The New Field of Contemplative Psychotherapy

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Joseph Loizzo, MD, PhD Related seminars and products

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Joseph (Joe) Loizzo, MD, PhD, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar with over forty years’ experience studying the beneficial effects of contemplative practices on healing, learning and development. He is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he researches and teaches contemplative self-healing and optimal health. He has taught the philosophy of science and religion, the scientific study of contemplative states, and the Indo-Tibetan mind and health sciences at Columbia University, where he is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Joseph Loizzo is the director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. He has employment relationships with the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Loizzo receives royalties as a published author, and he receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Joseph Loizzo serves on the advisor board for Tibet House New York and is the member of the boards for the International Tibetan Medical Association and the New York University Holistic Nursing Program. He is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy & Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association.

Objectives

1. Discuss how each brain level has networks for self-enclosure versus social engagement and its implications for clinician treatment. 
2. Discover how self-enclosed networks fuel mental illness, while socially engaged networks support health and development. 
3. Explain how mindfulness shifts neocortical absence to presence, compassion shifts limbic reactivity to resonance, and embodied methods shift brainstem stress reflexes to social resilience. 

Outline

Discuss how each brain level has networks for self-enclosure versus social engagement and its implications for clinician treatment. 

• Understand the cultural and evolutionary roots of human narcissism. 
• Learn how self-enclosing patterns are a general cause of psychopathology. 
• Review the cross-cultural consensus between modern psychotherapy and Buddhist psychology and the costs of this pathology. 

Discover how self-enclosed networks fuel mental illness, while socially engaged networks support health and development. 

• Review the biology of stress-protective versus socially engaged networks in the human brain. 
• Relate this neurobiology to the psychopathology of common mental conditions including PTSD. 
• Discuss the pivotal role of negativity bias in perpetuating self-enclosed processing. 

Explain how mindfulness shifts neocortical absence to presence, compassion shifts limbic reactivity to resonance, and embodied methods shift brainstem stress reflexes to social resilience. 

• Link the potential for treatment to the current revolution in neuroplasticity. 
• Understand the science supporting the effect of contemplative mind-training practices on shifting from self-enclosed to socially engaged processing at all main levels of the brain, 
• Explore the potential impact for psychotherapy and public mental health of widely integrating these practices into treatment and health education. 

Target Audience

• Psychologists
• Physicians
• Addiction Counselors
• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Nurses
• Other Behavioral Health Professionals