INCREASE YOUR PERSONAL AND INTERPERSONAL
WELL-BEING
A MINDFULNESS and MEDITATION PROGRAM
About
Mindfulness and Meditation
-
Develop present-moment awareness within your body and mind.
-
Learn non-judgmental, non-reactive, and accepting attitudes toward your experiences.
-
Engage with events in a more impersonal and detached manner.
-
Use sitting meditation to develop mindfulness skills.
​
Alleviate everyday sufferings like stress, anxiety, and depression.
Key Mechanisms of Mindfulness
-
Equanimity: Cultivating emotional balance and non-reactivity.
-
Develop a neutral response to something you experience.
-
Develop calmness and composure.
-
Experience a feeling of ease, and self-control.
-
-
Impermanence: Recognizing the transient nature of experiences.
-
Experience the changing nature of all things, including your own mental and emotional experiences.
-
Learn to see yourself more objectively and scientifically.
-
How do I practice mindfulness?
-
Sitting meditation is the most effective way.
-
You will focus inward, away from daily distractions, and reprocess internal experiences.
-
With closed eyes, you focus on your breath to enhance concentration and attention control.
-
Unhelpful thoughts arise, and you learn to see them as impermanent mental events.
-
You gain direct experience that thoughts, emotions and sensations don’t define who you are.
-
By not reacting you can accept and release emotions—this is emotional regulation.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
-
The way we think affects our emotions and behaviour.
-
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) helps manage mental health conditions by changing thought patterns and behaviors.
-
CBT uses:
-
Thought Modification: Alters unhelpful thought content.
-
Behavioral Changes: Addresses coping strategies and addictive behaviors.
-
Social Skills Training: Enhances assertiveness.
-
Exposure Therapy: Confronts avoided situations.
-
Belief Verification: Challenges unhelpful beliefs.
-
What is this approach called?
-
Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or MiCBT.
-
Offers a practical set of evidence-based techniques derived from mindfulness training from the Burmese Vipassana tradition with core methods of CBT.
-
Addresses a broad range of psychological disorders, general stress conditions, and pain symptoms.
MiCBT: Integrating mindfulness and CBT - A 4 Stages Program
-
The 4 Stages
MiCBT is a four-stage therapeutic approach that integrates mindfulness and some of the basic principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help people improve the way they feel and change unhelpful behaviours. However, MiCBT allows people to make changes differently from CBT. While CBT attempts to change maladaptive behaviour by modifying people’s unrealistic thoughts and beliefs, MiCBT tries to help people learn to develop control over the processes that maintain unrealistic thoughts and beliefs through mindfulness training. MiCBT helps change the process of thinking, not just the content of our thoughts.
1
Personal Stage:
This stage will teach you mindfulness skills to notice and let go of unhelpful thoughts and emotions to address life’s challenges successfully. Here you will develop deep insight and equanimity and realize that you don’t have to be prey to every thought that enters your mind and every emotion you feel.
2
Exposure Stage:
During Stage 2, you will learn to apply these self-regulation skills in situations you might be avoiding, which will result in an increase in self-confidence.
3
​
Interpersonal Stage:
​
In Stage 3, you will learn to develop better interpersonal understanding and communication skills in the face of tense situations with people and learn not to react to others’ reactivity.
4
Empathic Stage:
With Stage 4, you will learn to increase your capacity to be kind to yourself and compassionate with others in your daily actions, leading to a greater sense of self-worth and a deep sense of care and connectedness with people.
Changing Reactive Habits
​
Like cognitive behavioural therapy, MiCBT draws on exposure and desensitisation principles to help us change habitual unhelpful reactions or coping strategies. However, unlike traditional CBT, MiCBT regards reactive habits as the result of a habit of reacting to body sensations. Body sensations are the results of how we think, and we learn, often from early childhood, to react to the body sensations in certain ways in our attempt to feel better. Preventing such reactions while remaining fully aware and accepting bodily experiences leads to rapid change in our habitual feelings and behaviours. We feel emotionally relieved.
Interpersonal Mindfulness
​
MiCBT can not only help people change distressing thoughts, feelings and behaviours, it can also help people change their relationships with others. The skills we learn in MiCBT can help us not react to others and foster a greater understanding and acceptance of ourselves and others. This usually culminates in more harmonious relationships and helps prevent relapse into habitual moods and behaviour. This is explained during stage three of the program.
Mindfulness and Empathy
​
The fourth stage of MiCBT teaches people to use the skills learned from the previous three stages to develop empathy for themselves and others. The three previous stages lead to the realisation that we are the first beneficiary of the emotions we produce, whether this is a positive or negative emotion. A deep sense of empowerment, acceptance, and change usually occurs at the end of Stage 4, the last stage of the MiCBT program.
This page is reproduced with permission by Dr. Bruno Cayoun, MiCBT Institute;
15/09 /2023. https://www.mindfulness.net.au/for-community/how-can-micbt-help-me/
Biography-Daniel Huard
Daniel Huard is a trained Psychologist, member of the “Ordre des psychologues du Québec” since 1990 and of the College of Registered Psychotherapist of Ontario since 2016.
Testimonials
Jennifer Capiral, RP, Psychotherapist
“I highly recommend the MiCBT 10-week program for those new to mindfulness and for those who already have a mindfulness practice. I learned new techniques and practices and very soon into the program I noticed results. I felt more grounded, a sense of inner calm, and was able to deal with challenges with much more equanimity. Daniel’s gentle and non-judgmental approach as well as his deep understanding of theory and practice was a key factor to my progress. He made himself available and was responsive to questions. Today, a few months following the program, I continue to notice its benefits.”
Mario Laureti
Having explored various meditation techniques, my curiosity led me to Daniel's MiCBT program. Initially, during a busy weekend, I doubted my ability to commit the time and informed Daniel of my decision to withdraw. His immediate response and insightful questions during an impromptu discussion, which turned into a meaningful venting session, were pivotal. His support and understanding were key in my decision to persevere. The program, though challenging, was immensely rewarding. It has enabled me to pause my constant problem-solving mindset, allowing me to recognize and halt these thoughts during meditation, a significant shift in my mental process.
*More to come*
-
An avid meditator for a decade now, he has successfully completed the Core MiCBT Training early in 2023, providing him with the ability to provide MiCBT to a group and individual clients.
-
He is passionate about mindfulness and meditation and has the desire to help support people grow and optimize their living experience.
-
-
He has over 30-year experience in mental health and psychology, having had a career with the Federal Government as a Counsellor and the Manager of an Employee Assistance Program. He provided support and supervision to counsellors and helped the organization with its human systems.
-
He had a part time private practice for 12 years before he joined the government on a full-time basis.
-
He worked for five years in the field of addictions, providing psychotherapy to individuals, couples and groups.
-
Relying on evidence-based approaches to his practice, he provides practical tools to support effective experiential growth.
-
He has a passion for watching big birds soaring and gliding by taking energy from wind currents in the atmosphere, his ultimate analogy for navigating the sensate world of the humankind.
​
ABOUT Sati: It means “To Remember to Observe”.
Sati comes from the old Pali language and refers to mindfulness.
​
A Mindfulness Program to Increase your Personal and Interpersonal Well-Being