Mindfulness in Vallcarca: This is How the Psicotools Center Works

In Barcelona, ​​more and more psychology centers are incorporating Mindfulness into their repertoire of therapeutic tools. This set of practices, also known as “Mindfulness”, aims to help people regulate their attentional focus so that they are able to direct it towards the here and now.

In this article we will see why an idea as simple as this is useful therapeutically and how the Psicotools Psychology Center (Barcelona), located in the Vallcarca neighborhood, applies it to its work and that directs a good part of its psychological assistance proposals towards the use of Mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a set of practices developed from the tradition of Vipassana meditation This type of meditation, originating in the area of ​​India and Nepal and with more than two thousand years of history, was based on the principle of seeing things as they are, without seeing our point of view compromised by preconceived ideas and old obsessions

Mindfulness makes this philosophy its own and turns it into a form of psychotherapeutic intervention detached from religious implications, so that it can be used in multiple contexts and regardless of the person’s cultural roots.

Furthermore, Mindfulness has been designed following scientific criteria in order to be researched and tested reliably. In this way, professionals who use or teach Mindfulness do so without referring to concepts associated with religion or magical thinking, and are concerned with giving systematized and clear instructions, avoiding ambiguities.

Thus, Using Mindfulness means learning to focus your own consciousness on the present moment from a mentality of acceptance and avoiding prejudging, so that we avoid feeding the discomfort that certain situations cause us and we face them in a more constructive way, without letting anxiety dominate us.

That’s why, Mindfulness is used in situations where we experience high stress, anxiety or pain, regardless of whether there is a psychological disorder or not. It can be used in very diverse contexts; from the work context of organizations, to therapy through clinical psychology, or in schools and educational centers, with boys and girls. This is why centers like Psicotools not only see Mindfulness as one of the resources used in psychotherapy, but have also developed a department specialized in Mindfulness.

Mindfulness in Vallcarca: the case of Psicotools

Ferran García de Palau García-Faria, Head of the Mindfulness, Personal Growth and In-company Services Area at Psicotools, is in charge of coordinating the work linked to Mindfulness, applying it to many contexts.

From its position as one of the reference centers in the use of Mindfulness in Vallcarca, this organization develops work that shows the flexibility and versatility of Mindfulness to offer benefits in various areas of life both in day-to-day life and in the teamwork of companies and organizations.

How is Mindfulness used in psychology?

On the one hand, Psicotools offers the Mindfulness MBSR training program (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Program), a type of 8-week long psycho-educational intervention that combines learning of theory with training in the practice of Mindfulness, and which has shown good results in making participants cope with previously anxious or harmful experiences in a more positive and constructive way and with significantly less distress.

On the other hand, in the Mindfulness Area of ​​Psicotools Mindfulness interventions are also carried out in companies

These interventions are specialized in different objectives: enhancing creativity, playful Mindfulness, and Mindfulness to reduce stress. The latter is especially useful in recent times, in which markets change rapidly and the environment in which companies compete with each other adapting to new contexts, too. As each organization is different, the company’s needs are usually specified in a personalized way.

On the other hand, Mindfulness for children applied to educational and learning needs It is another of the intervention focuses on which Psicotools focuses. Mindfulness practices, despite being based on the same principles, are very diverse, and that is why there are simplified versions that can be used so that young people learn to regulate their emotions and their level of anxiety.

In this way, through Mindfulness, children are given tools to face challenges and uncomfortable situations without developing totally avoidable fears and insecurities.

A very versatile form of psychological intervention

As we have seen, Mindfulness can be used in a wide variety of situations and in response to clearly differentiated needs. However, there is a common core of these practices: focusing on the aspects of the present that really matter seeing the past and the future not as sources of worries, but as sources of information that help us face the here and now in a more positive and constructive way.

This combination of versatility and foundation in a single philosophy of life makes Mindfulness a very useful tool that is increasingly being used by psychology centers in avant-garde cities like Barcelona. It is to be hoped that as the years go by, new and interesting ways of applying it will emerge both in psychotherapy and outside of it.