ABSTRACT
The practitioner—client interaction provides many opportunities to promote a sense of present moment awareness and there are two key areas where this can be done. The first is in noticing automatic responses that facilitate ‘away moves’ from thoughts or feelings. The second area is in bringing awareness to the in-the-moment experience of valued actions. A key part of valuing is the discrimination between behaviour that is guided by values, as opposed to actions that is guided by the aversive functions of thoughts or emotions. The practitioner can use present moment awareness to make this discrimination more explicit. In the way, the practitioner provides an opportunity to engage in present moment awareness around the appearance of the emotion. The practitioner invites the client to be curious about a wider set of experiences and draws connections between the experiences and the actions that the client has taken.
