What is MiCBT?
There are a growing number of therapy approaches that incorporate mindfulness training. Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or MiCBT is one of these approaches. It offers a practical set of evidence-based techniques derived from mindfulness training together with principles of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to address a broad range of psychological disorders and general stress conditions. Below is a brief overview of the foundations of MiCBT as well as the core mechanisms and basic practice components of this valuable therapeutic approach.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness involves paying attention to each event experienced in the present moment within our body and mind, with a non-judgmental, non-reactive and accepting attitude. In learning to be mindful, we can begin to counter many of our everyday sufferings such as stress, anxiety and depression because we are learning to experience events in a more impersonal and detached way.
What is CBT?
The way we think often affects our emotions and behaviour and CBT or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy helps people with such conditions as anxiety and depression change the content of unhelpful thoughts and their maladaptive ways of coping, such as avoidance and addictive behaviour.
MiCBT: Integrating Mindfulness and CBT
MiCBT is a 4-stage therapeutic approach which integrates mindfulness and some of the basic principles of CBT in order to help people improve the way they feel and change unhelpful behaviours. However, MiCBT helps people make changes in a different way to CBT. While CBT attempts to change maladaptive behaviour by modifying people’s unhelpful thoughts and beliefs, MiCBT helps people learn to develop control over the processes that maintain the unhelpful thoughts and beliefs through mindfulness training. MiCBT helps change the process of thinking, not just the content of our thoughts.
The four stages are:
Stage 1: Mindfulness skills are taught to improve our understanding of thoughts and body sensations.
Stage 2: We learn how to apply these skills to the challenges of human life.
Stage 3: Specifically engages the mindfulness skills in interpersonal and relationship issues.
Stage 4: Deals with empathic understanding of ourselves and others.
Benefits of MiCBT
Changing Reactive Habits
Changing unhelpful or unwanted habits becomes easier as mindfulness skills are consolidated and integrated into daily life. We learn to understand and accept the process of thinking and sensing and to have a different perspective on troublesome thoughts and reactions.
Like CBT, MiCBT draws on the principles of exposure and desensitization to help us change habitual unhelpful reactions or coping strategies. However, unlike other models of cognitive-behaviour therapy, MiCBT regards learned reactive habits as being the result of our own way of reacting towards the body sensations that result from our judgmental thoughts. Preventing such reactions, while remaining fully aware and accepting of bodily experiences, leads to rapid change in our habitual feelings and behaviours. We feel emotionally relieved.
Interpersonal Mindfulness
MiCBT not only helps people change distressing thoughts, feelings and behaviours, it can also help people change their relationships with others. The skills we learn in MiCBT can help us not to react to others and foster a greater understanding and acceptance of ourselves and others. This usually culminates in more harmonious relationships and helps prevent relapse into habitual moods and behaviour. This is explained during Stage 3 of the program.
Mindfulness and the Power of Empathy
The fourth stage of MiCBT teaches people to use their own resources for empathy towards themselves and others. The three previous stages lead to the realization that we are the first beneficiary of the emotions we produce, whether this is a positive or negative emotion. A deep sense of empowerment, acceptance and change usually takes place at the end of Stage 4, which is the last stage of the MiCBT program.
Path of happiness
I was in the midst of a personal crisis, or what I believed was a personal crisis, I turned to Daniel for help, and was introduced to MiCBT.
I had never heard of the program, but was willing to undergo the treatment, as I has lost faith in my ability to overcome. The outcome was more than I could have expected. Too often I think we allow our minds to be negative vehicles, and just train ourselves subconsciously to accept negative thoughts and the impact on our bodies. I now know we can fight back. MiCBT taught me how to deal with negative thoughts, in a positive way, without medication. MiCBT is now in practice every day of my life, I owe a lot to its teacher, and its design.
Daniel as a teacher
Daniel has been practicing mindfulness meditation in organizational and community MiCBT facilitator settings since 2001. Daniel integrates the principles of mindfulness within his professional work as a naturopath. Mindfulness is a way of being, rather than simply a set of techniques to be applied when facing difficulties.
Call the clinic on 9894 0014 for bookings or make an appointment online for MiCBT therapy on my website
Clinical Evidence for MiCBT
There is clinical evidence that the development and use of mindfulness in daily life enhances many aspects of health – both physical and psychological. Studies have shown improvement in levels of stress, anxiety and depression as well as improvements in a range of psychological disorders. There is new evidence of benefits to physical health including the Immune system, cardiovascular system, eating disorders and many more…
Evidence based articles can be found on: http://www.mindfulexperience.org/
Daniel’s extensive professional development as a Mindfulness Facilitator enables him to teach MiCBT to his clients as a tool to help them achieve balance and happiness in their daily life, and effectively solve their emotional and health problems. This course is modelled on the Mindfulness-Integrated CBT program developed at the MiCBT Institute by Dr Bruno Cayoun who is Associate Professor at the University of Tasmania where he supervises mindfulness research.
Mindfulness Audio Resources
Click below
- Handy model of the brain – Dan Siegel
- How mindfulness changes the brain: Sara Lazar
- How mindfulness changes your brain… Rick Hanson
- Jon Kabat-Zinn at Google
- Professor Mark Williams from Oxford University on the science of mindfulness
- Rick Hanson’s TEDx talk: Hardwiring Happiness
- Brain scientist Kristen Race is an expert on how stress affects the brain,and has used her knowledge to help teach people to live more mindful and less stressful lives
- Dr. Cinzia Pezzolesi and Dan Harris on Anxiety and Mindfulness
Mindfulness Books
- Kabat-Zinn, J, Full Catastrophe Living, Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. Delacorte Press, New York, NY, 1990.
- Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., Teasdale, J. D. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. 2nd Edition. New York: Guilford Press, 2013.
- McCown, Reibel and Micozzi. Teaching Mindfulness: a practical guide for clinicians and educators. Springer, 2010.
- Bruno Cayoun, MiCBT for Wellbeing and Personal Growth: Four Steps to Enhance Inner Calm, Self-Confidence and Relationships: http://www.mindfulness.net.au/all-micbt-products/micbt-books/micbt-wellbeing
- The introduction to Bhante Gunaratna’s free online book “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English” Click here to go to the online free version of the book.
Mindfulness websites
- http://www.mindfulness.net.au
- http://www.melbournewellness.com.au/services/micbt.html