An Interplay of Wisdom, Emotion, and Reason in Depolarizing the Mind

While meditation-based mindfulness plays a significant role in espousing specific modes of mind that are prone to tranquility, calmness, and equanimity, Langerian mindfulness develops a creative state of mind that is also flexibly tailored toward a peace-oriented mentality with potential features for a foundational change in one’s psychological being.

Many mental health practitioners are aware of and utilize meditation-based mindfulness techniques in working with their clients. These techniques can help improve mental health and provide a number of health benefits in general. Fewer practitioners, however, are aware of and utilize a Langerian mindfulness approach when working with clients; and yet Langerian mindfulness can help increase psychological flexibility, intentionality and well-being.

In this webinar, Sayyed Mohsen Fatemi, PhD, will demonstrate and discuss Langerian mindfulness (developed almost 50 years ago by Dr. Ellen Langer), particularly as a way to increase empowerment through seeing and making conscious, mindful choices. In increasing psychological flexibility and awareness of choice, Langerian mindfulness can be an effective resource in depolarizing the polarized mind.  In fact, research shows that an attitude of Langerian mindfulness, with its positive impact on capacities for creativity and self-discovery, cultivates and is associated with the depolarized mind; and that “mindlessness” – the state of narrowed awareness and responsiveness – correlates with the polarized mind.

Dr. Fatemi will also emphasize the roles of reason and emotion in the functioning of the mind and how mindlessness and mindfulness give rise to different modes of being with different implications for thoughts, beliefs, feelings, emotions and behaviors. He will articulate ontological explanations of fear and anxiety, detail how underlying fears and anxieties give rise to the polarized mind and highlight how increased capacity for conscious choice sits at the heart of existential approaches to increasing health and well-being.

Psychotherapists are often dealing with the effects and influences of polarization on their clients, whether in working with couples, an individual locked in a rigid way of seeing things or with those suffering in the context of the deep division and antagonism that exists in our country today. Join us on November 14th as Dr. Fatemi provides training and education in how to find wisdom in the process of depolarizing the mind with the support of Langerian mindfulness.