Niemiec Mindfulness and Character Strengths

A Practitioner’s Guide to MBSP
2. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-61334-590-0
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten

This new, fully revised, and expanded second edition of the handbook for the groundbreaking, evidence-based Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) program is the guide you need in your professional practice. Developed by author Dr. Ryan M. Niemiec, scientist, educator, practitioner, and a global leader in mindfulness and character strengths, the MBSP approach is about the discovery, deepening awareness, exploration, and application of character strengths. It is about understanding and improving how we pay attention in life – the quality by which we eat, walk, work, listen, and experience joy and peace. And it is about seeing our potential – which sits underneath our strengths of perseverance, bravery, curiosity, hope, kindness, fairness, and leadership – and which, unleashed, could benefit the world. MBSP is not only about our clients’ own happiness, it is about the happiness of others too. And it is an evolving, evidence-based program that can help people to relieve their suffering by using mindfulness and character strengths to cope with, overcome, or transcend problems, stressors, and conflicts.
Counselors, coaches, psychologists, researchers, educators, and managers will discover the “how-to” delivery of mindfulness and character strengths. Following primers on the two strands of MBSP and deeper discussions about their integration, practitioners are then led step-by-step through the 8 sessions of the popular MBSP program. The session structure, scripts, tips, lecture material, processes, examples, and audio files are all there ready for use. This time-tested manual can bring beginners up-to-date on these topics while also serving to stimulate, inform, and provide valuable tools to the intermediate and most advanced students of mindfulness and character strengths.
A companion workbook is also available for clients.

Zielgruppe

Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counselors, coaches, work/organizational psychologists, and educationalists as well as students.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Niemiec, Ryan M.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Pädagogische Psychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Entwicklungspsychologie Pädagogische Psychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychotherapie / Klinische Psychologie Beratungspsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Wirtschafts-, Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie

