Bill Gayner will present an emotion-focused orientation to integrating mindfulness into clinical practice based on enhancing common therapy factors, such as empathy, positive regard and congruence, accessible regardless of the modality clinicians are most deeply embedded. Participants are asked to bring note paper and pens so they can journal their meditation practice.
- develop overview of emotion-focused mindfulness (EFM)
- consider relationship between experiential openness, self-compassion, and empathic attunement to clients
- experience, journal and discuss an innovative, experientially open form of mindfulness, recollective awareness meditation, in a brief meditation
Bill Gayner, BSW, MSW, RSW is a mental clinician in Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital and directs the Mindful Psychotherapy course in the Mount Sinai Psychotherapy Institute. He leads and researches mindfulness groups for people living with HIV, psychiatry patients, and hospital staff, and integrates mindfulness into individual psychotherapy with people living with HIV. He co-led a randomized-controlled trial of mindfulness for gay men living with HIV. Bill provides a monthly practice group for mental health professionals and students through the Health, Arts and Humanities Program, University of Toronto, and is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.