Thinking about mindfulness? Several good videos online produced by University of California San Diego’s UCTV in their consumer series Health Matters (requires the free Real Player) cover mindfulness, stress and pain management.

In the first half-hour video, Steve Hickman Psy.D. describes measures of sensation and distress to define and manage pain, with the tools of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Mindfulness is a simple but powerful concept borrowed from Buddhism and applied in a secular way to psychotherapies from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and dialectic behaviour therapy (DBT) to more informal stress reduction and relaxation skills. It’s “non-judgmental awareness” of the moment that helps with identifying, accepting, and/or an active change in thinking. Mindfulness ideally brings insight and increased self-control, including, in this case, control over chronic physical pain.

In a second UCTV show, Hickman delves further into research and teaches some practical skills, and the third video features guest Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of “Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness.”

Mind Hacks recently wrote about mindfulness and shared some good links, including the podcast All In The Mind focussed on mindfulness in evidence-based treatments. Listen online or subscribe to the weekly audio podcast; it’s a fantastic source of thoughts about cognition.

Link to videos about mindfulness.
Link to All in the Mind podcast on the same topic.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 12 Nov 2007
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