Are You Curious About Deepening Your Inner World?

Are you interested in meditation’s potential to help you become more connected, peaceful, and self-aware? If you’re new to meditation—or practice only inconsistently—you may be seeking a psychotherapy that incorporates mindfulness approaches that could strengthen your practice. Or, if you already have an established meditation practice, incorporating skills and introspection from psychotherapy might expand your wisdom and offer you a greater repertoire for handling life stresses and interpersonal conflicts.

Are you frustrated by feeling stuck, unable to reach the root of your suffering? Are you having trouble dislodging yourself from behaviors, thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, and assumptions that are keeping you from bringing your best self to your life? If anxiety, depression, or chronic pain are a source of ongoing discomfort, you might be interested in adding mindfulness approaches which could relieve your distress and open you to possibilities that you hadn’t imagined could be in your future.

Would you like to make more meaningful, long-lasting progress in therapy? Perhaps you’re curious as to how you could apply principles of insight-oriented psychology to your inner growth, or are longing for an approach to tie in your meditation practice with behavioral skills that can lead to significant internal change and improvements in your day-to-day life.

Whether you’d like to move through life with greater presence and ease or are hoping to create a deeper state of relaxation, insight, and connectedness, mindfulness-based therapy can help you move past ‘stuck’ and into living as your best self.

Modern Life Leaves Little Time For Self-Reflection

We live in a time of great conflict, anxiety, and social upheaval. Rather than getting overwhelmed or discouraged, though, we can learn to embrace, adapt to, and even appreciate the reality of our circumstances.

Being on this earth here and now gives us the means and motivation to learn to approach and respond to our ever-changing world more freely. There are ample opportunities for us to sharpen our focus and see the world more clearly. There are also plenty of occasions to practice compassion, gratitude, and forgiveness, resulting in a deeper respect for all living beings.

Mindfulness-based therapy can lessen internal shame and remorse, allowing us to form a kinder, more caring relationship with ourselves. As we learn to be on our own side, as it were, we also learn to expand our heart towards others. This allows us to be more compassionate to our family, friends, pets, and the world around us. As we grow in our own self-discovery and kindness, we can offer our increased loving awareness to those around us.

Mindfulness-based therapy can provide insight, growth, and deepening compassion, leading to meaningful life change. Without the challenges inherent to modern life, we would have less motivation to seek out these benefits. If we think about present time from this perspective, we can approach the rapid fluctuations in our world today with an open heart and a felt sense of gratitude. Feeling our own suffering and the suffering of others can help lead us to increased awareness and teach us effective skills for the benefit of ourselves and the world around us.

Open Your Heart With Mindfulness Therapy

I draw from my experience as a licensed clinical social worker and my ongoing education in mindfulness to offer profound healing through meditation-focused psychotherapy sessions. By combining traditional meditation techniques with modern psychotherapy best practices, I can help you deepen your self-awareness far beyond what either approach can individually provide.

The self-awareness you develop during meditation can serve as a gateway to profound psychological insights not only in our sessions, but in your daily life. Imagine, for example, that someone says something hurtful to you. If you react without the ability to pause and reflect, you might feel the need to attack back. On the other hand, if you can root yourself in a grounded presence cultivated through mindfulness, you can respond with greater self-awareness, perhaps even with compassion and kindness.

The simplest and most direct way to increase attention and presence is by focusing on the physical body. This approach provides many options for increasing your mindfulness at any time. During our sessions, you will learn to use your senses to become more aware of simple things like the feeling of your feet on the ground or the movement of your breath. This will train your mind to notice when things like sudden muscle tension or a quickening heartbeat arise. You will then have the opportunity to soothe and calm your nervous system when that tension arises using the variety of relaxation tools I will share with you, allowing you to curb anxiety and reduce reactivity.

Just as the meditative element of our sessions can help you mentally heal and grow, the psychoanalytic element of our work can deepen your meditation practice. If you are having trouble breaking out of what Tara Brach calls the “trance of unworthiness,” I can help you detach from identifying with your inner critic. As you learn to engage with yourself in greater kindness and pay less attention to negative thoughts, it will also be easier for you to listen to your intuition and tap into your innate wisdom.

The mindfulness-based therapy sessions I offer are highly personalized. Taking into account your previous therapeutic or meditative experience, I’ll incorporate a variety of approaches tailored to your situation and goals. For example, if you are hoping to recover from a traumatic experience, I can provide my experience in trauma-sensitive mindfulness meditation adaptations to help you heal. Depending on your needs, I can draw from my understanding of neurobiology, psychotherapy, meditation, psychodynamics, cognitive behavioral therapy, and more, to speed your progress.

My integrative approach can help you greet each day with a heightened presence and calm, while awakening within you new possibilities for acceptance and compassion. Should you wish, we can make a recording of a guided meditation created just for you, which you can use at home for increased practice and strengthening.

As you consider adding meditation to your life, you may be thinking. . .

I tried it before and I don’t have time to meditate every day.

Many people assume that the only “correct” way to practice mindfulness is to meditate quietly by themselves while focusing on their breath for long stretches of time. On the contrary, formal meditation practice is only one way to increase awareness. Mindfulness, simply put, just means training your mind to pay attention—on purpose—to what is going on inside of yourself and outside of yourself, and bringing a kind acceptance to what this experience is. Mindfulness practices help you become intimate with reality, with life as it unfolds, just as it is. This means that you can practice increasing your focused attention anywhere, like when sitting at the stoplight, sipping your coffee, or washing dishes.

Mindful therapy can help you cultivate a formal meditation practice if that’s your goal. For many people, just learning strategies to become more fully present in the midst of a busy life will be more than sufficient.

Therapy didn’t help me before. How will this be different?

While most therapists are kind and well-intentioned, not all are informed in mindfulness approaches or have many years in their own meditation practice, or apply Buddhist psychology to psychotherapy. Many are not aware of the current research, which suggests that meditation is an effective, no-side-effects treatment for anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic pain, and more.

There are many different approaches to therapy, and only some of them may speak to you. If you’ve developed an idea of what you don’t want from a previous therapy experience, that will help us tailor your sessions towards what does work for you, whether that means working with a certified mindfulness instructor or a therapist specializing in another area. That being said, I’m confident that everyone can benefit in some way from increased introspection and from gaining skills to effectively calm their nervous system and regulate their behavior.

Is mindfulness a religion?

Meditation and mindfulness have ancient roots in Eastern religions, including Buddhism as well as in Christian Centering prayer and Jewish Kabbalah. Western culture today—including the scientific community—has embraced meditation and mindfulness in recent years, both with and without its religious connotations. Defined from a purely psychological perspective, mind-body therapies such as meditation are simply useful exercises for training one’s mind. Mindfulness therapy allows you to experience a myriad of benefits while bringing as much or as little spiritual meaning to the practice as you desire.

Could Working With A Mindfulness Therapist Work For You?

The only way to know the answer is to discover it for yourself by working with a skilled and mindful teacher. I have a PH.D in clinical social work, and am a Board Certified Clinical Social Worker. I am a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, having completed the 2-year training program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. I am currently offering a free bi-monthly meditation practice session on Monday nights. Deepening my meditation practice with training from Jack and Tara has been transformative for me, personally. I welcome providing you with the tools you need to train your mind to pay attention more fully and more intimately—to your inner life, your relationships with others, and your experience of this world which is constantly in motion.

If you’re ready to learn more about deepening your mindfulness, building stronger connections with others, and letting go of physical and emotional tension, call 203-482-2402 or email kwalant@gmail.com today for a free 15-minute phone consultation. I look forward to helping you grow your aliveness and feel anchored in the experience of the present moment.