The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety

Advanced Mindfulness Skills 107

exercise in this section, we have designed a simple daily mindfulness regimen to help you continue
practicing your skills. It’s very important that you continue to use these skills, and to practice other
mindfulness exercises that you think are necessary, even as you move on to learning other dialecti-
cal behavior skills in this workbook. Mindfulness skills are so important to the overall effectiveness
of dialectical behavior therapy that they have been labeled “core” skills (Linehan, 1993a).

DAILY MINDFuLNESS REGIMEN

Your daily mindfulness regimen will consist of three skills that you’ve already learned:

1. Mindful breathing

2. Wise-mind meditation

3. Doing tasks mindfully

Mindful breathing is a skill you learned in chapter 3, Basic Mindfulness Skills. Remember, to
breathe mindfully, you need to focus on three parts of the experience:

1. You must count your breaths. This will help you focus your attention, and it will also

help you calm your mind when you’re distracted by thoughts.

2. You need to focus on the physical experience of breathing. This is accomplished by

observing the rising and falling of your breath as you slowly inhale and exhale.

3. You need to be aware of any distracting thoughts that arise while you are breathing.

Then you need to let the thoughts float past without getting stuck on them, as you did

in the Thought Defusion exercise. Letting go of the distracting thoughts will allow you

to refocus your attention on your breathing and help you further calm yourself.

Practice breathing mindfully for three to five minutes a day at a minimum. But if you want
to practice it longer, do it for as long as you can. Remember, the more frequently you practice
mindfulness skills, the calmer you will feel and the more control you will have over your present-
moment experiences. Refer to the Mindful Breathing exercise in chapter 3 if you need to review
the instructions.
The wise-mind meditation is a skill you learned earlier in this chapter. It will help you focus
your attention on your center of wise mind, which is also sometimes called your center of intuition
or “gut feelings.” Remember, wise mind is just one decision-making process that many people find
helpful. It incorporates using both your emotion mind and your reasonable mind, meaning that
wise-mind decisions require you to reflect on how you feel as well as the facts of a situation. This
skill also helps you make intuitive decisions that “feel” right to you. Wise-mind meditation will help
you make decisions based on the way your body reacts to a decision and your own inner knowledge
(what you know to be “true” for you). Again, practice the wise-mind meditation for at least three
to five minutes a day, or longer if you want to.