Advances In Contemplative Psychotherapy

Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy offers mental health professionals of all disciplines and orientations the most comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the art of integrating contemplative psychology, ethics, and practices, including mindfulness, compassion, and embodiment techniques. It brings together clinicians, scholars, and thought leaders of unprecedented caliber, featuring some of the most eminent pioneers in the rapidly growing field of contemplative psychotherapy. The new edition offers an expanded array of effective contemplative interventions, contemplative psychotherapies, and contemplative approaches to clinical practice. New chapters discuss how contemplative work can effect positive psychosocial change at the personal, interpersonal, and collective levels to address racial, gender, and other forms of systemic oppression. The new edition also explores the cross-cultural nuances in the integration of Buddhist psychology and healing practices by Western researchers and clinicians and includes the voices of leading Tibetan doctors. Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy offers a profound and synoptic overview of one of psychotherapy’s most intriguing and promising fields.

Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy offers mental health professionals of all disciplines and orientations the most comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the state of the art and science in integrating mindfulness, compassion, and embodiment techniques. It brings together clinicians and thinkers of unprecedented caliber, featuring some of the most eminent pioneers in a rapidly growing field. The array of contributors represents the full spectrum of disciplines whose converging advances are driving today’s promising confluence of psychotherapy with contemplative science. This historic volume expands the dialogue and integration among neuroscience, contemplative psychology, and psychotherapy to include the first full treatment of second- and third-generation contemplative therapies, based on advanced meditation techniques of compassion training and role-modeled embodiment. Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy offers the most profound and synoptic overview to date of one of the most intriguing and promising fields in psychotherapy today.

Today’s greatest health challenges, the so-called diseases of civilization—depression, trauma, obesity, cancer—are now known in large part to reflect our inability to tame stress reflexes gone wild and to empower instead the peaceful, healing and sociable part of our nature that adapts us to civilized life. The same can be said of the economic challenges posed by the stress-reactive cycles of boom and bust, driven by addictive greed and compulsive panic. As current research opens up new horizons of stress-cessation, empathic intelligence, peak performance, and shared happiness, it has also encountered Asian methods of self-healing and interdependence more effective and teachable than any known in the West. Sustainable Happiness is the first book to make Asia’s most rigorous and complete system of contemplative living, hidden for centuries in Tibet, accessible to help us all on our shared journey towards sustainable well-being, altruism, inspiration and happiness.

"We cannot find ourselves, or be ourselves, alone." - from Mixing Minds Mixing Minds explores the interpersonal relationships between psychoanalysts and their patients, and Buddhist teachers and their students. Through the author's own personal journey in both traditions, she sheds light on how these contrasting approaches to wellness affect our most intimate relationships. These dynamic relationships provide us with keen insight into the emotional ups and downs of our lives - from fear and anxiety to love, compassion, and equanimity. Mixing Minds delves into the most intimate of relationships and shows us how these relationships are the key to the realization of our true selves.

A basic guide for all therapists to incorporating simple Buddhist principles for optimal therapy effectiveness. Both Western psychotherapy and the Buddhist spiritual path are journeys toward increased self-awareness, understanding, and well-being. By drawing on the Buddhist psychological teachings, Contemplative Psychotherapy provides a deeper, richer approach to client work, one that can greatly enhance and expand a clinician’s therapeutic repertoire. While much has been written recently about mindfulness in psychotherapy and the underlying theory of Buddhist psychology, no book has yet been written that explains to therapists how to apply these teachings in their day-to-day clinical work with clients. This book will answer that need. Karen Kissel Wegela, a leading practitioner and teacher of contemplative psychotherapy, eloquently walks readers through the foundational concepts of this approach and its specific clinical practices, providing lucid guidance on what Buddhist psychology means in the context of therapy work and how to practice it. As Wegela explains, five basic competencies underlie all that a contemplative therapist does: (1) being present and letting be, (2) seeing clearly and not judging, (3) recognizing and appreciating differences, (4) connecting with others and cultivating relationship, and, finally, (5) acting skillfully and letting go. Having a personal mindfulness-awareness practice helps therapists to develop these competencies, and this book offers a step-by-step description of how to establish such a practice. The book explores the nuances of contemplative therapy practice, beginning with creating genuine therapeutic relationships and learning how to recognize “brilliant sanity”—not only psychopathology—in our clients, and goes on to consider sowing the seeds of mindfulness, making skillful use of mindlessness practices, investigating emotions, cultivating compassion, and working with anger. Filled with client vignettes and practical guidance in an eminently wise, openhearted tone, Contemplative Psychotherapy Essentials makes the increasingly popular pairing of Buddhist psychology with traditional therapy accessible for any clinician, putting readers and their clients in better touch with the present moment—their bodies, emotions, and minds—for more enduring change.

This book, now in its fifth edition, provides a comprehensive introduction to Buddhist psychology and counselling, exploring key concepts in psychology and practical applications in mindfulness-based counselling techniques using Buddhist philosophy of mind, psychology, ethics and contemplative methods.

Science has long treated religion as a set of personal beliefs that have little to do with a rational understanding of the mind and the universe. This work attempts to bridge this gap by launching an unbiased investigation into the history and practices of science and Buddhist contemplative disciplines.

Early on in her clinical practice, psychoanalyst Pilar Jennings was presented with a particularly difficult case: a six-year-old girl who, traumatized by loss, had stopped speaking. Challenged by the limitations of her training to respond effectively to the isolating effect of childhood trauma, Jennings takes the unconventional path of inviting her friend Lama Pema—a kindly Tibetan Buddhist monk who experienced his own life-shaping trauma at a very young age—into their sessions. In the warm therapeutic space they create, the young girl slowly begins to heal. The result is a fascinating case study of the intersection of Western psychology and Buddhist teachings. Pilar’s story is for therapists, parents, Buddhists, or any of us who hold out the hope that even the deepest childhood wounds can be the portal to our capacity to love and be loved.