Synopses & Reviews
Mindfulness-based interventions have exploded in popularity due to their success in treating everything from everyday stress to more serious mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This breakthrough book provides professionals with a comprehensive, session-by-session guide to teaching mindfulness, complete with the scripts and training materials needed to teach introductory mindfulness in a wide variety of settings, despite theoretical background.
Mindfulness—once an ancient practice honed in Buddhist monasteries—is now a mainstream, evidence-based, secular intervention employed by trained health and mental health professionals worldwide. The rapid spread of mindfulness increasingly involves psychologists, physicians, social workers, therapists, counselors, spiritual advisers, life coaches, and education professionals trained in their respective disciplines. Additionally, research continues to show that mindfulness is an effective treatment for anxiety, depression, stress, pain relief, and many other illnesses.
If you are a professional interested in teaching mindfulness, this book will provide you with everything you need to get started right away. The introductory, six-week protocol outlined in this book is easy-to-use, and can be implemented in a variety of settings, ranging from an outpatient mental health clinic to an inpatient oncology clinic, from a substance abuse recovery program to educational settings.
In addition, this book will tell you what to bring to each class; provides outlines for each session; offers scripts to help you differentiate the weekly meditative practices; and provides invaluable resources for further study and professional development. If you’re looking to integrate mindfulness into your professional work, this is your go-to guide.
Review
“A ‘must-read’ for anyone who wants to teach mindfulness in groups. The authors’ experience and talent shine through every page. They spell out for readers what is often implied in hands-on teacher trainings. A special bonus is how mindfulness and compassion are seamlessly woven together. Highly recommended!”
—Christopher Germer, PhD, author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, coeditor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, and clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School
Review
"What a beautiful, wise, and user-friendly handbook on how to teach mindfulness. I also appreciate how the authors provide clear directions on how to support the clinicians ability to sit in the mindfulness teachers seat with greater wisdom and humility.”
Bob Stahl, PhD, coauthor of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Living with Your Heart Wide Open, Calming the Rush of Panic, A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety, and MBSR Every Day
Review
I cant imagine a more ideal how-to-teach-mindfulness manual! This book offers clear and comprehensive support in learning to lead meditations, offer beginners classes, and respond to the natural challenges and questions that arise in introducing mindfulness to clients. Keep this guide close at handit will enable you to bring your full intelligence, heart, and confidence to sharing these life-transforming practices.”
Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
Review
What a practical, thorough, extraordinary book. Wolf and Serpa give a crystal clear road map for any professional wanting to teach mindfulness in clinical settings. Their detailed lesson plans and voice-of-experience guidance are infused with their own deep practice of mindfulness, encouraging support, and clinical acumen. Highly recommended.”
Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddhas Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Review
Broad in scope, yet practical,
A Clinicians Guide to Teaching Mindfulness can serve as a resource for secular mindfulness teacher training programs. Clearly the result of years of experience, this book provides especially good support for new instructors, while those with experience will appreciate its clarity and fresh perspectives.”
Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness
Review
Wolf and Serpa have given us a wonderful gifta clear, complete, and inspiring guide for teaching the basics of mindfulness. The authors deep understanding of this topic from both Buddhist and psychotherapist perspectives is evident throughout, and helps to make this book not only a very practical manual, but also a succinct and direct guide for how to become a more effective and comfortable teacher or facilitator of mindfulness. This book will be highly valuable for anyone interested in this area, regardless of prior experience. Absolutely the best book on this topic I have encountered.”
Bruce D. Naliboff, PhD, research professor of medicine and psychiatry, and biobehavioral sciences director in the pain research program at the Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Review
A Clinicians Guide to Teaching Mindfulness is a wonderful guide for far more than only clinicians! There is no one on this lifes journey who cannot deepen their experience and their joy through understanding and practicing mindfulness. When we as clinicians, in the broadest sense of the word, advance our capacity to understand and teach these fundamental concepts, this way of being in the world and in our lives will take root more organically. It will become a fundamental way of being. I would highly recommend this book as a guide to all of us who would like to better help ourselves and others discover, understand, and integrate this way of being.”
