What Did Mindfulness Teach Me, and How Do I Integrate It into My Schema Therapy Practice?
- Ng-Kessler Beatrice
- May 22
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Mindfulness is my home in this world.
I first encountered mindfulness in 2005, when I was seeing a therapist who shared with me a CD by Dr. Helen Ma—later one of Hong Kong’s most influential mindfulness teachers. It was her very first recording (yes, the script even said, “this is a tape!”). I can still recall her voice when I practice Body Scan today—the first mindfulness practice I ever tried.
Practicing with a CD didn’t last long, of course. But it planted a seed inside me.
Later, I managed to get my life back on track and pursued a postgraduate degree in Psychology, followed by Clinical Psychology. I dedicated several years to engaging deeply in mindfulness training. I attended retreats in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, and the U.S., followed many teachers, sought supervision, and participated in retreats ranging from 3 to 10 days. I explored Vipassana and Buddhist meditation and earned six professional mindfulness training certificates during those years. I felt like I had found my home.
Since 2016, I’ve been teaching. I’ve led over 20 rounds of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) groups in Hong Kong and online, in both Cantonese and English. In my English groups, I’ve met people from diverse cultural backgrounds—and despite our differences, I’ve found profound connection through our shared humanity. I now incorporate mindfulness into my personal life and professional work—whether parenting, corporate training, or clinical practice.
Recently, a supervisee asked how I integrate mindfulness into clinical practice. That question encouraged me to try verbalizing it—despite knowing it won’t be perfect. It can never fully reflect the depth of the experience. But maybe it’s still worthwhile. There’s value in trying. Because mindfulness itself is a form of corrective emotional experience, much like the core mechanism in Schema Therapy.
So, here I go.
What Did Mindfulness Teach Me
1. A Nonjudgmental Attitude Toward Experience—Mine and Others'
This is the most powerful thing mindfulness has offered me: a better place to stand with my experience. I’ve learned that “the part of me that knows how I feel is always neutral.” From there, I’ve gained more capacity for acceptance, compassion, and love—toward both myself and others.
In clinical training, we often focus on “changing” or even “fixing” our clients. Mindfulness, however, has helped me adopt a more compassionate stance—being with clients, not just treating them. Simply being with them—seeing and feeling with them—is part of co-regulation. That’s the healing human connection.
This non-judgmental stance creates a sense of safety that didn’t exist in my upbringing. It allows me to observe my own anger, pain, and suffering—without reacting or judging. This enables my Healthy Adult mode to contain, understand, and observe both my internal and external reality more calmly and spaciously. That space is healing. It brings freedom, even within our limitations.
Mindfulness trained our awareness. And teaching Mindfulness has trained me in embodying it when I am under stress. I definitely feel mindfulness has equipped me to be even more non-judgemental, as I become more aware of my assumptions, my expectations, my lens of seeing this world.
2. Co-Regulation Is Not About Solving or Soothing Alone
A supervisee once asked, “How can I solve this for my client?” This is similar to how new parents often believe they must solve everything for their child. It’s a natural instinct, rooted in care and responsibility.
But we must face the reality: we don’t have all the answers.
So—what can we offer, especially in helpless situations?
We can suffer with our clients. That’s part of being human. Avoiding their pain can lead us to deny, minimize, or reject it. But staying present—offering our presence, our being, even when it’s painful or helpless—is a vital part of co-regulation.
Trauma happened alone. Our willingness to be with our clients’ suffering itself, is part of the healing process. It helps relieving the shame of carrying that trauma.
This may also mean feeling helplessness, pain, or guilt (especially if we carry self-sacrifice or unrelenting standards schemas). But staying with our clients through their suffering is healing in itself.
3. Transforming Longstanding Emotions
How do we help clients transform emotions that have lasted for years?
Many therapies focus on changing thoughts, behaviors, or gaining insight. Schema Therapy goes further by offering corrective emotional experiences—often through experiential techniques. Similarly, mindfulness gives us a new dimension for understanding emotion: by connecting with the body.
