This practical guide helps therapists from virtually any specialty or theoretical orientation choose and adapt mindfulness practices most likely to be effective with particular patients, while avoiding those that are contraindicated.
The authors provide a wide range of meditations that build the core skills of focused attention, mindfulness, and compassionate acceptance.
Vivid clinical examples show how to weave the practices into therapy, tailor them to each patient's needs, and overcome obstacles.
Therapists also learn how developing their own mindfulness practice can enhance therapeutic relationships and personal well-being.
The Appendix offers recommendations for working with specific clinical problems.
Free audio downloads (narrated by the authors) and accompanying patient handouts for selected meditations from the book are available at www.
sittingtogether.
See also Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, Second Edition, edited by Christopher K.
Germer, Ronald D.
Siegel, and Paul R.
Fulton, which reviews the research on therapeutic applications of mindfulness and delves into treatment of specific clinical problems.
About the Author: Susan M.
Pollak, MTS, Ed D, is cofounder and senior teacher at the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, where she has supervised and taught since the mid-1990s.
She is the president of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and a psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A longtime student of meditation and yoga, Dr.
Pollak teaches about mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion in psychotherapy and has been integrating the practices of meditation into psychotherapy since the 1980s.
She is author of Self-Compassion for Parents (for general readers) and coauthor of Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy (for mental health professionals).
Thomas Pedulla, LICSW, is a clinical social worker and psychotherapist in private practice.
Guilford Publications Sitting together: essential skills for mindfulness-based psychotherapy, paperback/susan m. pollak
