Christiane Wolf and Greg Serpa join us to talk about their new book, A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness: The Comprehensive Session-by-Session Program for Mental Health Professionals and Health Care Providers.

Let’s say you’re a clinician, treating patients on a regular basis for their mental and emotional difficulties. You hear about a new technique, called mindfulness, and decide to get a book, read it, and integrate that into your practice.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it works. Mindfulness is not a technique, nor is it something you can simply pick up after a day-long seminar. It represents the potential for a fundamental shift in how we live, how we relate to the world around us and within us. And it is built upon a solid and long-term personal formal contemplative practice. But even if you happen to be that clinician with a long-standing meditation practice, and several years of training at the Center for Mindfulness at University of Massachussets Medical School, there are nuances particular to the clinical applications of mindfulness training.

Christiane Wolf

Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD, is a physician turned mindfulness teacher, teacher’s trainer, writer, and speaker. Her mindfulness practice started in the late 1980s. Before becoming a full-time mindfulness teacher, she was a board certified OB/GYN at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. She also holds a PhD in psychosomatic medicine from Humboldt University. Dr. Wolf is a certified senior mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teacher and supervisor for the Center for Mindfulness at University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is the director of MBSR programs at InsightLA, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit, and the director of the VA CALM program at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, training staff and clinicians in mindfulness and how to teach it.

Greg Serpa

J. Greg Serpa, PhD, is a clinical psychologist for the US Department of Veterans Affairs at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He teaches mindfulness to America’s veterans and is the first full-time mindfulness teacher and trainer in the federal system. Greg is an associate clinical professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an associate visiting clinical scientist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He teaches intensive mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindful self-compassion (MSC), and introductory level mindfulness classes at four area hospitals, and serves as a trainer, supervisor, and consultant to clinicians at the VA and UCLA. He is currently the director of interprofessional mental health education at the West Los Angeles VA.

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Books

Web Links

• Christiane Wolf
• Insight LA

Music for This Episode Courtesy of Rodrigo Rodriguez

The music heard in this podcast is from Rodrigo Rodriguez. You can visit his website to hear more of his music, get the full discography, and view his upcoming tour dates.