What Mindfulness Really Means in ACT Therapy
Blog #1 in The Hexaflex: a 6 part series on Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
History of Mindfulness
The ideas surrounding mindfulness began in Eastern traditions and religion, particularly Buddhism in the 6th or 5th century BCE. The Pali word sati is commonly translated to mindfulness in English. Sati commonly referred to the act of contemplation following teaching from Buddha. Followers were asked to engage with quiet meditation. They reflected on how the ideas could be translated to their own lives.
In more contemporary understandings of the practice, Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön expresses: “meditation works very directly with beginning to see what we’re doing and beginning to realize that we have a choice in any moment to either return to the present or to escalate our suffering by letting our stories and thoughts take over.”
Later in 1975, the ideas of Buddhism were used in therapeutic contexts. Herbert Benson was among the first. He was a doctor at Harvard. He attempted to show the benefits of intercessory prayer on the heart following major surgery.
Afterwards, others would follow. In fact, they would develop whole treatment modalities based on the practice itself. These include Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
What Mindfulness Is Not
Because of its generalizability, mindfulness is used amongst many therapies. It's incorporated into many interventions across the field of therapy. The introduction of mindfulness into the fold of Western therapy was seen by many as an appropriation of culture into a modern and capitalistic world.
The term "McMindfulness" was dubbed by Ronald Purser in 2019. It describes the overwhelming sense that mindfulness had been transformed into a way to pacify and quiet emotions, feelings, and thoughts rather than exploring them more deeply. The idea that mindfulness as a practice is one to calm down, relax, and breathe remains a part of mindfulness practices globally. But it is not the goal in modern Buddhist practice or in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Use in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
As a practitioner of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, I feel like I've had a very similar conversation with clients in the past about using the skill. When asking my own clients about their experience with mindfulness, they will often explain that the school they went to might have had a practice at the beginning of the day. It came through the school PA system, asking students to relax and start the day.
While beneficial and compassionate at times to offer a space to deep breathe and relax, the idea of mindfulness in session often shifts its attention away from this form of mindfulness. It focuses its efforts on deepening experience rather than avoiding it.
Why Mindfulness Takes Practice
Mindfulness is not a practice that comes naturally to humans. We often have to allow ourselves to become aware that a mindful moment is necessary. I've never met someone in my work professionally or personally who just knew from their gut exactly what they were feeling, experiencing, and noticing all in one moment. Our attention does not allow this to be very possible without practice.
Imagine for a moment you're looking for a quarter in your car to feed the meter when you go to park downtown. You just cannot seem to find any in your car! Instead you've just passed over the 3 dimes in your glove compartment because it wasn't the quarter you were imagining.
Our attention to experiencing our emotions, feelings, and memories are similar. Deliberately including those parts of your experience, especially unexpected or unwanted ones, can be entirely difficult.
Practice with Me
As you are reading this paragraph, take a second to practice. Close your eyes for a moment.
How long did it feel like you closed them for?
As you opened your eyes, what was the first thing that caught your attention visually?
If you had to describe that image to an alien, what would you say?
What emotions did you feel looking at the object? What about now?
Pause for a second and notice the chair that you're sitting in while you read. Where is the chair contacting your body?
Can you feel the air in the room making contact with your skin? Does it feel warm or cool?
To experience mindfulness is to experience deeply and fully. Allowing yourself to understand your entire experience, wanted or unwanted, is the purpose of building the skill.
What Mindfulness Looks Like in an ACT Session
In an ACT therapy session with me, you might see something similar to this exercise above. I also find that formal eyes-closed exercises are also great for utilizing time to engage with various skills from other areas of ACT. My favorite eyes-closed exercise that engages with mindfulness is "Dropping Anchor." It might look something similar to this example from Russ Harris, a leading practitioner in ACT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fch45RTDtAc
Something important to note after watching this, notice for a moment that the therapist in the video ties together other examples of strategies from ACT. In upcoming blogs, I will discuss further upon how to utilize acceptance and defusion from a similar lens. Stay tuned!
Start ACT Therapy in Columbia, MO
If you've tried to relax your way out of anxiety and it hasn't worked, you're not doing mindfulness wrong. You may just be practicing a version of it that was built to help you feel less, not feel more.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy takes a different route. Instead of quieting your experience, we practice noticing it fully, so you have more room to move toward what actually matters to you. That work is slow at first. It also tends to hold up better than trying to talk yourself out of how you feel.
Here's how to start:
Call our Columbia office at 573-328-2288 or our Lee's Summit office at 816-287-1116.
Tell our client care coordinator a little about what's been going on.
Get matched with a therapist who fits what you're working on.
We see clients in person in Columbia and Lee's Summit, and online across Missouri. Whenever you're ready for effective care and lasting change, we're here.
About the Author
Jordan Lascuola, LCSW, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Aspire Counseling in Columbia, Missouri. He earned his Master of Social Work from the University of Missouri and holds a bachelor's degree in psychology, with a minor in sociology, from Truman State University.
Jordan has been facilitating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy groups since 2017, starting at Fulton State Hospital and continuing through years of community mental health work. He also trained as a social work intern at Rock Bridge High School here in Columbia. Along the way, he built and led a tabletop role playing game therapy group for teens, which says a lot about how he thinks: meet people through what they actually care about, then do the real work from there.
Jordan works with teens and adults ages 14 and up on anxiety, depression, trauma, and life transitions. He also offers parental coaching. His practice is queer and neurodiverse affirming. Alongside ACT, he is trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and draws on compassion focused approaches. He sees clients in person in Columbia and online across Missouri.
To work with Jordan, call 573-328-2288 or reach out through our contact page.