Leseproben

|xvii|Preface
The faculty of bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will…an education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. William James It’s an honor to write this book, again. I am on the same journey of awareness and growth as each person reading these sentences, and it is humbling to describe my observations, experiences, and understanding of the advancement of the sciences and practices relating to these topics. These topics are extraordinary ones. To merge mindfulness and character strengths is to bring a deep awareness to our best qualities and to use these qualities to improve our awareness. Mindfulness and character strengths deepen one another. Mindfulness offers the how for the practice of character strengths. In other words, to practice using strengths with mindfulness is to be intentional and conscious about noticing and deploying your best qualities. Character strengths draw upon mindfulness itself (e.g., curiosity, self-regulation), providing the fuel to help you make mindfulness an ongoing part of your daily life. Truly, this integration is the ultimate uniting of our mind and heart. This book is about using mindfulness and character strengths in everyday life. Can you practice more mindful living and strengths-based living in your life? Absolutely, you can, no matter what your lifestyle, work demands, or family situation. It will look different for each person. For me, I have three very active young children, a long-standing marriage filled with the various habits of being while my wife and I have full-time jobs, with a dog that often prefers not to be house-trained, a myriad of exciting writing projects, and multiple activities for our children each week. Yet, mindfulness and character strengths can be imperfectly woven into this lifestyle. Another person might have a highly demanding, on-call position at a hospital; another is struggling in a difficult unhappy relationship; and yet another person lives alone experiencing quite a bit of loneliness. Each individual has their challenges – and it is fruitless to compare the complexity of one person’s situation with the next. Instead there’s the reality that mindfulness and character strengths can be central tools and ways of living for each of us. Beginnings
My formal connection and practice with mindfulness began in the 1990s when I was introduced to the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, a humble and prolific Buddhist monk. I began to read and practice the principles contained in several of his books, especially The Miracle of Mindfulness, Being Peace, and Peace Is Every Step. His observations on tuning into the present moment struck a deep chord in me. I was astonished at how the words and the |xviii|practices were simultaneously simple and deep. They were simple in that they were immediately understandable and could be quickly applied in daily life in a meaningful way, and his words were deep in that upon reflection it was clear that they offered solid wisdom about how to live a fulfilling life. This naturally led me to the work of other popular mindfulness teachers such as Jon Kabat-Zinn. I attended mindfulness retreats and conferences and seriously studied mindfulness as espoused by both secular and nonsecular teachers (including Buddhists and Christians), and more important, applied mindfulness in my daily life – practicing meditation, engaging in mindful walking, applying mindfulness to mundane tasks such as washing the dishes, and using mindfulness when stressed or anxious. As a psychologist, I found that mindfulness connected well with my holistic conceptualization of people, fit neatly with the emerging trend toward mind–body therapies, and offered a powerful path that could help clients who were suffering. I began to lead meditation experiences for a wide range of clients, helping professionals, and the general public, and I used these workshops to teach participants how to integrate Eastern and Western philosophies and practices. Soon, I was being invited to lead day-long mindfulness training programs for practitioners and weekend mindfulness retreats for the general public. At this time, interest in mindfulness was spreading; however, it was in its infancy, either an unknown or a mere curiosity to most professionals, compared with its popularity in today’s world. One day, in 2002, the late Dr. Bob Wilke, the director of the Psychology and Religion Program at Saint Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute, called me into his office. He was pleased with the success of the mindfulness groups I’d been leading for priests, nuns, friars, and other ministers. Bob pointed to a green book on his desk titled Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (Segal et al., 2002), and he said, “Ryan, I want you to do this in our program.” Being a fairly agreeable person, trusting Bob’s judgment, and intrigued by the book’s title, I responded, “Sure.” I soon came to understand that the research and practice in this book was both solid and significant, as well as cutting-edge psychology. I studied the approach, attended workshops on the topic, continued my personal mindfulness practice, and wove mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) into my work. A hybrid model began to emerge in my practice – one that merged the wisdom and mindful living qualities of Thich Nhat Hanh, the structured, scientific-based approach of MBCT, and the widely applied scientific work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. I was privileged to bring mindfulness to groups and individuals, to those suffering with medical and mental illness, addictions, and everyday problems and stressors. This involved leading hundreds of groups in clinical and nonclinical settings. I was inspired by the immediate joy people often experienced, the healing that came about, and the excitement that was generated when someone began to grow and change as a result of implementing these new behaviors and practices. Seven years later I was hired by a nonprofit organization, the VIA Institute on Character (see Appendix 2), where I currently conduct science, design best practices, and educate both clinicians and nonclinicians about the latest research and knowledge in working with character strengths. This position allowed me to spend my time exploring the research on working with strengths in general, as well as the latest specific research on each of the 24 character strengths, collaborating with leading scientists, practicing from a strengths-based approach, and teaching practitioners around the world how to improve their work with strengths. While conducting trainings, the topic of mindfulness as a mechanism for working with strengths repeatedly came up. In addition, the main model for working with character |xix|strengths – aware-explore-apply (Niemiec, 2013) – happens to begin with mindfulness. Research was documenting more and more that mindfulness could be applied successfully to help people manage a variety of problems, disorders, and struggles, and, at the same time, bring about greater balance, coping, and resources. So why not bring mindfulness explicitly to what is best in individuals? An important synergy was developing. Despite widespread popularity, there were no programs focused exclusively on training individuals and groups on the VIA character strengths. I saw a natural opportunity and began to experiment with integrating these topics. I presented on the integration in several countries during a VIA World Tour of character strengths in 2009–2010, had conversations with practitioners in each country and cutting across industries, and developed several iterations of what eventually became mindfulness-based strengths practice (MBSP). Early versions of the program were tested by me and a handful of expert practitioners from several countries, and the original data were positive. The first edition of this present book was published, and I sat back and observed what was to come, while continuing to lead MBSP groups each year. The full manual for MBSP is found in Section III and Section IV of this book. Humble About Our Limitations
About 2 decades ago I was asked to be part of a mindfulness colloquium that involved professors, educators, and meditators from different disciplines, along with a...