We tend to spend a lot of time either preoccupied with thinking to the exclusion of feelings or getting too immersed in and buffeted and driven by difficult emotions and thoughts. Mindful experiencing provides an alternative, coming alive in a spacious, grounded way to the implicit, embodied feel of what is happening, what Jon Kabat-Zinn […]
Category Archives: Blog
How we learned to suppress feelings
Softening and opening with kindness and gentle curiosity towards our inner vulnerabilities and pain is unfamiliar territory for many of us, because we didn’t learn how to do this growing up. Many of us had parents who didn’t know how to calm themselves down, let alone how to calm us down. Our parents may not […]
Integrating Self-Compassion into Your Mindfulness Practice
If you find yourself struggling or beating yourself up in meditation, it can be helpful to remember to cultivate self-compassion. In my post, Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Meditation, I described how Kristin Neff highlights three factors in cultivating self-compassion: trying to be kind to yourself; remembering our common humanity (that whatever you are struggling with, many other […]
Thoughtful Response to My Paper
I appreciate the warm way Bob Maunder, MD FRCPC, recently welcomed my paper. As Head of Psychiatry Research, Sinai Health System, Bob regularly sends out papers published by staff in our department to the rest of the department, accompanied by a short, thoughtful introduction. Bob is also Chair in Health and Behaviour and Deputy Psychiatrist-in-Chief, […]
Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Meditation
This style of meditation emphasizes cultivating a gentle, participatory curiosity toward all the processes that weave consciousness and deepen experiencing, including bodily sensations and other senses, feelings, thinking, imagery, and needs. You are welcome to plan, remember and reflect on your experience.
My Paper on EFMT Published
My paper, the first on emotion-focused mindfulness therapy, has been published by Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies: Gayner, B. (2019). Emotion-focused mindfulness therapy. Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies, Vol. 18, Issue 1, pages 98-120. The journal allows me, as the author, to post a preprint on my website that you can download, which includes all the edits but […]