Olivier Rouiller

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Since the third wave of CBT, mindfulness has been widely adopted as one of the tools for psychotherapy (Segal et al. 2018). It has been shown that the practice of mindfulness has positive effects on emotional regulation, and in CBT, these tools are used to allow patients to gain perspective on their experience, name their emotions, accept discomfort, and recognize their thoughts for what they are: thoughts and not realities.

However, I would like to highlight that these contributions, while important, are only a part of what mindfulness can bring to psychotherapy.

In mindfulness-based psychotherapies, mindfulness is not used as a stress management tool that patients can learn and use themselves, but psychotherapy itself is conducted in a state of mindfulness.

This "two-person" mindfulness was glimpsed by Freud in free association (Freud 1895). By freely associating ideas and simply noticing what arises, thoughts, emotions, etc., one is indeed practicing mindfulness.

Furthermore, the contribution of the therapist's presence allows the patient to be more capable of being in contact with their experience. The therapist acts as the caregiver who helps the child regulate their emotions. In other words, the mindful therapist fulfills a containment function that helps the patient develop their own capacity to contain their experience (Bion 1991).

This approach to therapy, notably proposed by Hakomi (Kurtz 2015), Daniel Siegel (Siegel 2007), allows for the study of the psycho-corporeal apparatus as Freud might have dreamed, not in post-hoc analysis but in the embodied present moment. It also provides access to altered states of consciousness and neuroplasticity that allows for rapid transformation of unconscious material, limiting schemas, and attachment working models (Rhonda 2020). In my Hakomi therapy practice, I have observed the resolution of relational patterns in a single session with a client who had a very good foundation, and there are reports of similar transformations in Hakomi. I remain convinced, however, that many problems require long-term treatment in these therapies, however effective they may seem.

Bibliography

Bion, W. R. (1991). Learning from experience (Eighth printing). Karnac.

Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (1895/1956). Studies on Hysteria (J. Laplanche, Trans.). Presses Universitaires de France.

Kurtz, R. (2015). Body-Centered Psychotherapy : The Hakomi Method. LifeRhythm.

Rhonda Mattern. (2020). The Brain’s Requirements for Spontaneous Transformation : Lessons Learned from Coherence Therapy and Memory Reconsolidation Research. Hakomi Institute.

Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., Teasdale, J. D., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (2018). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression (Second edition, paperback edition). The Guilford Press.

Siegel, D. J. (2007). The Mindful Brain. W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated.