Santa Clara University

'Mindfulness' meditation being used in hospitals and schools

Shauna Shapiro, an Associate professor for Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University was quoted in a USA Today story about “mindfulness” meditation being used in hospitals and schools.

Challenges are landing fast and furious on Capitol Hill. So Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, feels he has to arrive at the top of his game every day. And Ryan says he has found a way to do that: He meditates for at least 45 minutes before leaving home.

Ryan, 35, sits on a floor cushion, closes his eyes, focuses on his breath and tries to detach from any thoughts, just observing them like clouds moving across the sky — a practice he learned at a retreat. Read More »

Making it happen: Jasmine Square

Many of Jasmine Square's 220 residents - half of whom are children - are fighting the subsidized housing stigma, taking spirited action to break the cycle of poverty by empowering themselves and their neighbors.

The 72-unit complex at 16530 Monterey St. opened in 2005 and provides affordable housing to families and individuals who have extremely low and very low income levels, property manager Estela Gonzalez said. Rents are on a sliding scale based on income and can be as low as $551 for a one-bedroom apartment or as high as $1,369 for a four-bedroom apartment.

Affordable housing is a hot topic in Morgan Hill, and it's these income levels that the anti-subsidized housing set resents most. The stigma is that these renters are taking advantage of the system and are a dark mark on the community, bringing down school test scores and driving up crime rates.

But this complex is replete with residents who have goals: from reading at their grade level to owning their own home.

Take 12-year-old Jose Mendoza, for example.

"I was mostly all failing," Mendoza said of his school performance four years ago. That's when he started attending an after school tutoring program in Jasmine Square's community room.

"I was feeling like I wasn't going to make it through school. Like I was too dumb to learn," Mendoza said. The program's director, Dr. Cheryl McElvain, said most of the Jasmine Square children are, like Mendoza, first or second generation Mexican immigrants whose parents don't have the education or the grasp of the English language to help their students with school work. McElvain's program, called The Bridge Project, has helped 30 Jasmine Square children improve their grades. Many of the project's volunteers signed up through the Morgan Hill Volunteer Fair last fall.

Read More »

David Feldman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology has published Public Speaking for Psychologists and Shauna L. Shapiro, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology has published The Art and Science of Mindfulness.

The celebration will be on February 25th, 2010 from 4-5:30pm at Loyola Hall North Lobby.

For more information »

RSVP with Susan Babbel at sbabbel@scu.edu

Don't miss this Counseling Psychology Graduate Student Association Event!

12-5PM, February 27th, 2010
12-1PM, Pizza and Drinks
Benson Parlors B & C

RSVP at sbabbel@scu.edu

The Client As Active Self-Healer: Implications For Psychotherapy Practice
Despite the fact that many writers hold that it is clients who ultimately make psychotherapy work, the field has been “therapistcentric” in its focus on what therapists do. However, recently, attention has begun to turn to clients’ contributions to the success of psychotherapy. In this workshop I will review evidence suggesting that clients are not only important, but the major factor in making therapy work. They do this through their involvement, but more importantly through their active, creative, thoughtful and intelligent contributions to the process, as well as through their active efforts to operate on the therapy environment to make it work for them. Additionally, therapy does not necessarily work through changes that happen insession, but through clients’ active efforts to integrate and blend what they are learning in therapy with their lives, and their lives with therapy.

I will suggest that focusing more on the client’s active contributions leads to a small but significant shift in therapy practice. I will outline the implications of this shift, and how some approaches to therapy are already implementing this. I will also consider implications of this view for the current debate over how psychotherapy should be practiced in an evidence based fashion. Several experiential exercises will be utilized to illustrate the points being made.

Arthur C. Bohart, PhD, Professor Emeritus California State University Dominguez Hills; Faculty, Saybrook University. Dr. Bohart has published articles on psychotherapy integration, experiencing in psychotherapy, empathy, constructivism, couples therapy, and the role of the client as self-healer. He is the coeditor of Empathy Reconsidered: New Directions in Psychotherapy, and of two textbooks, Foundations of Clinical and Counseling Psychology and Personality.

Download flyer (pdf)