Our brains decode emotions through physical sensations. When emotions become overwhelming, we can guide clients to simply pay attention to body sensations. One powerful MBCT practice is “Breathing with Difficulty”—a technique I adapt for clinical use.
4. Staying With Emotions Through the Body
In silence on retreat—I am referring to we spend days away from phones, stop talking to one another, just meditating—we encounter a full range of emotions. If we stay long enough with bodily sensations (especially in Vipassana practice), our emotional experience changes.
Rather than analyzing, reflecting, or ruminating (which prove to perpetuate depression), we simply turn to the body sensations, moment by moment. Nonjudgmental, moment-by-moment attention to bodily sensation becomes our anchor.
This helps me sit with my clients through intense emotions—especially when facing unchangeable realities, like gender bias in some society.
5. Meeting Clients Where They Are, Emotionally and Imaginally
Schema Therapy often boils down to one question: “What does my client need right now?”
If I see a client in Angry Child mode, I look deeper—to the pain of the Vulnerable Child behind the anger. I speak to that pain, offer understanding, it helps soothe the anger. I also need to set behavioural limits to the clients, and teach self-regulation.
Beyond verbal counselling, I also explore other modalities. In collectivistic culture, words are often not enough, Imagery Rescripting is particularly powerful. I may not be able to physically hug a client (In reality even I can, it may not be well-received in this culture.) but I can do so within the imagery—and more. Imagination gives us the freedom to offer what each client needs.
6. Recognizing the Duality Trap, Holding Contradictions in a Spacious Inner World
In life, we often unconsciously fall into binary thinking. We assume that accepting something means we are lowering our standards or giving in. We may not feel love when we’re angry with a loved one, but that doesn’t mean love isn’t present.
When we feel unsafe, for example, when the abandonment schema is triggered, our minds often default to polarized thinking. This “duality trap” narrows our thinking and deepens disconnection. Mindfulness helps us expand beyond this binary mindset.
One of my key learnings is emotionally owning the belief that 'I can always improve, and I am good enough.’ It wasn’t a single “aha” moment, but a deep, lived realization. A Taiwan retreat helped me embody this idea that I had read during the one-year mindfulness foundation training offered by Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Since then, I’ve been able to embrace life's contradictions more—and offer clients more nuanced interventions. My connection with clients has deepened, and I now see them over a longer journey focused on spiritual growth.
When we accept life’s complexities, we find more ways forward.
7. Impermanence and New Beginnings
Everything is impermanent. Life is never without risk, not in any single moment. But we rarely carry that awareness with us. Instead, we assume peace, comfort, and safety—often taking them for granted.
Awareness arises in each moment. Each breath is a new beginning.
This truth grounds me. It reminds me that our freedom lies in becoming aware of the choices we make moment by moment—and making peace with them.
This helps me create opportunities for corrective emotional experiences in therapy.
8. Curiosity Is a Blessing
Curiosity is a powerful human trait—and it leads to a growth mindset.
We’re born curious, though it can be suppressed by the way we were raised. Mindfulness helps us reclaim that curiosity. How do we stay curious about something as simple as the breath?
The practice itself teaches us how.
With curiosity, I see more in my clients—sometimes more than they see in themselves. It opens up space for healing and growth. When we let go of “fixing,” we see more clearly. We naturally have more to offer.
9. Letting Go Is Not Letting Go—It’s Letting Be.
Our emotions and body sensations are also a way of knowing, whether or not we can put them into words. To let go is, in truth, to let things be.
My supervisors often say that I’m very creative. I believe this creativity stems from how my mindfulness experience has shaped my clinical practice. I highly recommend all Schema Therapists try a standardized 8-week mindfulness program and attend retreats. A fellow Schema Therapist once asked me about this, but I was too busy at the time to offer anything. If you're interested in joining a mindfulness course with me, please feel free to reach out.
Beatrice Ng-Kessler
Registered Clinical Psychologist (HK and UK)
Advance Certified Schema Therapist and Supervisor (ISST)
Certified Mindfulness Trainer from Canada
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