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Jonah Lehrer published an opinion piece in the LA Times on The Deliberate Calm of Pilots. "Deliberate calm" is a term airline pilots use to describe the mental state they enter into during a crisis in order maintain calm and focused awareness. It is learned through conscious effort and regular practice, including hours on a flight simulator. This is very similar to mindfulness, a process of engaging in a deliberate and focused awareness of your surroundings. As a psychotherapist here in Portland, OR, I use experiential exercises and visualization much like a pilot uses a flight simulator, to walk clients through stressful or anxiety provoking situations. Just as simulators help pilots learn to respond effectively to highly stressful situations, visualization and experiential exercises help clients to develop skills to get them through stressful episodes much more effectively. My blog post on this at at http://davelcsw.com.

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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