Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (7th post) - fifth week's practice
26th January 2012
I wrote about chapter eight in Mark & Danny's book last week. This post is about chapter nine - the fifth week of meditation practice - "Turning towards difficulties" (pp. 159 to 182). In their week-by-week programme summary (p. 59), they write "Week five introduces a meditation - Exploring difficulty …
My brand new "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy! (second post)
23rd January 2012
I began thinking yesterday about what I actually do as a psychotherapist. This lead to a light-hearted first post describing a "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy. The initial "two" acknowledges the importance of an overview of what has been going on for the client and a good working alliance. The …
My brand new "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy! (first post)
22nd January 2012
Here's my brand new "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy. How do I know it's so fresh off the press? Well I just came up with it lying warmly in bed an hour or so ago. It's "serious" in the sense that I have been mulling over what I actually do …
Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (6th post) - fourth week's practice
19th January 2012
Last week I wrote about chapter seven of Mark & Danny's book. This post is about chapter eight - the fourth week of actual meditation practice - entitled "Moving beyond the rumour mill" (pp. 134 to 158). In their week-by-week overall summary of the whole programme (pp. 58 to 60), …
Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (fifth post): two chair conflict dialogues
16th January 2012
I wrote yesterday about the importance of processing "hot cognitions" and feelings. In today's post I aim to to drill down more into the emotional evocation and processing of chair work. "Two chair work for conflict splits" is often relevant, Robert Elliott suggested in this Emotion-focused therapy workshop, when clients …
Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (fourth post): the importance of processing "hot" cognitions & feelings
15th January 2012
I wrote yesterday about the morning session on "Narrative therapy and trauma processing" in the third day of an "Emotion-focused psychotherapy: Level 2 workshop series" that I'm attending at the University of Strathclyde. A couple of months ago, in my first post about this whole workshop series, I wrote "As …
Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (third post): narrative therapy and trauma processing
14th January 2012
"Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts" Salman Rushdie Yesterday was the third day …
Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (5th post) - third week's practice
12th January 2012
I wrote recently on "Using Williams & Penman's book ... as a self-help resource (4th post) - second week's practice". Today's post looks at the third week's practice described in chapter seven "The mouse in the maze". The authors state "Week three builds on the previous sessions with some non-strenuous …
Recent research: articles from December journals
6th January 2012
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 17,000 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …
Is short duration sleep a problem or is it just disturbed sleep that leads to increased mortality risk? A personal exploration.
3rd January 2012
It is clear that there is a U-shaped association between sleep duration and mortality, with both short and long sleep linked with increased death rates. This finding is underlined by two major recent research overviews - Gallicchio & Kalesan "Sleep duration and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis" and Cappuccio …