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Summary of Clinical Mindfulness

Clinical Mindfulness (CM) is a mindfulness meditation approach where you set aside one or more periods of time each day to work on your inner life and deal with psychological issues. You start out using it to deal with these issues but doing this can become the start of developing a long-term daily mindfulness meditation practice that will provide you with many benefits throughout life. The steps in a typical Clinical Mindfulness session are summarised below, but you can change the emphasis of these or add other techniques from other mindfulness meditation approaches as you develop your own customised mindfulness meditation practice.

what is clinical mindfulness (CM)?

• Setting aside a period each day when you put on hold your normal activity and turn your attention inward. You may start with five minutes a day but you can then extend this to two twenty-minute sessions or more each day.

• When doing Clinical Mindfulness you use mindfulness meditation techniques to help you work through whatever psychological or other issues you are currently facing.

• If you are in therapy, this means that you can continue to work on your issues during the week outside of just the weekly, or less frequent, sessions with your therapist.

• Once you have used Clinical Mindfulness to work on one or more specific issues, ideally you will continue with the practice once you have completed therapy. You can use your ongoing Clinical Mindfulness practice to better understand how your mind works, focus your thoughts, process your emotions, reflect on your life and work on any other psychological or other issues that may arise for you in the future.

Does Clinical Mindfulness (CM) work?

• Doing regular mindfulness meditation has been shown to have a wide range of physical and psychological benefits. It has been shown to be effective for reducing stress, anxiety, sadness, sleep problems, and pain and it maybe beneficial with other issues.

How do you do you daily Clinical Mindfulness session?

• Commit to the idea of doing a Clinical Mindfulness session at least once a day.

• Ideally, find a regular place where you can practice where you will not be disturbed. This can be anywhere in your house or locality where you can have uninterrupted time to do the practice. You may have to negotiate with those you live with for them to not disturb you during the time. You may even put up a ‘Doing Mindfulness Please Do Not Disturb’ sign. Some people find places outside their homes, on a quiet park bench somewhere or in an empty church, etc. If you know someone else who does some sort of mindfulness meditation practice you can do your practice with them. The great thing about the various mindfulness meditation practices is that different people using different practices can generally do them together as they are just sitting silently next to each other.

• There is a wide range of different mindfulness meditation techniques that you can potentially use in your Clinical Mindfulness sessions. Your therapist may talk to you about some of these. Over time you may introduce new techniques drawn from the multiple mindfulness meditation techniques that are out there. If you already practice some sort of mindfulness meditation, you may just introduce some of the Clinical Mindfulness elements that are discussed below into your existing meditation practice.

What are you trying to achieve in your daily Clinical Mindfulness session?

• First, you are trying to get better at ‘watching’ how your mind works. Normally we are very caught up in what we are thinking, feeling, doing, and saying in any moment. The result of this is that we cannot see exactly what is going on inside ourselves and why we are behaving the way that we are. In your Clinical Mindfulness sessions, you will gradually become better at observing the way that you operate.

• Second, over time you can use these insights to make adjustments to how you operate as a person. You will be able to get more control over the stream of thoughts that goes through your head. You will be able to process your feelings better. And, you will be able to better align your behaviour with how you want to behave in accordance with your aspirations and values.

What are the steps in Clinical Mindfulness?

The steps in Clinical Mindfulness are summarised in the acronym BE CALM. They are set out below.

1. B - Breathe. Take in several breaths. Count four as you breathe in. Hold for four. Breathe out for two counts of four.

2. E - Examine your body and posture for tension - for instance in your shoulders. Relax. Make sure that you are in an upright posture with your back straight. Put a small smile on your face to further relax you.

3. C - Start counting in order to focus your thoughts. Starting positive. Count: one and one, and one and two, and one and three, and one and four, and one and five, and one and six, and one and seven, and one and eight, and one and nine, and one and ten. Then, and two and one, and two and two, and two and three, and two and four and so on. Depending on the length of your Clinical Mindfulness session, you can count like this for a shorter or longer period. The idea is to get to a point where the existing thoughts in your mind are starting to settle at least a little. When thoughts do arise, just gently return to your counting. See more information on the Focus Your Thoughts counting technique.

4. A - Accept your feelings. Look into your body to locate what you are feeling. Simply stay with the feeling and fully experience it, then let it go. See more information on accepting your feelings. (If when doing this, or any other technique suggested on this site, you feel overwhelming thoughts or feelings, contact a health professional to talk to them about it).

5. L - Like yourself and others. Direct warm positive feelings towards yourself. Think about positive things that you have done. You can say the saying: ‘May I be safe, may I be at ease, may I be looking for the positive, may I be filled with kindness for myself and others.’ Once you have done this a number of times for yourself you can then project it out onto other people. Say: ‘May they be safe, may they be at ease, may they be looking for the positive, may they be filled with kindness for themselves and others.’

6. M - Stop making any effort. At the end of the session, just let go of trying to do anything from the five steps above. Just relax and be in that moment and feel that there is now nothing that you have to do or achieve at all.

The amount of time you spend on each of these elements in the Clinical Mindfulness session will vary. If you are seeing a therapist or mindfulness meditation teacher, talk to them about where you should put the emphasis during your sessions and if you should add additional techniques to your sessions.

Please note when you are doing any type of psychological or self-development work, if you find yourself feeling overwhelming emotions, troubling thoughts or actions, you need to talk to a health professional.