Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

This new edition of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy: Distinctive Features (MBCT) provides a concise, straightforward overview of MBCT, fully updated to include recent developments. The training process underpinning MBCT is based on mindfulness meditation practice and invites a new orientation towards internal experience as it arises - one that is characterised by acceptance and compassion. The approach supports a recognition that even though difficulty is an intrinsic part of life, it is possible to work with it in new ways. The book provides a basis for understanding the key theoretical and practical features of MBCT and retains its accessible and easy-to-use format that made the first edition so popular, with 30 distinctive features that characterise the approach. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy: Distinctive Features will be essential reading for professionals and trainees in the field. It is an appealing read for both experienced practitioners and newcomers with an interest in MBCT.

Dr Rebecca Crane is an MBCT teacher and trainer and directs the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, School of Psychology, Bangor University, UK.

Acknowledgements Permission acknowledgements Foreword by Mark Williams Introduction Abbreviations used Part 1: THE DISTINCTIVE THEORETICAL FEATURES OF MBCT 1. An integration of mindfulness-based stress reduction and cognitive behavioural therapy 2. Underpinned by the cognitive theory of vulnerability to depression 3. Learning skills to reduce the risk of depressive relapse 4. Modes of mind: doing 5. Modes of mind: being 6. Automatic pilot and conscious awareness 7. Thinking and sensing 8. Mental time travel and present moment focus 9. Reacting and responding to experience: avoidance and approach 10. Needing things to be different and allowing things to be as they are 11. Ways of approaching and welcoming what is 12. Seeing thoughts as real and seeing them as mental events 13. Origins of mindfulness 14. Working with general and specific vulnerability 15. The MBCT evidence base Part 2: THE DISTINCTIVE PRACTICAL FEATURES OF MBCT 16. Course content and structure 17. Session themes 18. Assessment and orientation 19. Eating a raisin with awareness 20. Body scan practice 21. Mindful movement practice 22. Sitting meditation practice 23. The Three-Minute Breathing Space 24. The importance of home practice 25. Mindfulness practice in everyday life 26. Pleasant and unpleasant experiences 27. Cognitive behavioural curriculum elements 28. Investigating experience 29. The MBCT group learning environment 30. Teaching through embodiment Further resources Index