ACT
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) proposes that we relate to our own thoughts without challenging them and without letting ourselves be challenged by them; it proposes that we learn to direct them in the direction of change associated with our values and aspirations.
Backed by an impressive amount of experimental data, ACT considers the issue of psychological flexibility/inflexibility to be central to a constructive and meaningful life. Dr. Hayes, its founder, starts from the idea that human beings have three basic needs: to feel loved, to be recognized as competent, and to be accepted as part of the group.
In our efforts to satisfy these basic needs, a natural process of distortion occurs that reduces our capacity to meet them. ACT proposes working on our own minds to expand and make them more flexible, based on the premise that every coin has two sides, that where there is Yin there must also be Yang, that the negative pole implies the positive pole for the current to flow.
In ACT we work with pairs of opposites with the purpose of freeing the mind through a way of thinking that is inclusive, functional and appropriate to the present context.
Based on the Theory of Evolution of Species, Functional Contextualism, and the Functional Framework Theory of Relationships, ACT aims to expand and free the mind from the psychological constraints that prevent us from loving, for fear of suffering; prevent us from being present, for worry about what will happen; prevent us from accepting, so as not to recognize ourselves as vulnerable; prevent us from recognizing our values, for not knowing how to act to put them into practice.
ACT uses meditation and cognitive exercises to learn to think constructively and act in accordance with those thoughts.
YOGA NIDRA
In the soft, almost imperceptible boundary between sleep and wakefulness, we experience a state of deep relaxation: Yoga Nidra —a technique that teaches how to plant the seed of desired change in the matrix of one's unconscious. Following the suggestions recited by the therapist's voice, we allow sensory and emotional memories to surface, developing the ability to mentally reconstruct and deconstruct them.
We understand the difficulty of putting our plans into action: willpower and motivation aren't always enough. Yoga Nidra practice aims to improve the way cognition and emotion intertwine, making this union fruitful. It proposes working with your own mind to achieve the desired changes.
Yoga Nidra, or sleep yoga, originated in Tibet and utilizes the brain's potential for cohesion, recovery, and knowledge in a sleep state to transform the waking state.
The session takes place in a state of relaxed immobility, with eyes closed, lying in a comfortable position that allows us to ignore external sensory stimuli, minimize analytical processing, and activate the proprioceptive system and preconscious mental mechanisms.
This involves visualizing what the therapist's voice indicates, focusing our attention on the images and the sensations they generate. This transposition of words into images, in a state of yoga nidra, integrates the visual with the auditory and activates associative areas of the cortex, facilitating the connection between the cerebral hemispheres, from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex.
The resolution (sankalpa) is the decision to act: to complete a project, break a habit, or change a way of relating. The resolution is formulated in a clear and concise sentence. Once the sankalpa is formulated, all the necessary actions for putting the resolution into practice are visualized. The images must be concrete and detailed because the goal is to imprint them on the subconscious mind through conscious repetition of the sankalpa at specific moments during the session.