Mindfulness in Vallcarca: how the Psicotools center works

Psicotools is a psychology center in Vallcarca that gives great importance to Mindfulness.

In Barcelona, more and more psychology centers are incorporating Mindfulness into their repertoire of therapeutic tools. This set of practices, also known as "Mindfulness", aims to help people to regulate their attentional focus so that they are able to direct it towards the here and now.

In this article we will see why such a simple idea is therapeutically useful and how the Psicotools Psychology Center (Barcelona), located in the Vallcarca neighborhood, applies it to its work.and which directs a good part of its psychological assistance proposals towards the use of Mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a set of practices developed from the Vipassana meditation tradition.. This type of meditation, originating in the area of India and Nepal and with more than two thousand years of history, was based on the principle of seeing things as they are, without seeing our point of view compromised by preconceived ideas and old obsessions.

Mindfulness takes this philosophy and turns it into a form of psychotherapeutic intervention detached from religious implications, so that it can be used in multiple contexts and regardless of the person's cultural background.

In addition, Mindfulness has been designed following scientific criteria in order to be researched and tested with reliability. In this way, professionals who use or teach Mindfulness do so without reference to concepts associated with religion or magical thinking, and take care to give systematized and clear instructions, avoiding ambiguities.

In this way, using Mindfulness means learning to focus one's consciousness on the present moment, from a mentality of acceptance and acceptance of the present moment.This way, we avoid feeding the discomfort that certain situations produce in us and we face them in a more constructive way, without letting anxiety dominate us.

That is why, Mindfulness is used in situations in which we experience high stress, anxiety or pain, regardless of the existence of a psychological disorder.regardless of whether there is a psychological disorder or not. It can be used in very diverse contexts; from the work context of organizations, to therapy through clinical psychology, or in schools and educational centers, with children. That is why centers such as Psicotools not only see Mindfulness as one of the resources used in psychotherapy, but have developed a department specialized in Mindfulness.

Mindfulness in Vallcarca: the case of Psicotools

Ferran García de Palau García-Faria, Head of Mindfulness, Personal Growth and In-Company Services at Psicotools, is in charge of coordinating the work related to Mindfulness, applying it to many contexts.

From its position as one of the centers of reference in the use of Mindfulness in Vallcarca, this organization develops a work that shows the flexibility and versatility of Mindfulness to provide benefits in various areas of lifeMindfulness can be used in everyday life as well as in teamwork in companies and organizations.

How is Mindfulness used in psychology?

On the one hand, Psicotools offers the MBSR Mindfulness the Mindfulness training program MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program), an 8-week psycho-educational intervention that combines learning the theory with training in the practice of Mindfulness, and which has shown good results in making participants face previously anxiogenic or harmful experiences in a more positive and constructive way and with significantly less discomfort.

On the other hand, in the Mindfulness Area of Psicotools Mindfulness interventions are also carried out in companies..

These interventions are specialized in different objectives: creativity enhancement, playful Mindfulness, and Mindfulness to reduce stress. The latter is particularly useful in recent times, when markets are changing rapidly and the environment in which companies compete with each other, adapting to new contexts, is also changing rapidly. As each organization is different, the needs of the company are usually defined in a customized way.

On the other hand, Mindfulness for children applied to educational and learning needs is another focus of intervention on which Psicotools focuses. Mindfulness practices, despite being based on the same principles, are very diverse, and therefore there are simplified versions that can be used for young children to learn to regulate their emotions and anxiety level.

In this way, through Mindfulness, children are given tools to face challenges and uncomfortable situations without developing fears and insecurities that are totally avoidable.

A very versatile form of psychological intervention

As we have seen, Mindfulness can be used in a wide variety of situations and in response to clearly differentiated needs. However, there is a common core of these practices: focusing on the aspects of the present that really matter.The past and the future are not seen as sources of concern, but as sources of information that help us face the here and now in a more positive and constructive way.

This combination of versatility and grounding in a single philosophy of life makes Mindfulness a very useful tool that is increasingly being used by psychology centers in avant-garde cities such as Barcelona. It is to be expected that over the years new and interesting ways of applying it both in psychotherapy and outside of it will emerge.

Bibliographical references:

• Hofmann, Stefan G.; Sawyer, Alice T.; Witt, Ashley A; Oh, Diana (2010). "The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 78 (2): 169 - 183.
• Segal, Z.V., Williams, J.M. y Teasdale, J.D. (2006). Terapia cognitiva de la depresión basada en la consciencia plena. Un nuevo abordaje para la prevención de recaídas. Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer.