Mindfulness isn't a therapy in its own right, but its capacity for improving the quality of people's lives has received substantial empirical support as a class of meaningful interventions, particularly when embedded in a substantive therapeutic framework. Guided mindfulness meditation as a focusing strategy shares some key characteristics with clinical hypnosis, guided imagery, positive psychology, and other such focus-related approaches, but usually has a different aim in its application. This speech explores these overlaps when mindfulness is applied to a goal-oriented treatment process. This is NOT a speech about spiritual exploration with mindfulness. Rather, the focus is entirely on clinical applications of key aspects of mindfulness by deconstructing the hypnotic elements of such processes. We will identify the therapeutically relevant components of guided meditations, and how we can construct more meaningful interventions by incorporating them in novel ways.

Learning Objectives

1. Recognize and more skillfully use the power of focus and suggestion inherent in any type of therapy.
2. List and describe core components of mindfulness to increase client responsiveness and enhance treatment efficacy.
3. Compare and contrast the methods of applied hypnosis and guided meditations.