BehaviorTherapist.com Podcast Interview with Drs. Susan Orsillo & Lizabeth Roemer about The Mindful Way Through Anxiety

At BehaviorTherapist.com, Dr. Trent Codd interviews Drs. Susan Orsillo and Lizabeth Roemer, two psychologists in the Boston area who are well-known within the mindfulness community for their work on mindfulness-based approaches to anxiety. They have recently authored a self-help book, The Mindful Way Through Anxiety: Break Free From Chronic Worry and Claim Your Life. The book came out last month.

The BehaviorTherapist.com has a promotional code that allows you to receive a 20% discount off the book through the publisher. (Even with the discount, however, it seems to be cheaper through Amazon at the moment).

I've not read their book but have great respect for Drs. Orsillo and Roemer's work. (As graduate student, I did a research symposium with one of Dr. Roemer's students. Not only was Dr. Roemer really friendly, but she came across as incredibly engaged and expressive during the presentations.) 

We've previously featured Dr. Codd's podcast interviews with Steven Hayes, Rob Zettle, and Michael Twohig. If you've listened to any of these, you know that Dr. Codd is a thoughtful interviewer and has really great people on his podcasts. As Dr. Codd notes, this is one of his more accessible podcasts, and his interviewees offer very practical suggestions for working with anxiety.

To check out the podcast at the BehaviorTherapist.com, click here. To check out the authors' website for their book, click here.

The citation for their book is:

Orsillo, S.M., & Roemer, L. (2011). The Mindful Way Through Anxiety: Break Free From Chronic Worry and Claim Your Life. New York, NY: Guilford .

Yoga for Persistent Pain: New Findings and Directions for an Ancient Practice

Although the literature isn't nearly as large as that for mindfulness and meditation, there is a growing body of research on the use of yoga to address mental health concerns. In a recent issue of Pain, Wren and colleagues offer a brief summary of current research on the application of yoga to medical conditions.

One of the co-authors is Dr. James Carson, a former researcher at Duke who is now at the Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Carson and his wife Kimberly developed an 8-week yoga program called Yoga of Awareness. You can download a bunch of Jim's research on mindfulness and yoga-based interventions on his Yoga of Awareness website.

The article examines 13 randomized controlled trials of yoga with pain and related medical conditions. The authors propose three potential pathways for the benefits of yoga: 1.) Physiological changes, such as decreased heart rate and improved strength, circulation, and flexibility; 2.) Behavioral changes such as increased social contact and regular physical activity; 3.) Psychological changes, such as increased awareness and mindful acceptance.

The growing literature is very encouraging. I expect we'll hear a lot more about yoga interventions in the future as the trend picks up steam. At moment, however, there's not a lot that unifies the studies other than yoga practice. They're based on a variety of yogic traditions--especially Inyengar and Hatha. What will likely be important to this literature in the future is the development of programmatic research around a specific yoga intervention (e.g., Yoga of Awareness) with more attention paid to the contributions of particular techniques and theorized mechanisms of change. It will be interesting to see if a particular yoga-based course eventually becomes as well known as specific mindfulness-based programs such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I'm curious to see the evidence base on the use of yoga continue to move forward in a more systematic way, as I think there's great potential.

Reference:

Wren, A.A., Wright, M.A., Carson, J.W., & Keefe, F.J. (2011). Yoga for Persistent Pain: New Findings and Directions for an Ancient Practice. Pain, 152, 477-480.

Psychology Today Blog Post: "Confronting Death with an Open, Mindful Attitude"

Back in November, I posted about a study in which the researchers examined the impact of mindfulness on mortality salience ("Being Present in the Face of Existential Threat"). Today, one of the authors and George Mason University professor Dr. Todd Kashdan published a blog post about the study on the Psychology Today website

Dr. Kashdan provides a nice summary of the research and reflects upon his personal interest in the topic. He writes:

So what do mindful people do that allows them to confront death in a non-defensive manner? What we found was that when asked to deeply contemplate their death, mindful people spent more time writing (as opposed to avoiding) and used more death-related words when reflecting on the experience. This suggests that a greater openness to processing the threat of death allows compassion and fairness to reign. In this laboratory staged battle, mindfulness alters the power that death holds over us. Pretty cool.

To read Dr. Kashdan's full post, click here. To read the Scientific Mindfulness post on the original article, click here.

The Unwelcome Party Guest

This animated short by Joe Oliver illustrates a popular metaphor from the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy literature. I've heard the metaphor called "Joe the Bum" and "Aunt Edna"--here the uninvited guest is "Brian." (Also, my name!--there are any number of self-deprecatory comments I can insert here.)

The metaphor is used to illustrate the practice of acceptance or (in ACT terms) willingness.