The Basic Mindfulness Toolkit

When medical doctors routinely made house calls they carried a ‘black bag’ of a few essential diagnostic and treatment tools. The black bag is a useful metaphor for the Basic Mindfulness Toolkit–a few tools or medicines selected for their broad utility with the conditions the therapist is most likely to face. What tools would a psychotherapist need if she were putting together a mindfulness-based black bag? What tools do I use so routinely with clients that they would be considered essential?

With this workshop you will be introduced to:

1) Basic Mindfulness, a modern and comprehensive system of psycho-spiritual training designed by Shinzen Young

2) The Basic Mindfulness Toolkit: a small selection of mindfulness training tools chosen from the broader Basic Mindfulness system.

The utility of the Basic Mindfulness Toolkit becomes clear when we recognize that experiential avoidance (EA) and chronic stress (CS) are found to be both cause and effect in a wide variety of physical and mental disorders. The underlying mechanism in both is a maladaptive relationship to sensory experience, maladaptive versions of the nervous system’s hardwired response of fight/flight/freeze/submit.

Temporary relief produced by these innate responses reinforces unconscious repetition. Mental rumination (fight), active turning away (flight), or non-action (freeze/submit), become habitual ways of relating to experience as the untrained (ucs) mind seeks relief.  Mindfulness is a key psychotherapeutic tool to decondition these habits because its action is directed at the fundamental relationship to sensory experience.

Participants will learn to use mindfulness to transform maladaptive defenses (fight, flight, freeze/submit) into adaptive strategies (turn towards, turn away, turn to rest) for coping. These three exercises become a strategy in the Basic Mindfulness Toolkit, which can be easily taught to clients and have an immediate impact on a broad range of client diagnoses.

Date: Saturday, February 11

Time: 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Location: Lewis & Clark Graduate Campus, Conference Center Room 115

Instructor: Janet M. Sims, Ph.D.

Noncredit/CEU: 6 hours, $125 by 1/27, $140 after. $40 for students.

About the Instructor:

Janet M. Sims, Ph.D. is a psychologist and co-founder of Basic Mindfulness Portland, LLC. In addition to using mindfulness in her therapy practice, she has taught it at Dartmouth Medical School, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and to mental health and allied health professionals in New England and Oregon. As a Visiting Professor of Psychology at Portland State University, she teaches Mindfulness in the Contemplative Education program. Dr. Sims has meditated for over 25 years and is a student of and facilitator for Shinzen Young, the developer of the Basic Mindfulness system. She continues to develop the Basic Mindfulness Toolkit for use individually and in psychotherapy.

Lewis & Clark is accredited by the Northwestern Association of Schools and Colleges and is an approved provider (#04228) of continuing education hours for the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC). The Oregon State Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists, the Oregon State Board of Clinical Social Workers, and the Washington State Board of Chemical Dependency Counselors accept noncredit courses for licensure renewal.

Registration required, please fill out the registration form with contact information, name of workshop and payment.