Mindfulness training is the process of cultivating non-judgemental awareness of one's moment-to-moment experience. One learns to develop this awareness by paying attention to breath, physical sensations, thoughts and feelings.

Mindfulness meditation strengthens our capacity to be present and experience our lives more directly and fully. It allows us to "own" each moment of our experience--whether pleasant or unpleasant--in all of our actions, such as eating a delicious meal or experiencing pain in the body.

With mindfulness, we can relate to our experience with less anxiety and fear. We begin to develop a more friendly and caring attitude toward ourselves and have more choice about how we relate to our experiences. Mindfulness brings greater balance, acceptance and ease into our lives.

Mindfulness assists us to reconnect with our sense of wholeness, regardless of what we might be facing. Mindfulness can be helpful to those living with the stress which accompanies work, relationships, childhood trauma, mid-life transitions, chronic pain or illness. It can help us to experience inner resources of awareness, relaxation and balance.

It's not that mindfulness is the "answer" to all life's problems. Rather, it is that all life's problems can be seen more clearly through the lens of a clear mind. Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Mindfulness expedites the counselling process in the following ways:

• discerns between pain and suffering. Pain is just pain; suffering is largely self-imposed.
• helps us to reduce our own suffering.
• increases the ability to tolerate strong emotions. Hence, difficult feelings are not so overwhelming; "A feeling is just a feeling and I won't die from it."
• interrupts the pattern of getting "stuck" in difficult emotions. This has the effect of helping to contain strong feelings, rather than intensifying them.
• reduces fear, cultivating acceptance of difficult feelings or material.
• helps to break repetitive cycles by simply experiencing, rather than expressing or acting.
• cultivates non-identification. All painful feelings are seen to be transient, and an individual can choose not to be defined by their pain, nor be swept away in the identification. ("I" am not a panic attack!)
• develops the ability to perceive the components of painful states, such as sensation, emotion, thought or feeling. Painful states cease to be "real", but metamorphose into a shifting field of experiences.
• supports boundary formation by suspending the familiar narrative, or story-line. We become habituated to the story that we know, and it often stirs us up.
• helps to distinguish between the experience and the idea of what is happening.
• cultivates patience. Ups and downs are seen to be part of unceasing change.
• promotes understanding our barriers to motivation--protection, boredom, resistance or aversion. We can distinguish between "disliking" and "I don't want to!"
• assists with experiencing one's body. Often the events which bring people to counselling have disenfranchised them from their somatic reality. This is particularly true with early abuse and neglect.

Mindfulness emphasizes the inner experience. Counselling engages the experience in relationship. I believe that both aspects are often necessary to negotiate the difficulties that bring people to counselling. Mindfulness expedites the process, making it easier, faster and more effective.

I emphasize that I am generalizing about the effectiveness of mindfulness in the context of the counselling relationship. Mindfulness alone may seem somewhat harsh, cold or dismissive when some individuals are in a great deal of emotional distress; some people feel diminished or silenced by strict mindfulness. However, mindfulness in the context of therapy is simply a useful set of skills to learn, along with many others.