The Power of Mindfulness: Mindfulness Inside & Outside the Therapy Hour

The Power of Mindfulness: Mindfulness Inside & Outside the Therapy Hour is organized by Institute for Better Health (IBH) and will be held during Mar 08 - 09, 2018 at Sheraton Philadelphia University City Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.

The target audience for this medical event is Psychologists. This CME Conference has been approved with a maximum of 12 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits.

Course Description:
Mindfulness - awareness of the present moment with acceptance - is a deceptively simple way of relating to experience that has been practiced for over 2,500 years to alleviate human suffering. Recently, mental health professionals are enthusiastically discovering that mindfulness holds great promise both for their own personal development and as a way to enhance therapeutic relationships. It is also the central ingredient in a number of new empirically validated treatments, and is proving to be a remarkably powerful technique to augment virtually every form of psychotherapy.

Day One: Mindfulness and Personal Fulfillment

The first workshop day is designed to help you to understand mindfulness practice theoretically and experientially. Through lecture, demonstrations, participatory exercises, and small group discussion, we will see how mindfulness can enrich and enliven our lives both inside and outside of the therapy hour.

We will explore how mindfulness practice can help us to deal with the personal challenges of living in an ever-changing, uncertain world filled with complicated interpersonal relationships. We will investigate the role of mindfulness in working with thorny existential issues such as loneliness, alienation, illness and loss. You`ll learn a variety of formal and informal mindfulness techniques, and gain insights from both scientific and Buddhist Psychology into paths and obstacles to greater well-being.

Day Two: Mindfulness-Based Clinical Interventions

The second workshop day will focus on the integration of mindfulness practice into psychotherapy. First we`ll examine how mindfulness practice can enhance therapeutic presence and transform understanding of the causes of psychological suffering. We will then discuss when and how to introduce various mindfulness techniques to our clients or patients. Special techniques for treating depression, anxiety, chronic pain, stress-related medical disorders and childhood distress will be introduced.

Throughout the workshop, we will examine contraindications for using mindfulness techniques, as well as creative ways to deal with the obstacles and challenges that arise when working with particular disorders and personalities. Upon completion, you will have a foundation for integrating this exciting, potentially transformative practice into both your personal life and your therapeutic work.

Workshop Objectives :
• Describe the three core components of mindfulness practice
• Demonstrate an experiential understanding of mindfulness through participation in actual practice sessions
• Specify how a therapist can best choose which mindfulness exercises are most appropriate for which individuals
• Describe the core attitude toward experience found in depression and how mindfulness practice can help to transform it.
• Indicate the mechanisms that maintain anxiety disorders and how these can be altered using mindfulness practice.
• Specify the core dynamics of chronic back pain and other psychological disorders and how mindfulness practice can help to interrupt them .
• Discuss ways to assist clients to integrate mindfulness practice in their own lives
• Describe research that provides empirical support for the use of mindfulness in therapy

Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.