In the last 15 years, there has been an exponential increase in societal and clinical interests in mindfulness-based interventions and research on the beneficial effects of these interventions. It strikes us that there is still relatively little research on the application and efficacy of mindfulness in an individual setting, despite the fact that more and more therapists are offering mindfulness to their clients in individual sessions. From mindful group trainers, we understand that they think that mindfulness training without the group sharing cannot be very effective. Yet, how does this align with a growing application of and research on the effectiveness of online mindfulness-based interventions in which there is no or only some online contact with other participants (Spijkerman et al.
2016). Such online interventions lack face-to-face contact not only with other group members but also with a trainer embodying mindfulness. With this letter, we summarize our work with
individual mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (iMBCT). We hope to make researchers and clinicians more aware of and curious about the opportunities that iMBCT offers and stimulate more carefully controlled research to examine its effects across target populations and problems. …
