Guides
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Practical attention to your body and the present moment—the part of therapy that keeps insight from staying stuck in your head.
Approaches I draw on
Of the traditions my work rests on, mindfulness is probably the least mysterious. At its simplest, it means noticing what’s happening while it’s happening, without rushing to fix it, explain it, or talk yourself out of it. That might be a tight throat, a story your mind keeps replaying, or the sudden urge to change the subject.
My MBSR training (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) was through Cambridge Health Alliance in 2022, and the rest of my training is listed on Meet Lauren. In therapy, mindfulness can show up as a short guided practice, or simply as a way of paying attention in the middle of an ordinary conversation.
Why insight and noticing need each other
You can understand exactly why you react the way you do—trace it to your family, name the pattern, explain it beautifully to a friend—and still feel your stomach drop the next time it happens. That’s what I mean on my approach page when I say insight without noticing tends to stay in the head. The understanding is real, and it just hasn’t reached the part of you that does the reacting.
It works the other way, too. You can notice your jaw tightening every time a certain name lights up your phone without having any idea what it’s about, and noticing on its own can start to feel aimless. In our work, the two travel together: we notice something in the moment, get curious about what it’s connected to, and let each one inform the other.
What it looks like in a session
Much of the time, it doesn’t look like meditation at all. It looks like me asking you to pause halfway through a sentence because your voice just changed, or wondering out loud what’s happening in your body as you describe a conversation with your mother. Sometimes we’ll use a short guided practice too, which I describe in meditation & breathwork in therapy. Along the way, it might include:
- Pausing when something shifts, so we can notice it instead of talking over it
- Locating a feeling: where it sits in your body, how big it is, whether it moves
- Staying with something uncomfortable a little longer than usual, at a pace you choose
- Getting curious about an urge—to fix, to flee, to apologize—before acting on it
How mindfulness supports parts work
Mindfulness is also how Internal Family Systems gets traction. In IFS, we use mindfulness and guided exploration to understand what your “parts” need, and that starts with noticing a part instead of being completely swept up in it. There’s a real difference between “I’m furious” and “part of me is furious right now,” and that small gap is where curiosity becomes possible.
From there, we can ask the part what it’s worried about, what it wants you to know, and how long it’s been doing its job. Those questions are much easier to ask from a steady, noticing place, which is why mindfulness sits underneath so much of my IFS work.
When it can be especially useful
Mindfulness can help when your mind tends to run ahead of you, as it often does with anxiety and overwhelm, because it gives your attention somewhere to come back to. It’s also a core piece of emotional regulation and nervous system work, where the aim is to catch the early signs that you’re getting flooded or shutting down while there’s still some choice about what happens next.
No spiritual commitment required
Mindfulness has roots in Buddhist practice, and I’ve trained in Buddhist psychology as well, but I use both without asking you to adopt anything spiritual. There’s nothing to believe, and you won’t need to sit cross-legged or own a single meditation cushion. If the spiritual side interests you, there’s a separate guide to Buddhist psychology in therapy, and we can talk about it as much or as little as you like.
I keep a practice of my own, an imperfect one, so I’m not asking you to do anything I don’t also find hard some days. If you’d like to experience this rather than read about it, send me a quick note through the contact form. We’ll set up a free 15-minute video call, and you can bring any questions you have about this way of working.
A few common questions
Do I have to meditate?
No. Meditation is one way to practice mindfulness, and short guided practices are there if you’d like them, but a lot of mindfulness in therapy happens with your eyes open, in conversation. If formal meditation isn’t for you, nothing about the work depends on it.
How is this different from taking an MBSR course?
MBSR is a structured program, usually taught to a group over eight weeks, with a set sequence of practices. In our sessions, there’s no curriculum. Mindfulness gets woven into whatever you bring that day, shaped around your history and your nervous system, and combined with IFS, psychodynamic, and attachment-focused work.
Is mindfulness-based therapy only for anxiety?
Not at all. It can be useful with anxiety, and it’s just as much a part of working with low mood, old relationship patterns, stress, or simply wanting to know yourself better. Think of it as a way of paying attention that runs underneath the work, rather than a treatment aimed at one thing.