The Sinai Health System’s newsletter, This Week at Sinai Health, shared an article today on my work developing emotion-focused mindfulness therapy on the hospital website:
Mount Sinai social worker develops innovative approach to using mindfulness in therapy
Corporate Communications, Sinai Health System, March 20, 2019
Bill Gayner, a social worker who works as a mental health clinician in Mount Sinai Hospital’s Psychiatry Department, has developed a unique approach to mindfulness-based therapy. It’s called emotion-focused mindfulness therapy (EFMT) and in February, Bill published his first paper about it in the journal Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies…
At the heart of this approach is a form of meditation that’s a little different from meditation used in other mindfulness-based therapies. “Meditation in mindfulness-based interventions typically encourages us to acknowledge and accept difficult thoughts and emotions in order to let go of them and focus our attention instead on sensory experience in the present moment,” says Bill. “This helps us to create some space between ourselves and our emotions where we can understand that we’re separate from our emotions and thoughts. In EFMT, we use mindful experiencing to help people explore their thoughts and emotions, integrate thinking and feeling, address and resolve internal conflicts and unfinished business, and cultivate more fulfilling lives both in meditation and therapeutic encounters. This type of exploration is not encouraged in mainstream mindfulness practices. ”
Click here to read more.