This practical workshop utilizes the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help therapists more fully integrate mindfulness and acceptance processes into their practices. Beyond teaching clients how to meditate, ACT provides useful guidelines on how to weave these processes into therapy on an ongoing basis, as well as ideas on how to utilize these processes with clients who are not interested in meditation. ACT now has dozens of clinical trials supporting its effectiveness for a variety of client problems and thus provides an empirical foundation for the use mindfulness and acceptance processes.

This workshop includes an overview of ACT theory as it applies to acceptance/mindfulness as well an opportunity to discuss and apply the model. Participants will watch video of ACT sessions focused on these processes and practice some of the techniques. As ACT is an experiential approach to behavior change, the workshop will also include some experiential components.

AUDIENCE

This workshop is intended for those with little knowledge of ACT to those with an intermediate experience. Those experienced with mindfulness might benefit from new practices based on ACT. Participants should have a beginning familiarity with ACT and have read at least something on ACT prior to beginning the workshop. Those coming to the workshop without any prior reading or experience will still benefit, but will probably not take away as much. For a packet of recommended readings to do before the workshop, see below. This workshop is highly recommended for those who have previously attended an experiential weekend workshop, since this is more of a “how-to” workshop.

WORKSHOP LEADER

Jason Luoma is a clinical psychologist, director of the Portland Psychotherapy Clinic, Research, and Training Center in Portland, Oregon, and a grant-funded researcher with the University of Nevada, Reno. His research focuses on the application of ACT to the alleviation of burnout in counselors, ACT as an intervention for the stigma of substance abuse, and the dissemination and training of evidence-based therapies. He also has an active clinical practice and has provided training and supervision in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in the U.S. and internationally. He directed the first ACT Summer Training Institute and trained with Steve Hayes in Reno for 3.5 years. He has published a number of scientific articles in peer reviewed journals on ACT and is author of a book called Learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (www.learningact.com) that will provide part of the materials for this workshop.

Recommended Pre-Workshop Readings

For a easy to read overview of ACT written by Australian ACT Trainer Russ Harris, download this article. If you only read one article before coming to the workshop, this will help a lot.

For a more technical introduction to ACT see this article by Aki Masuda and Steven Hayes.

For a an excellent general background on mindfulness and acceptance, see this article by Ruth Baer.

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