Mindfulness Therapy

What Is Mindfulness?

We go through so much of our lives without stopping to reflect on our internal experiences. We get swept up in our day-to-day distractions and forget to pause and consider what we’re really thinking or feeling. In short, we spend most of our time doing and forget to make space for simply being—allowing ourselves to feel all our feelings and be present in the moment. 

Mindfulness is an approach to therapy that seeks to help you pay more attention to your inner life and maintain a deeper sense of present-moment awareness. It is a way of learning to connect with the world around you by using one of the most powerful tools you have—your mind—to heal yourself and effectively manage your challenges. 

Many people think of mindfulness as intense meditation or ecstatic dance, but mindfulness is so much more practical than that. It can be as simple as using grounding techniques like deep breathing or visualization to help you lower your blood pressure and heart rate. Mindfulness is essentially a component of self-care, a way of getting yourself back to baseline emotional wellness. It can help you be more in tune with your feelings, at peace with the world around you, and connected in your relationships with yourself and others.

How Does Mindfulness-Based Therapy Work?

Mindfulness is a practice that’s individualized for each client. The therapeutic process empowers clients to develop, hone and integrate their own unique mindfulness practice. It is often skill-based, focusing on specific strategies you can use to improve your emotional wellbeing. Using this direct approach, you and your therapist can practice new skills in sessions and explore ways to integrate them into your daily life.

Sometimes, however, mindfulness training with Rocky Mountain Counseling Collective can take a more indirect approach. You and your therapist may already have some larger goals and objectives in mind, and mindfulness can be incorporated into the work you’re already doing. 

Whether therapy takes a direct or indirect approach, our practice can help you learn a vast array of mindfulness skills, including:

Mindful breathing—By focusing on your breath, you can lower your heart rate, increase your concentration, and reduce feelings of stress and overwhelm. 

Meditation—Contrary to popular belief, meditation does not have to be religious in nature. You can achieve calmness by meditating on a word, phrase, object, quality, person, or anything else that helps you de-stress.

Visualization—You will use your imagination to visualize yourself in environments that are peaceful and relaxing, enabling you to feel grounded and at peace with your surroundings.

Embracing feelings—By letting all your feelings be felt, whether positive or negative, you can allow your feelings to work through your body rather than fighting against them or continuing to push them down. 

Perspective taking—this technique is all about zooming out and trying to look at a situation more objectively. By taking space from the situation, you can begin to see your own judgment more clearly and understand how your own perspective may not be in line with your needs and goals. 

Working on being rather than doing—Instead of trying to be productive or busy yourself with tasks, you’ll learn to be present in the moment and focus on connecting with your values. When you have a clear sense of your values, it becomes much easier to live a life that’s unhindered by stress and anxiety. 

In the end, there are hundreds of mindfulness skills to choose from and this is hardly an exhaustive list. After all, we want you to find a mindfulness practice that works for you. In collaboration with a mental health professional, you will learn tools that specifically fit your needs and allow you to reach your goals.