The mindfulness boom keeps on booming. As the pandemic continues to change our way of life, people are turning to meditation and mindfulness practices to help them cope with the stress, anxiety, and isolation that social distancing causes. The Washington Post recently reported on a marked spike in meditation app usage—a trend that may only increase as the impact of COVID-19 is felt more acutely around the world.
For practicing psychotherapists, this may not come as a huge surprise. Scholars have noted that the immense popularity of mainstream mindfulness is due in large part to their successful entrenchment in health care and, especially, psychotherapy. Contemporary therapeutic mindfulness practices are an established feature of the mental health field—studies assessing the clinical effectiveness of mindfulness practices number in the many thousands, and have even become the foundation of entire treatment modalities (e.g., mindfulness-based cognitive therapy). And though it continues to be referred to as a “new fad,” the use of mindfulness practices in psychotherapy is actually decades old.
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