Donald Altman - The Mindfulness Toolbox: 50 Practical Tips, Tools & Handouts for Anxiety, Depression, Stress & Pain

This is a must-have book for every therapist using mindfulness approaches with clients. From the 10 Tips thru the 40 Tools, Donald Altman shares his considerable wisdom, along with a sense of respect for both the clientand the therapist. At the same time, the material is presented in a light and very usable style, from the clear outlines to the many client handouts.

Jean L. Kristeller, Ph.D., Research and clinical psychologist, and developer of Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT)

The ceaselessly creative Donald Altman, in his never-ending quest to make mindfulness practice accessible to anyone motivated to learn it, has once again broached new ground in elaborating simple, useful techniques for applying mindfulness in everyday life. The Mindfulness Toolbox is a veritable wonderland of user-friendly implements of mindfulness practice, all laid out to maximize a new (and maybe not-so-new) practitioners ability to effectively use applied mindfulness. The Mindfulness Toolbox will be a tremendous aid and benefit to all people who practice and teach mindfulness.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, author of Brain Lock and You Are Not Your Brain

Much like any healing prescription, The Mindfulness Toolbox skillfully reduces pain and fosters balance by getting to the root cause of the symptoms. If you want to expand your mindfulness repertoire, you wont find a more complete and practical set of key techniques, handouts, and ideas. Youll even be guided as to which tools fit together, such as tools for sensing the body, tools for meditation, and tools for getting into the present moment. With a large dose of awareness, clarity, precision, simplicity, and insight, Donald Altman has given us a potent and worthwhile medicine for inviting well-being, acceptance, and inner peace.

Paul Harrison, creator and producer of The Mindfulness Movie, and author of Wheres My Zen? and The Ten Paradoxes: The Science of Wheres My Zen?

Mindfulness has swept through the mental health profession in the past several decades and plays a major role in important modalities such as DBT, ACT, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention and others. Whether or not you are trained in any of these modalities, The Mindfulness Toolbox by Donald Altman is the resource you need to strengthen your use of mindfulness with a wide variety of clients. Altman is an experienced and loving guide to lead you through the mindfulness landscape. His new book presents a comprehensive set of highly practical, effective techniques, tools and handouts that will enable you to skillfully utilize mindfulness in your clinical work. The easy-to-use interventions for anxiety, depression, stress and pain are described in clear language that reflects the kindness and beauty of mindfulness. The Mindfulness Toolbox will not only improve your effectiveness with clients, it will also enable you to more fully integrate into your personal life the emotional, psychological and spiritual wealth offered by mindfulness practice. If you have any interest in mindfulness, you should have The Mindfulness Toolbox as a resource.

Terry Fralich, LPC, JD, author of The Five Core Skills of Mindfulness and Cultivating Lasting Happiness

The Mindfulness Toolbox is a treasure trove of resources for healing and belongs in every clinicians office. It teaches simple, effective ways to reduce suffering and increase happiness. Well worth reading!

Mary NurrieStearns, author of Yoga For Anxiety, Yoga For Emotional Trauma, and Yoga Mind, Peaceful Mind

Donald Altmans newest book, The Mindfulness Toolbox, is an important work for how it will reduce emotional and physical suffering in the world. Highly practical and well-organized, the book tackles the key areas of stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. The evident care and attention given to the guided scripts and handouts will help build the therapeutic relationship with patientsall the while guiding them gently and persistently toward a more expansive awareness and a deepened sense of self-compassion and self-acceptance. I highly recommend it.

Christopher Kennedy Lawford, best-selling author, Symptoms of Withdrawal, Recover to Live, and What Addicts Know

In an era of high popularity for anything labeled with the word Mindfulness, Altman has written a user-friendly and practical book that is as fun to read as it is helpful. He provides great handouts and suggestions for how to describe mindfulness to clients so that they can gain peace of mind when feeling anxious and optimism in the face of depression. Highly recommended.

John B. Arden, PhD, author of the Brain Bible

There is an old Russian fable about a swan, a pike and a crawfish pulling a horse cart in three different directions, with a predictable result: the cart is hopelessly stuck. Sometimes I think of the field of psychotherapy as too being pulled in all kinds of different directions. Each school of thought, each wave of thinking, each clinical breakthrough not only moves the field along some relative continuum of evolution, but also asunder. The novelty junkies that we all are, we dont miss a beat: we rush to update and to upgrade our clinical software with each CEU we earn. Clinician-authors such Donald Altman pull the field back together. They hold it grounded and unified around such ancient centers of therapeutic gravity as awareness and mindfulness. Altmans collection of tips and tools on how to introduce clients to the know-how of mindfulness has a powerfully anchoring force of field-tested clinical wisdom. Each of Altmans 50 mindfulness tips is a spoke on a wheel of wellbeing. Roll with it, clinician, if you feel professionally stuck.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of Anger Management Jumpstart, Present Perfect and Eating the Moment

Donald Altmans new book, The Mindfulness Toolbox brings you practical, wise, and helpful techniques from a seasoned expert. With an easy-going writing style, Altman gives tips for therapists and clients plus clear exercises in every chapter for overcoming common psychological problems mindfully. He also gives useful handouts to lead clients into the experience. But the book reaches deeper, as Altman communicates the essence of mindfulness through classic stories and his own profound understandings from years of personal practice and teaching. The therapist already using mindfulness will find many ideas and techniques, and those new to mindfulness will be well guided. We recommend this book to anyone who would like to integrate this important, evidence-based method into his or her treatments, and to those who would like to deepen their own practice.

C. Alexander Simpkins, PhD and Annellen M. Simpkins, PhD, PESI presenters, clinicians, and authors of 28 books including The Yoga and Mindfulness Therapy Workbook, The Tao of Bipolar: Using Meditation and Mindfulness to Bring Balance and Peace, Zen Meditation in Psychotherapy, Meditation and Yoga in Psychotherapy, Neuroscience for Clinicians, and The Dao of Neuroscience

THE MINDFULNESS TOOLBOX

50 Practical Mindfulness Tips, Tools, and Handouts
for Anxiety, Depression, Stress, and Pain

by
D ONALD A LTMAN , M . A ., LPC

Copyright 2014 by Donald Altman, M.A., LPC

Published by

PESI Publishing & Media

PESI, Inc.

3839 White Ave

Eau Claire, WI 54703

www.pesipublishing.com

Cover Design: Matt Pabich

Layout Design: Bookmasters

Edited By: Marietta Whittlesey & Catherine Bernstein

Printed in the United States of America