The Heart of Mindfulness-Based Therapy and How It Helps
What if the struggles that feel most overwhelming could become doorways to deeper healing, resilience and contentment? This is the heart of mindfulness-based therapy.
The Choice We All Face
The Buddha was once asked a revealing question: what's the difference between people who are on the path of awakening and those who aren't? This process of “awakening” simply means choosing to bring awareness to present moment experience as it unfolds, and connecting with our compassionate wisdom for guidance. The Buddha responded by first sharing what we have in common: he said we will all get hit by first arrows. That is, we all get hurt and encounter difficulties.
The difference, the Buddha went on to say, lies in whether after we are stung by an arrow we fire a second arrow, at ourselves or others. Do we add hurt by lashing out, beating ourselves up, or numbing out? Or do we steady ourselves, connect with the caring response called for, and nurture true healing? In other words, the difference between these two paths is whether we choose to fuel the life span of suffering (fire more arrows) or interrupt the cycle of suffering through skillful response (put down our arrows).
This path of mindful “awakening” doesn't eradicate or prevent all further suffering. Yet it can lessen an arrow’s rippling impact, potency, and residue. It can also support wellbeing and our capacity for steadier happiness.
Buddhist Foundations
Mindfulness is rooted in Buddhism. That is, it stems from a contemplative tradition that understands innate goodness as ever present within us. Buddhism holds that we inherently belong—we need not prove our worth nor earn our keep. We will make mistakes, may not always have the answers, and inevitably struggle. Yet in the midst of these realities, from a Buddhist perspective, we still belong and are deserving of dignity and love. Even when wounded, struggling, messing up, confused, or at a loss, we're not considered broken nor unredeemable. We need not "fix" or "improve" ourselves to be loveable. We may not be in touch with our pure goodness in those moments, our inherent wisdom and heart—they may lie dormant or be buried by painful conditioning—but this form of mindfulness is steadfast in seeing us as whole, intact and worthy.
It may be worth pausing here for a moment to reflect. For many of us in the West, this represents a radical departure from the tough-love and hyper-individualistic approach so many of us have been conditioned into. My experience though—personally and from twenty years of working with people—is that it’s a departure worth exploring.
What Mindfulness Offers
Mindfulness becomes a pathway for personally connecting with our innate goodness, intelligence and belonging. It is an invitation to bring clear, kind awareness to inner and outer experiences in order to meet ourselves, relationships, and life with wisdom and care. Mindfulness is neither passive nor weak, and doesn’t ask us to shrink, it's a call to be discerning and intentional rather than reactive and impulsive. This means when we're hurt we turn towards what will address the harm. It means noticing when harsh and harmful self-talk is in play and shifting to compassionate and empowering self-talk. Mindfulness, at its heart, is an opportunity to live with buoyancy, supporting embodied resilience, grounded presence, and deeper contentment.
How This Unfolds in Therapy
When mindfulness becomes the foundation of our therapeutic work together, something genuinely beautiful can unfold. We hold supportive space for both the hurts we've experienced and those we’ve caused, making room to gently and actively heal. We grow our practical toolkit for thriving and happiness. We connect with what we hold as meaningful and sacred. We bring caring awareness to patterns that may have served us before but are now limiting, discovering ways to set them down and step into more healthful ways of being. In turn, we not only can heal, we can become more nimble in daily life and experience more pleasure. For many of us, we also rediscover our unbreakable goodness. We shift from striving to earn our keep, to trusting our inherent belonging and beautiful gifts, and reclaiming our natural capacity for unconditional love and self-regard.
What Becomes Possible
Research continues to validate the therapeutic power of mindfulness, and Buddhist psychology. Bringing this approach to therapy has been shown to effectively support:
A calmer nervous system - reducing anxiety and stress.
Emotional steadiness - strengthening emotional regulation during charged experiences and life transitions.
Mental clarity - improving concentration and focus, lessening distractibility.
Increased self-compassion - fostering a kinder, more empowering inner voice, reducing sabotaging self-criticism.
Inner healing - alleviating depression and experiences of shame, providing responsive tools for moving through grief.
Enduring resilience - growing sustaining, internal resources for life's challenges, and the capacity to thrive.
Stronger relationships - improving communication and connections, decreasing reactivity in conflict.
Deepened spirituality - connecting with what feels most sacred and meaningful, and a sense of unconditional belonging.
Greater life satisfaction - renewing a sense of meaning and purpose, experiencing more unwavering contentment.
Why This Work Matters to Me
I have a personal relationship with this work, it has transformed my own life - softening harsh inner critics, healing old wounds, and opening me up to more joy and wonder. For the past two decades, I've also witnessed first hand the resilience, hope, and happiness that emerges when clients turn towards these contemplative teachings and tools, and the powerful role they can play when integrated with other therapeutic modalities.
We all get hit by arrows, and will inevitably be struck by more. My wish is that whatever has been your journey, that you may still return to the heart of your humanity— to come to know the strength, belonging, and goodness that are already and always yours.
Curious if mindfulness-based therapy might be a good fit for you? I invite you to reach out to schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation. We can explore how mindfulness-based approaches might serve your healing journey, and answer any questions you have. You can also visit my services page to learn more about my mindfulness-based therapy offerings.