ABSTRACT
Attitudes towards meditation practice have changed rapidly over the past ten years. The ideas in this chapter are different to a direct Mindfulness approach to helping patients. The focus is on the resonances between the therapist’s state of mind in facilitating transitional experiences, and meditative states of mind. Meditation can help to extend the therapist’s capacity to contain anxiety in life in general, and more specifically in the consulting room. There is further exploration of Winnicott’s writings about transitional experiences, and how meditative states can be thought about from this perspective. The clinical example comes from the end of my work with ‘Gail’, the patient discussed in chapter six.
