Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness (52 page)

in the context of clinical anxiety? How can mindfulness training be integrated

most effectively with existing evidence-based treatment approaches, includ-

ing CBT and/or medication? And finally, what is the role that institutions and

184

Jeffrey Greeson, Jeffrey Brantley

communities may play in facilitating the development of greater mindfulness,

individually, and collectively?

Conclusion

Human beings have the capacity for accurate, present-moment awareness

of the flow of their inner life. Mindfulness is a name for this accepting and

accurate awareness. Mindfulness arises from paying attention on purpose.

Practicing mindfulness appears to complement and enhance established

psychotherapeutic approaches to the treatment of anxiety and underlying

mind/body dysregulation. Taken together, mindfulness practice appears to

offer a healthy and effective means of relating to one’s inner experience of

fear and anxiety, in part through cultivating the ability to pay attention on

purpose with an open, curious, and accepting attitude toward oneself and

one’s outer world. This “wise relationship” offered by mindfulness practice

may help ease the suffering of excessive fear, anxiety or panic by encour-

aging an individual to “reperceive” the transient conditions of internal dis-

comfort by maintaining equanimity as one’s experience unfolds, moment by

moment. Using the higher-order skill of “metacognitive awareness,” one may

more easily perceive unpleasant internal stimuli or external events simply

as they are, without creating a story about one’s present-moment experi-

ence that can fuel perseverative thinking, upsetting feelings, disconcerting

physiological arousal, and reactive behavior in an attempt to avoid distress.

With practice, as automatic reactions are deliberately acknowledged and let

go and consciously chosen behavioral responses are selected, one begins to

realize increasing wisdom, psychological freedom, and behavioral flexibility.

These characteristics afforded by mindfulness practice define healthy, adap-

tive mental functioning, which includes acknowledging fear and anxiety, but

does not allow fear to control or distort one’s life.

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