Overview of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease-specific mindfulness-based cognitive therapy programme
| Session | Theme | Mindfulness exercises | Cognitive exercises | Home work |
| 1 | “Awareness and automatic pilot” | “The raisin exercise”; “The body scan” | “The body scan” every day; mindfulness of a routine activity | |
| 2 | “Living in our heads” | “Awareness of the heartbeat and the blood flow” | “Thoughts and feelings exercise” (noticing connection between thoughts and emotional states); introduction of “the pleasant experiences calendar” (monitoring daily activities and their effects on thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations) | “Awareness of the heartbeat and the blood flow” every day; mindfulness of a routine activity; complete “the pleasant experiences calendar” |
| 3 | “Gathering the scattered mind” | “Awareness of the heartbeat, blood flow and body”; “The 3-min breathing space”; “Mindful stretching” | Review of “the pleasant experiences calendar”; introduction of “the unpleasant experiences calendar” (monitoring daily activities and their effects on thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations) | “Mindful stretching” every day; “the 3-min breathing space” 3 pre-scheduled times per day; complete “the unpleasant experiences calendar” |
| 4 | “Recognising aversion” | “Awareness of the heartbeat, blood flow, body, sounds and thoughts”; “the 3-min breathing space” | Review of “the unpleasant experiences calendar”; “automatic thoughts exercise” (noticing negative automatic thoughts and their effects on emotions and bodily sensations, and knowing when to do a 3-min breathing space) | “Awareness of the heartbeat, blood flow, body, sounds and thoughts” every day; “the 3-min breathing space” every time something uncomfortable happens |
| 5 | “Allowing/letting be” | “Being with the difficult”; “Walking meditation”; “the 3-min breathing space” | “Being with the difficult” every day; “the 3-min breathing space” every time something uncomfortable happens | |
| 6 | “Thoughts are not facts” | “Awareness of thought and the emotional reaction”; “the 3-min breathing space” | “Mood, thoughts and alternative viewpoints exercise” (our mood can influence how we think about/interpret a situation); “My personal warning system” (noticing personal signals of bad mood and anxiety) | Mindfulness exercise of own choice every day; “the 3-min breathing space” every time something uncomfortable happens”; complete “my personal warning system” |
| 7 | “How can I best take care of myself?” | “Awareness of spontaneous reactions of body, emotions, thoughts”; “the 3-min breathing space” | Review of “the personal warning system”; “Activities and mood exercise” (noticing connections between daily activities and mood); introduction of “the action plan” (a personal plan how to best schedule activities when emotions threaten to overwhelm” | Use the mindfulness exercises that you are planning to use after the programme has ended; complete the personal “action plan” |
| 8 | “Maintaining and extending new learning” | “The body scan” | Review of “the action plan” | - |
The complete manual can be found in the supplementary material.