Mindfulness 101: The What and How Skills

As Eastern practices infuse into Western medicine, mindfulness is becoming popular and is widely utilized in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).  Mindfulness is an ideal skill set that supports active listening and enhances the clarity of thoughts, potentially yielding more authentic and precise questions and feedback. 

               

At its core, Linehan’s mindfulness is the fusion of Zen meditation and “Western contemplative thought” (Linehan, 1993, p. 144).  It integrates attention and heightened awareness techniques with emotion regulation and distress tolerance by involving the “what” and “how” skills of mindfulness.    

The activities of mindfulness, the “what” skills, are to observe, describe and participate.  Observation is the back seat perception of one’s immediate environment without labels or judgments.  Description is the verbal acknowledgment of what is observed internally and externally and equally cognitively and behaviorally.  Participation is akin to Csíkszentmihályi’s positive psychology concept of flow and is “entering completely into the activities of the current moment, without separating oneself from ongoing events and interactions” (Linehan, 1993, p. 146). 

The ways to practice them are the “how” skills: taking a nonjudgmental stance, focusing your thoughts on the here and now, and “using skillful means,” also termed “being effective,” to respond to one’s internal and external environments.  These concepts are the foundation for urge surfing (Linehan, 1993).