The Center for Mindful Body Awareness is a non-profit aimed at providing professional trainings in Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy (MABT), an evidence-based approach to teach body/interoceptive awareness skills for client self-care and emotion regulation. Interoception is the ability to access, attend and process inner body sensory experiences. MABT strategies are particularly helpful for clients with high experiential avoidance. Professional trainings for clinicians are designed as small classes to provide a supportive and individualized learning environment. The Center also works with organizations to train staff, develop programs, and evaluate MABT services. 

Professional trainings in MABT are offered to psychotherapists, bodywork and somatic therapists, physical therapists, nurses, and other health professionals. There are multiple training levels available. For an overview of MABT Level 1, click here. MABT training can involve certification; to read about the advanced training options, click here. 

In MABT Training you will learn: 

• How to incrementally teach skills critical for interoception including identifying sensory awareness, accessing the inner body, and mindful attention to area of the inner body.
• How to develop related skills for integration in daily life to support self-care and emotion regulation.
• How to facilitate tolerance for and comfort with attention to the inner body among people with high experiential avoidance due to emotional or physical discomfort or pain.
• How to promote your own presence while working with clients, and thus better facilitate your ability to teach and collaborate with your client when engaged in this approach.
• How to assess client presence and use this assessment to direct your teaching methods.
• How to support clients learning and reappraisal processes to support behavior change.
• How to collaboratively develop take home practices to promote client interface and integration of new skills.

To learn more about MABT, listen to podcasts (podcast links are listed here), and read clinical and research articles. We also publish a quarterly newsletter that lists news and upcoming events (see latest one website Resources page). 

Learning MABT has profoundly shifted my work. I now have more ease in my practice. I have learned to slow down, to be more present as a therapist, and to facilitate a relationship of co-presence with my clients that leads to a natural unfolding of the therapeutic work. Even though I was a long-time student of mindfulness, this approach helped deepen my own meditation practice and the exploration of subtle sensation. I’ve learned how to guide clients into their bodies and stay with sensation in a rich and in-depth way ~ primarily due to two fundamental aspects of this approach: 

• MABT is a process of inquiry and promotes the client’s sense of curiosity about what they feel and experience. Through this process, clients develop tools for self-care based on their own journey of self-discovery.

• MABT facilitates engagement and the client’s active participation. Learning this technique helped me interact in more ways with clients’ present-moment experience, thus facilitating client learning and inner connection.

~Elizabeth Chaison, MEd LMT, Therapist, MABT Instructor, and Research Interventionist, Seattle, WA 

For more information on MABT and MABT Trainings, please visit: www.cmbaware.org 

To answer any questions, Cynthia Price, PhD MA LMT, MABT developer and Director of the Center for Mindful, Body Awareness, can be reached via email: info@cmbaware.org