What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the practice of taking a step back and giving your full attention to your emotions, task at hand and/or relationships. Mindfulness is one of the four tenets in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) as well as a key component in the Internal Family Systems model (IFS). Mindfulness has been practiced for thousands of years, with its origins able to be traced back to early traditional Eastern spiritual practices such as those found in Hinduism and Buddhism. Today mindfulness has been adapted to the secular, Western version used to help people accept and tolerate powerful emotions in order to identify and challenge habits, beliefs and/or difficult situations. Mindfulness is used to increase an individual’s ability to self-regulate their attention, increase distress tolerance, increase their ability to accept what cannot be changed, and redirect the instinct to judge or assume and replace it with openness and curiosity.



