Meditation in Therapy: Evidence-Based Practice and Personal Integration for Clinicians

Since the arrival of meditation and mindfulness ideas in the western secular zeitgeist, there has been an intuitive sense felt by many practitioners that these tools could play a powerful role in the healing process. Over the past 50 years, meditation & mindfulness has transitioned more clearly into the realm of evidence-based practice. In the clinical context, substantial research supports meditation-based interventions for anxiety, depression, stress, and other chronic conditions with outcomes for depression comparable to antidepressant medications (Goyal, 2014). This impact is most prom...Read moreinent in individuals with clinically diagnosed mental health disorders (Khoury, 2013). These interventions are also shown to improve overall perception of wellbeing and reduce the risk of relapse in cases of chronic depression (Goldberg, 2018). With this promising body of evidence from a growing number of robust meta-analyses, it is increasingly valid for clinicians to bring meditation and mindfulness-based interventions into the therapeutic space.

The practice of meditation itself is simple in some aspects, but complex, diverse, and subtle in others. It requires substantial commitment from the facilitator to delve deep into both personal practice and theory. As clinicians with interest in mindfulness-based interventions, engaging directly with the process ourselves is the ideal foundation to sharing this process fruitfully with others. This course explores the basic research, language, theory, and applied practice of Vipassana and contemporary Indo-Tibetan oriented meditation in the context of clinical intervention and provides tools to cultivate a strong personal practice. First, we will explore what meditation & mindfulness are, where they come from, and why they work for the brain & body. Next, we will examine modes of practice and ways to bring them into the therapy space. We will then explore frameworks from traditional systems of Buddhist psychology that are useful in the process of teaching and understanding mindfulness ideas. Finally, we will discuss the subtleties of meditation for specific mental health diagnoses and to find transcendent meaning in the later stages of the healing process.

This course emphasizes a hands-on, experiential approach to applied meditation practice for clinicians balancing theory and practice. It also celebrates the diverse schools of thought and modes of practice around meditation and aims to help clinicians choose and transmit appropriate mindfulness tools based on the needs of the client. Through cultivating a deep personal relationship with meditation practices, clinicians can improve client outcomes by communicating these subtle ideas intuitively and effectively. Though we are still in the early stages of understanding the role of meditation in brain and body health, it is a low risk and low cost intervention with comparable results to medication, nutrition, exercise, and sleep regulation and a synergistic effect when applied alongside conventional treatment and support systems (Sedlmeier, 2012). Less...

Learning Objectives

• Define and explain a selection of recent research supporting mindfulness-based interventions.
• Implement applied meditation/mindfulness interventions applicable to clinical practice.
• Evaluate client personality, needs, and presentation and select interventions that will be a beneficial fit.
• Describe and discuss the core philosophical framework of meditation and mindfulness interventions.

Target Audience

Learning Levels

• Intermediate

Thursday, March 13, 2025

12:00 PM EDT - 03:00 PM EDT