and conscious self-healing. Over the past forty years research in mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have demonstrated reductions in a wide variety of clinical issues and syndromes including chronic pain, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, self-injurious behavior, and addictions. Additionally, immune function, concentration,

Aligned with this new direction, breakthroughs in our understanding of the prefrontal cortex, limbic system, and brainstem have revealed the human brain to be much more geared to social cognition, social

The shift began when the first research studies of meditation, notably transcendental meditation (TM), inspired the groundbreaking clinical paradigms of the 1970s and 1980s: Herb Benson’s relaxation response and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) (Beary & Benson, 1974; Kabat-Zinn, 1982).

Awareness of physical sensations involves an attunement to one’s sensory feeling tone, specifically noting if the experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. By coupling an attitude of inquisitiveness, patience, and acceptance with this mindful observing of whatever is encountered, one learns to override habitual reactive tendencies of clinging

To his credit, Freud correctly read the landscape of modern culture and made a tactical decision that allowed psychotherapy to become a mainstream institution in an era in which scientific modernity obliged us to leave contemplative healing and pedagogy behind, as artifacts of humanity’s religious past.

This wave gave us the psychology of embodied cognition and embodied mind‒brain integration, along with role-modeling imagery, affirmative recitation, and advanced breath–energy

As awareness is trained, it is more accessible for self-redirection

Since this observing of mental states includes the prior foundations of body and sensation, it avoids the pitfalls of disembodied abstraction and numbing detachment. So mindfulness of mind protects one from the escapism or disassociation characteristic of spiritual bypassing, by engaging mind/body events fully, clearly, and courageously without

all methods of meditation and psychotherapy work by deepening relaxation and heightening attention—