Mindfulness for Trauma: Overview
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- Mindfulness is paying attention for a purpose in the present without judging. It involves a combination of awareness, acceptance, and action.
- Mindfulness involves a process of expanding awareness of the physical, internal, and external experiences.
- Unresolved trauma gets stuck in the body and manifests somatically. Healing from trauma starts with mindfulness of the body.
- When introducing mindfulness to clients, select activities that are inherently enjoyable, already part of their routine, do not require extra time and money, can be done in small time increments, and involves awareness of the body.
- We have a thinking mind, a feeling mind, and a balanced mind. The thinking mind is verbal while the feeling mind is nonverbal. Both are equally important. The role of the balanced mind is to recognize thoughts and feelings, up or downregulate thoughts and feelings, synthesize thoughts and feelings, and make mindful dialectical decisions. The balanced mind is a repository of wisdom and a source of healing.
Materials Downloads
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Transcript
In this module, we have learned all about mindfulness. In this final video, let’s summarize some of the key points we have covered throughout this module.
So first of all, mindfulness is all about paying attention for a purpose in the present without judging. Applied mindfulness always involves a combination of awareness, acceptance, and action. The reason that mindfulness is such an effective agent of change is because human observation literally affects everything in the universe that we could possibly observe, including the mind itself.
Another key point. Learning to become more mindful involves a process of expanding awareness in the following domains: physical experiences, internal experiences, and external experiences. Mindfulness practice starts with learning to attune to your own body, further expands when you learn to attune to your own mind, and expands even further when you learn to attune to everything else in life.