Mindful Meditation For Marriage Therapists

Marriage And Beyond

oi-Staff

By Staff

Friday, April 9, 2010, 12:18

Marriage and family Therapy which is one of the most sort after treatment has taken up meditation as of the most effective tools to treat their clients. Virginia Tech is one of few universities to integrate mindfulness meditation into its MFT program curriculum.

"Mindfulness meditation helps students improve their ability to be emotionally present in therapy sessions with clients. It helps beginners, who can sometimes feel overwhelmed, stop focusing on themselves and think more about others," Explained Eric McCollum.

Mindfulness meditation, is a practice of deliberately focusing one's attention to present experience, thoughts, physical sensation and emotions and doing one's best to stay present with those experiences without judging them or avoiding the difficult aspects.

With this practice one can gain a lot of benefits. MFT, leads to being more present, more empathetic, and more compassionate.This has helped many students at the university in their interaction with clients.

The course requires the students to maintain journals. The educational purpose of these journals is to provide an avenue for students to both communicate and reflect on their experience and to provide some accountability for their weekly practice of mindfulness meditation.

This practice has helped students of Marriage and Family Therapy to be present in difficult marital sessions, without being affected or agitated. This calmness, which the meditation provides have also proved to be very helpful for the clients.