Every day at noon, for 15 minutes, before lunch, it was the routine practice that all the seminarians would retreat to their rooms in silence (in solitude) to contemplate your actions and your reactions for that day (or prior days if that’s what came to your mind) then observe yourself as a third person and judge your own actions as good or bad, right or wrong, as seen from a third-person perspective. The next step was to question your motives, your feelings, your hidden thoughts that prompted your behavior.

Naturally, if you discovered good inner motives that prompted good behaviors you strived for increasing those good behaviors and feeding those good inner motives.

On the other hand, if you discovered bad inner motives that prompted bad behaviors you identified what thoughts and what behaviors would counter, lessen, and eventually overcome those bad inner motives. Your ‘homework’ was then to embody behaviors and thoughts that realigned those negative inner motives towards positive inner motives.

What was stressed to us as seminarians was that actions, behaviors, came first; feelings would later follow. It was imporant to practice good behaviors because they were good in and of themselves, not because our emotional state liked or enjoyed the good behaviors. The counter argument was just as true. It was important to avoid and restrain one’s bad behaviours, despite the feelings of eagerness and desire that motivated those behaviors.

Examples: Just because you had the strong urge to put somebody down and say something that would be very sarcastic and very amusing to yourself, you bit your tongue and avoided speaking something that would be hurtful to the other person.

If a person you didn’t like did something good and marvelous, you did not miss the opportunity to congratulate them on their private success. Your feelings of not caring were not sufficient for you to decide to omit performing a good behavior like encouragement.

I admit, after leaving the seminary, I haven’t done my Conscience Exams (Examinations of Conscience). I haven’t had any meditation time set aside. If mindfulness and broadness of thought all stem from meditation, then the lack of meditation would narrow our thoughts and make us less mindful people. I know it logically it’s a valid conclusion, can we say that if IF A then B Therefore: If Not B then Not A. I think Marcial would be up to speed on that one. I forget my Boolean Logic Truth Tables off-hand.

It’s so great to see this deep-seated integration of practice with a client with the theory of how broadening, mindfulness, CBT work.

Wayne, thanks for the mindfulness-CBT link.
Leanrainmaking, that is really neat to hear about the mindfulness-science connection. Reading your perspective actually made a few things clearer for me – that’s similar to part of what is appealing about mindfulness to me also.

Kirsten, thanks too for the thoughts to Dave’s question about moving meditations. I will email you offline for some more info too. Thank you.

S.

I’m glad my articles are useful to you. I do have some research that points to the benefits of yoga, particularly in regard to stress and mood. Also, tai chi is a form of mindfulness that requires focusing, one of the bedrocks of mindfulness.

I can pass along the research to you if you’d like to email me offline.

Kirsten

Thanks for the feedback on my article. I’m glad it spoke to you.

Yes, I do use Wayne’s software, although there are other places that offer other versions. And that is just one mindfulness tool in my practice.

Kirsten

I think there are probably a lot of reasons why mindfulness is gaining credibility in the pos psych world. Largely, I think it’s because the research is outlining the ways in which it is effective, and the fact that it IS so effective. Given that information, practitioners like myself find themselves better able to help clients.

I think also that the ideas of mindfulness and meditation are becoming much more mainstream in our culture, so there is an openness to exploring what they have to offer.

What do you think?

Kirsten

There is a growing body of research that suggests that mindfulness improves the efficacy of CBT (see http://www.innate-intelligence.com.au/blog/?p=356) and might in fact be more powerful the CBT (http://www.innate-intelligence.com.au/blog/?p=394.

It’s interesting that mindfulness seems to be a hot topic on various PP forums. I’m wondering if its because mindfulness might be the most effective way to cope with todays tough economic times. Wht do you think?