Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation

The word ‘mindfulness’ refers to a psychological trait or quality of consciousness, while ‘mindful’ refers to a psychological state or process of being aware. Mindfulness as a type of meditation originated in Buddhist India around 500 BCE. The term is a translation of the Pali word sati and the Sanskrit word smrti, which means ‘to remember’.

control; it is represented by the Vajrayana Buddhism of Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia, the schools encountered by the West through the Tibetan refugee community that fled to India in 1959 (Loizzo, 2012).

one begins meditative training by restricting the focus of attention to the smallest input or stimulus, similar to narrowing the focus of the aperture on a telephoto lens to magnify something small or remote.

According to tradition, present-centered awareness trained repeatedly over time through mindfulness practice produces several distinct mental qualities: relaxation, concentration, balanced sensitivity, mental clarity, and pliancy. In addition, mindfulness affords two key skills—recognition and choice. These skills are not well documented, but are t

of the clinical research on mindfulness identified five major mechanisms underlying positive change: relaxation, acceptance, affect tolerance, behavior change, and meta-cognitive awareness/insight. A more recent wave of neuroscientific research correlates these psychological effects with specific brain changes (Lutz et al., 2007). Taken together, a

By optimizing the brain’s full capacity for social learning, these practices expand the mind’s openness to shared introspection and corrective dialogue; and by cultivating that shift in a stable, supportive social learning environment, they sustain that openness though repeated practice over time. As a result, they facilitate a gradual dismantling

The fact that mindfulness increases affect tolerance and emotional sensitivity is supported by many studies, such as one that showed significant reduction in anxiety and panic maintained over three years as a result of an MBI (Miller et al., 1995).

Wisdom, meditation, and ethical training each work synergistically (rather than linearly) to support one another. Harmonious lifestyle reduces fluctuations of mind and facilitates deepening insight, while insight into the nature of reality fosters tranquility and enables a responsible, caring engagement with life. Like the three-pronged cycle of se

have historically been used to describe a discipline of reflection considered central to introspective learning, especially the meditative learning practiced by lay and professional people in Western religious institutions and traditions. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, has evolved as a healing method of reflection and introspective learning, inf