Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy

This practical guide helps therapists from virtually any specialty or theoretical orientation choose and adapt mindfulness practices most likely to be effective with particular patients, while avoiding those that are contraindicated. The authors provide a wide range of meditations that build the core skills of focused attention, mindfulness, and compassionate acceptance. Vivid clinical examples show how to weave the practices into therapy, tailor them to each patient's needs, and overcome obstacles. Therapists also learn how developing their own mindfulness practice can enhance therapeutic relationships and personal well-being. The Appendix offers recommendations for working with specific clinical problems. Free audio downloads (narrated by the authors) and accompanying patient handouts for selected meditations from the book are available at www.sittingtogether.com.

See also Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, Second Edition, edited by Christopher K. Germer, Ronald D. Siegel, and Paul R. Fulton, which reviews the research on therapeutic applications of mindfulness and delves into treatment of specific clinical problems.


Author: Susan M. Pollak, Thomas Pedulla, Ronald D. Siegel
Publisher: Guilford Publications
Published: 07/29/2016
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.50w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9781462527731
ISBN10: 1462527736
BISAC Categories:
- Psychology | Psychotherapy | General
- Medical | Psychiatry | General
- Social Science | Social Work

About the Author
Susan M. Pollak, MTS, EdD, is cofounder and senior teacher at the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, where she has supervised and taught since the mid-1990s. She is past president of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and a psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A longtime student of meditation and yoga, Dr. Pollak teaches about mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion in psychotherapy and has been integrating the practices of meditation into psychotherapy since the 1980s. She is author of Self-Compassion for Parents (for general readers) and coauthor of Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy (for mental health professionals).

Thomas Pedulla, LICSW, is a clinical social worker and psychotherapist in private practice in Arlington, Massachusetts, where he works with individuals and leads mindfulness-based cognitive therapy groups. A faculty and board member at the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy since 2007, Mr. Pedulla has also served on the board of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and has been a practitioner of meditation in the vipassana tradition since the 1980s.

Ronald D. Siegel, PsyD, is Assistant Professor of Psychology, part time, at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, where he has taught since the early 1980s. He is a longtime student of mindfulness meditation and is a faculty and board member at the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Dr. Siegel teaches internationally about the application of mindfulness practices in psychotherapy and other fields, and maintains a private practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts. His books include The Mindfulness Solution, for general readers, as well as several acclaimed works for professionals.