Tracy W. Gaudet, MD, executive director of the Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation, US Department of Veterans Affairs
Review
Thorough, practical, and full of heart and integrity. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking to get started or enhance their ability to teach mindfulness individually or in groups.”
Elisha Goldstein, PhD, author of Uncovering Happiness
Synopsis
In the tradition of ACT Made Simple, DBT Made Simple is a manual for therapists seeking to understand and apply the four dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills in individual therapy. DBT is an effective treatment for borderline personality disorder, self-injury, chemical dependency, trauma related to sexual abuse, and various mood disorders.
Synopsis
Mindfulness-based interventions have exploded in popularity. What was once an ancient practice honed in Buddhist monasteries is now a mainstream, evidence-based, secular intervention employed by trained health and mental health professionals. A Clinicians Guide to Teaching Mindfulness provides professionals with a comprehensive, session-by-session guide, complete with the scripts and training materials needed to teach introductory mindfulness in a wide variety of settings, despite theoretical background.
Synopsis
Originally developed for the treatment of borderline personality disorder, dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, has rapidly become one of the most popular and most effective treatments for all mental health conditions rooted in out-of-control emotions. However, there are limited resources for psychologists seeking to use DBT skills with individual clients. In the tradition of ACT Made Simple, DBT Made Simple provides clinicians with everything they need to know to start using DBT in the therapy room.
The first part of this book briefly covers the theory and research behind DBT and explains how DBT differs from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy approaches. The second part focuses on strategies professionals can use in individual client sessions, while the third section teaches the four skills modules that form the backbone of DBT: core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. The book includes handouts, case examples, and example therapist-client dialogue—everything clinicians need to equip their clients with these effective and life-changing skills.
Synopsis
Mindfulness meditation can help both therapists and clients stay in the present moment and make the most of treatment sessions. This comprehensive training manual presents the mindfulness pyramid model: a practical, multi-dimensional, and graphic model for implementing mindfulness in psychotherapy. Using the new approach outlined in this book, therapists will be able to employ the healing power of mindfulness for better treatment outcomes.
Synopsis
Mindfulness meditation can help both therapist and client stay in the present moment and make the most of treatment sessions. This new and unique approach will allow you to employ the healing power of mindfulness in session for better client outcomes.
If you’re a psychotherapist interested in implementing mindfulness practices into your therapy sessions, The Essential Guide to Mindfulness Meditation in Psychotherapy is a comprehensive manual to get you started. In this book, psychotherapist Steven Alper presents the mindfulness pyramid model: a multi-dimensional and graphic model for implementing mindfulness in psychotherapy.
This practical guide will help demystify mindfulness meditation; elaborate on the psychotherapeutic benefits of practices such as body scan, breath awareness, sitting meditation, and lovingkindness; and offer helpful strategies for teaching formal and informal mindfulness skills to clients. This book conceptualizes and explores the applicability of his mindfulness pyramid model, and delves into the many ways in which mindfulness can manifest and be incorporated in psychotherapy.
This is a must-have resource for any therapist.
About the Author
J. Greg Serpa, PhD, is a clinical psychologist for the US Department of Veterans Affairs at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He is honored to teach mindfulness to America's veterans and is the first full-time mindfulness teacher and trainer in the federal system. Serpa is an associate clinical professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an associate visiting clinical scientist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He teaches intensive mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindful self-compassion (MSC), and introductory level mindfulness classes at four area hospitals, and serves as a trainer, supervisor, and consultant to clinicians at the VA and UCLA. He is currently the director of interprofessional mental health education at the West Los Angeles VA, where he trains psychology postdoctoral fellows, psychiatry residents, social work interns, and nurses in mindfulness and integrative modalities of health and well-being. Serpa is a national mindfulness content expert for the VA's Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation, where he and Christiane Wolf are preparing mindfulness toolkits for national dissemination. He is also an active researcher with a number of projects expanding on the evidence basis of mindfulness interventions. This includes a National Institutes of Health-funded biomarker study examining the impact of meditation on brain structure in combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic headache.Jack Kornfield, PhD, is cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. He is author of many books, including A Path with Heart and The Wise Heart.Trudy Goodman, PhD, is a senior Vipassana teacher in Los Angeles, cofounder of the Growing Spirit program, and contributing author to several books, including