Mindfulness Skills

Do you have clients struggling with worry, anxiety, and stress? Mindfulness is a proven antidote to address these emotionally centered issues. The Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress will give you the tools needed to help your clients as they explore and develop mindfulness skills.

This workbook is a practical tool for counselors, social workers, teachers, group leaders, therapists, and other helping professionals. Depending on the role of the professional using Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress, the modules can be used either individually or as part of an integrated mindfulness curriculum. You may use this program with clients who need to slow down, live more in the present moment, pay attention rather than live on autopilot, and accept life and others without judgment.

This workbook includes everything you need to help your clients develop mindfulness skills. Each chapter begins with discussion questions to encourage deeper self-reflection, followed by activity pages designed to teach specific mindfulness skills.

Use the workbook's reproducible activities, exercises, and handouts with individual clients or groups. The techniques used in the assessment tool and self-exploration activities are evidence-based and field-tested.

Why Is Mindfulness Important?

Although mindfulness is not automatic and does not occur spontaneously, it can be learned and practiced to be intentionally accessed when needed. Some of the characteristics of mindfulness include non-judgmental awareness, paying attention on purpose, remaining non-judgmental, staying in the present, being non-reactive, and remaining open-hearted and compassionate.

Mindfulness has many benefits that can help to reduce the stress associated with daily hassles:

• Increased acceptance—By not making evaluations, participants can accept their thoughts and see these messages as simple mental processes rather than pure truths.

• Greater awareness—Participants can experience expanded awareness and a clearer vision of the world and its processes.

• Less intense reactions—Participants will be less inclined to react when experiencing the stress of daily hassles. Instead, they will develop an observer stance through which they are free from evaluation, attachment, and frustration.

• Relaxed approach—Participants will learn to relax to better cope with worry, anxiety, and stress related to daily hassles.

• Calm demeanor—Participants develop a state of mind in which they are mentally and physically at peace, preparing them to deal more effectively with daily worry, anxiety, and stress. They will experience greater overall well-being.

• Mental functioning—Participants will experience greater concentration, focus, and self-awareness to promote personal and professional growth and development.

Chapter Descriptions:

The chapter and activity page titles all ask questions to think about and respond to. They will help you lead a more mindful life.

Chapter 1: Are You on Autopilot?

This chapter will alert participants to wake-up calls or reminders not to react immediately but to come back to awareness to be more mindful during daily activities. When daily hassles affect participants, mindfulness triggers remind them to break out of "autopilot" to be mindful, spontaneous, calm, and free.

Chapter 2: Do You Live a Purposeful Life?

This chapter will focus on participants developing awareness of their body, thoughts, and sensations arising from their experience. It will provide activities so participants may learn to apply mindful awareness to all aspects of their bodily experience. Participants are instructed to mindfully notice what they see, hear, taste, feel, and smell. They will learn how to cultivate an open, curious, and gentle attitude of mindfulness towards what they sense and feel about the hassles occurring in their lives.

Chapter 3: Do You Live in the Present Moment?

This chapter will help participants choose to fully observe the events and feelings that are happening to their internal and external experiences right now. It will help participants let go of the need to focus continually on the past or the future and bring their full awareness to each moment in time.

Chapter 4: Do You Accept Others Without Judging?

Mindfulness is not about solving problems and searching for solutions. Instead, it is more about observing your present-moment experiences with curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love. This chapter will stress that in a state of true mindfulness, participants will choose to refrain from judging their daily hassle experiences, no matter how painful they may be. Participants will then practice describing their internal and external experiences with non-judgmental language.

Chapter 5: Do You Have a Toolbox of Mindfulness Techniques?

This chapter will provide a variety of standard mindfulness practices and unique techniques to overcome worry, anxiety, and stress in any situation or at any time.

*Free PDF Download: When you purchase your copy of Mindfulness Skills Workbook: Remedies for Worry, Anxiety & Stress you'll receive a free PDF download of the assessment tools and the reproducible activities in this workbook, making it easy for you to make copies.

Mindfulness Skills Workbook eBook (PDF)

This workbook is also available as an eBook (PDF format). Save the eBook on your computer and print off the worksheets and handouts as you need them.

Mindfulness Skills Card Deck

Use the open-ended, discussion starter questions to jump start a group or individual session.  Each question corresponds to a page in the workbook.

Sample Questions:

Some daily hassles are more difficult to deal with than others. What is one of your more difficult daily hassles? Ask others in the group.

What does this Wayne Dyer quote mean to you? “The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it's your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can't package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.” Ask others in the group for their interpretation.

What are some of the ways and places you can meditate for a quick few minutes when you feel the need?