I had a therapist who tried to teach me mindfulness techniques for dealing with voices. something about imagine they are a flowing river and let them float away. I didn’t understand what she meant and it greatly confused me.
visuals are not part of mindfulness, mindfulness is following your breath and paying attention to noises around you.
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maybe she was confused, she called them mindfulness techniques.
As I have written on those forum at least dozen times, some patients with diagnoses in the psychotic spectrum – and especially those who cannot seem to find emotional stability via medication – are not good candidates for the mindfulness-based cognitive and somatic experiencing psychotherapies.
BUT… those who have achieved a reasonable degree of emotional stability with meds (as I did) are often able to gain a lot from such work.
There is also the whole matter of WHO the therapist is. In my experience, some of them are qualified to teach these use-of-skills therapies to patients in the psychotic spectrum. Many others are not, however. I was so put off by the incompetence of many of the therapists I encountered that I elected to fight my way into school and learn how to be my own therapist (very much with the guidance of others I was then able to determine to know what they were doing or not on the basis of years of my own schooling, in-service training, etc.).
All that said, many of the therapies I list are available in workbook form on the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheap. One can buy a workbook on MBSR or DBT or MBBT, for example, and determine for themselves for less than $25.00 if it’s what they want to pursue further.
DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
MBCT - Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: theory and practice - PubMed
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia
Sorry; not necessarily true. I have done many mindfulness-via-visualization meditations since 1975.
That’s just one version of it. There are many.
If interested, you may want to look into Charles Tart’s truly superior (if unfortunately cursed by awful, potentially misleading cover design) book on the real deal.
Others who really know what the stuff is are listed in my posts elsewhere, including Eckhart Tolle, Arthur Deikman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mark Williams, Stephen Hayes, and Stanley Block.
Maybe your talking about vajrayana based mindfulness, Im talking about zazen mindfulness like the type that jon kabat-zinn teachs.
I think visualisations are dangerous for schizophrenics, I did kalachakra and yab-yum meditions found in vajrayana and it made me manic.
For some with sz, I agree. But I must know at least 20 to 30 sz patients here and in the physical world who can and do use the stuff without problems. I just don’t think we can globalize, over-generalize or make a blanket statement.
Please see my comments to flybottle and cbbrown above.
BTW, I have never seen anyone practice MM visualization the way David Crosby sings about it at the link below and get “weird” from it. As Tart makes it clear, to get the maximum benefit from MM (for those for whom it is safe to use), one has to do it in each of the sensory channels. My first experience with it in visual, tactile, olfactory, taste, aural and “gut” (enteric) channels was in 1975 over the course of several hours in a huge hotel ballroom with 250 other people.
I see you have 40 years exp with this, I only do mindfuless for 20mins a day and try stay in the now as Eckhart puts it.
What practices have you found most helpful there is most likely something I could learn that would help me too.
@notmoses What gets me is when you previously said take note of the senses and not what your thinking. That’s sort of bad advice for someone like me, it’s straight to the hospital. I need to ignore my senses which is easier said than done and I have a frame of mind where anything is believed.
Actually, Jiddu Krishnamurti’s. Which will seem to most people (when they first encounter him) to decry most or all of the “standard” MM or Buddhist practices.
He (along with Watts, Huxley, Brach, Trungpa, Tart and others in very recent times) understood that obsessive practice of MM is a waste of time and even potentially counter-productive.
It was from him that I was steered towards weekly formal meditation and the daily (sometimes many times daily) use of the 10 StEPs.
I have said the former but never the latter.
One needs to pay attention – for a nice safe distance – to what they are thinking, so that they can detach from it when it gets screwy (as, for example, when The Voices get noisy), as well as what they feel.
I use the 10 StEPs to watch (or listen to) my thoughts and my feelings, especially when they get too wrapped up in emotions. But I would not be able to use the 10 StEPs without having all the other stuff “down,” so I try to do a group meditation that focuses on all five sensory channels, as well as my thoughts, weekly with others. We just sit there and observe our minds operating. Notice, recognize, acknowledge what is noticed and recognized, accept it as being there, own any reactivity to it, appreciate why it’s there, etc.
It’s funny because with some not all I can tell they have schizophrenia (also had it where I could’t spot an ill person on a PQ, couldn’t see it at all). And I can tell they have problems. I can’t say for sure but I don’t think I would believe a person when this happens. I don’t know why i say this just sharing.
I have had it where I know I have a problem and I just can’t for the life of me see what. And I actually felt mentally ill in the head (can’t quit explain, a physical feeling in a way in my brain). The thing is in the hospital they just leave you to crash and burn, threatening to knock you out with injections. Some form of intensive CBT (I don’t know but something) could help. Won’t cure but help.
I very much agree.
And here (for those who may be lurking but wondering) is the post on an earlier thread that got all this started. (Because there is obviously some measure of misunderstanding what was written there by others.)
http://pairadocks.blogspot.com/2016/01/why-and-how-to-reduce-medication-dose.html
if you are a stable mentally ill person…meditate
if not… i would not advise it… as it can ’ fuel ’ delusions…
take care 
p.s levitating is overrated
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Exactly. (And leave it to @darksith to Break It Down.)
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I can’t grasp the whole mindfulness thing . I am not sure what I am meant to do/ not do . Phrases like “being in the moment” throw me.
Common sense and intelligence tells me it must work for some people and not for others though who is suited to it and who isn’t I haven’t got a clue.
I am willing to entertain that personal shortcomings make it something difficult for me to get into and grasp.
Means nothing more than paying attention to what is going on on any “sensory channel” (e.g.: sight, sound, tactile) right this second, and then in the next, and then in the next. Very simple. And it sounds so prosaic.
But because most people live in the past (thoughts, memories, ideas, etc.) determining the (as yet nonexistent) future, they rarely see, hear or fell what is happening right now.
But when they start to do so, they find they become increasingly capable of steering the “life bus” to where they really want it to go instead of where their thoughts, memories and ideas want it to go.
I think meditation used improperly can cause problems, maybe even illness. I think focusing on your breath simply is about as easy at it gets. What some encourage is conscious breathing (but not hyperventilation). If you aren’t breathing, don’t continue that behavior. I wouldn’t practice meditation in a way that isn’t suggested by a trusted master, and I wouldn’t try meditation while driving (yes, I have tried meditating while driving, so I know it doesn’t work). There are many forms, but the simplest is breathing. Breathe. Oxygen is good for you (and so is carbon dioxide is good for you too). Lack of oxygen can cause all kinds of problems for the body and the mind. Look into it.
I am practicing meditation with the help of a teacher in a sangha. All the talk about how meditation being harmful to the person with psychosis is harmful to me. It sets off fearful thoughts in my mind and discourages me from continuing on with my meditation. It’s like anything today. The media do this to everyone. They set up fearful thinking in the mind of the individual who exposes himself to them. You have to choose your influences. As Trungpa says: find out for yourself. The Buddha said this too. Pema Chodron is a very good influence. I have chosen Thich Nhat Hanh as my guide in all of this. As he suggests, I practice mindfulness of breath during the day, as much as I can. It is the key to mindfulness of the body. I suggest, notmoses, you reconsider your opinion of Thich Nhat Hanh. Maybe look at his writings with an open heart. Much of this talk on the forum today about MM is overloaded with abstractions, esp.notmoses’ advice. I get confused. Is this talk just opinion?
I do agree with you.
Mindfulnness and CBT are both over hyped.