Mindfulness: Nurturing Awareness
“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (1997).
Mindfulness as a guiding principle to the Numinus model of care speaks to both its importance as a skill and perceptual orientation for therapists but also its therapeutic potential as a learned skill and perceptual orientation for the client.
For practitioners, strong mindfulness supports strong and stable empathetic abiding presence. Numinus therapists are expected to have an ongoing practice cultivating mindfulness because it is a foundation for psychedelic-assisted therapy. For participants, increasing one’s capacity for mindfulness supports healthy psychological change processes, such as psychological flexibility, and promotes a supportive “set” or “mindset” for psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Mindful or ‘conscious’ awareness encompasses contact with all available modes of sense perception (vision, sound, touch, taste, smell, vibration, temperature, interoception, etc.), as well as awareness of arising and passing emotions and phenomena (such as thoughts, mental images, and embodied emotional experiences). Mindfulness can be practiced formally (with meditation practice) or informally (as a general perceptual orientation).
Mindfulness practice supports capacities such as present-centred awareness, non-reactivity to experience, meta-awareness, de-centring/psychological distancing, and compassion. Scientific literature supports the possibility of a reciprocal influence between psychedelic use and mindfulness, each facilitating and accentuating the positive impacts of the other (Payne et al., 2021; Smigielski et al., 2019; Walsh & Thiessen, 2018), such as prosocial behaviour and developing a sense of meaning and purpose in life (Crego et al., 2021; Donald et al., 2019; Gandy, 2019; Proulx et al., 2018).
Third Wave Behavioural Therapies
Mindfulness has seen an explosion of neurocognitive research in recent decades. Advances in neuroimaging, such as fMRI, have allowed researchers to gain insight into how practicing mindfulness impacts brain function and connectivity. Psychedelics are now seeing a similar surge, and while distinct, both psychedelics and mindfulness are associated with a range of similar phenomenological, psychological, and neurobiological changes (Payne et al., 2021).
Multiple validated mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been developed, such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP). Many benefits have been shown through research into these MBIs, including symptom reduction and enhanced quality of life across a broad range of chronic conditions, including mental health conditions. Other validated modalities such as Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) include a strong emphasis on mindfulness, and collectively these therapies have come to be known as third wave behavioural therapies.
Justice, Equity, Dignity, and Inclusion
We must acknowledge however, that White culture, experiences, and social references are embedded as “the norm” in contemporary mindfulness approaches (Proulx et al., 2018). When introducing mindfulness interventions within Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, additional cultural considerations need to be considered to ensure we deliver trauma and violence-informed care in a culturally safe manner and minimizing the potential for harm and re-traumatization, such as working with an Elder or Knowledge Keeper chosen by a self-identified Indigenous client in the delivery of care and adhering to the protocols of the local Nation or community (Proulx et al., 2018).
A uniting principle of third wave therapies is their focus on the process of how a person relates to internal experiences (thoughts, urges, sensations) rather than on reducing or eliminating the content of these experiences, with reductions in psychological or emotional symptomatology typically considered a ’side effect.’ Third wave therapies have been identified as promising modalities for explicit combination within psychedelic-assisted therapy protocols for a host of reasons, including their shared and possibly synergistic mechanisms for enhancing psychological flexibility and regulating emotion (Walsh & Thiessen, 2018; Watts & Luoma, 2020).
The Numinus Perspective
For this reason, Numinus Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Protocols incorporate elements of the Psychological Flexibility Model as represented by ACT, and a more recent psychedelic-specific adaptation, the Accept, Connect, Embody (ACE) model.
References
Crego, A., Yela, J. R., Gómez-Martínez, M. Á., Riesco-Matías, P., & Petisco-Rodríguez, C. (2021). Relationships between Mindfulness, Purpose in Life, Happiness, Anxiety, and Depression: Testing a Mediation Model in a Sample of Women. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(3), 925.
Donald, J. N., Sahdra, B. K., Van Zanden, B., Duineveld, J. J., Atkins, P. W. B., Marshall, S. L., & Ciarrochi, J. (2019). Does your mindfulness benefit others? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the link between mindfulness and prosocial behaviour. Br J Psychol, 110(1), 101-125.
Gandy, S. (2019). Psychedelics and potential benefits in “healthy normals”: A review of the literature. Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 3(3), 280-287.
Nhất Hạnh, T. (1997). Living Buddha, Living Christ. Riverhead Trade.
Payne, J. E., Chambers, R., & Liknaitzky, P. (2021). Combining Psychedelic and Mindfulness Interventions: Synergies to Inform Clinical Practice. ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, 4(2), 416-423.
Proulx, J., Croff, R., Oken, B., Aldwin, C. M., Fleming, C., Bergen-Cico, D., . . . Noorani, M. (2018). Considerations for Research and Development of Culturally Relevant Mindfulness Interventions in American Minority Communities. Mindfulness, 9(2), 361-370.
Smigielski, L., Scheidegger, M., Kometer, M., & Vollenweider, F. X. (2019). Psilocybin-assisted mindfulness training modulates self-consciousness and brain default mode network connectivity with lasting effects. NeuroImage, 196, 207-215.
Walsh, Z., & Thiessen, M. S. (2018). Psychedelics and the new behaviourism: considering the integration of third-wave behaviour therapies with psychedelic-assisted therapy. Int Rev Psychiatry, 30(4), 343-349.
Watts, R., & Luoma, J. B. (2020). The use of the psychological flexibility model to support psychedelic assisted therapy. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 15, 92-102.