Goals
Session 6 – Compassion
Session 7 – Ego
Session 8 – Integration