Mindfulness Meditation: Another Context for the Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Abstract

Mindfulness meditation has received enormous empirical support over the past 20 years and has been integrated into the theory and practice of several clinical approaches. Although mindfulness is now an essential feature in the third wave of cognitive/behavioral therapies, there still has been very little written about the integration of, and the implicit commonalities between, mindfulness meditation and the humanistic/experiential approaches to psychotherapy. In this article, the author provides a brief description of the emotional concerns that fueled his initial encounter with a well-known psychologist and one of the first teachers of mindfulness meditation in North America and Europe. The author describes this encounter, suggests that this meeting was transformative because it combined mindfulness practice with the Rogerian elements, or core conditions, of successful client-centered psychotherapy, and argues that by itself, mindfulness embodies its own form of the same core conditions. Last, the author argues that mindfulness meditation and client centered psychotherapy are consilient approaches to mental health that promote the movement toward self-actualization.