The modern world can feel like it’s almost designed to keep us from being present. There’s always another notification, another tab, another “thing” to plan for, or worry about, or purchase. When we move through life habitually, we are never really present but instead constantly stuck in a cycle of rehearsing what’s next, or replaying what’s past, never fully experiencing where life actually happens: the present moment.
Mindfulness is the systematic practice of being with what is here in the present moment, again and again, with openness and curiosity, and without judgment. It’s a simple instruction, but as anyone who attempts to follow it quickly realizes, not easy. Through sustained practice, mindfulness meditation has been shown to have a host of benefits — reducing stress and anxiety, improving focus, and increasing well-being.
At Gofman Therapy and Consulting, David Gofman works with mindfulness in two capacities: as a teacher, through 1:1 meditation instruction that helps you build or deepen a personal practice, and as a therapist, bringing mindfulness into clinical care. Both are available in person in Westport, CT and virtually across Connecticut and Virginia.
Meditation Instruction
In one-on-one meditation instruction, you receive individualized support as you learn to steady attention on the breath, the body, or sound, and to keep company with whatever the mind happens to be doing. Whether you are sitting down for the very first time or returning to a practice you have kept for years, the instruction meets you where you are. Much of it comes down to befriending your own mind: noticing, again and again, that attention has wandered off — as it always will — and gently beginning again, without reproach. In time, that steadiness becomes something you can carry off the cushion and into the ordinary hours of your day. The instruction is secular, drawn from the Insight (Vipassana) tradition and the framework of MBSR.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness-based therapy brings the practice of awareness into clinical work. So much of what we suffer comes less from our experience itself than from our relationship to what we’re experiencing. In therapy, mindfulness becomes a way of turning toward what is difficult — anxiety, stress, painful emotion, the pull of rumination — and learning to meet it differently. Alongside evidence-based approaches like ACT and CBT, it is well suited to anxiety, chronic stress, and the kind of relentless overthinking that is hard to interrupt on your own.
What a Session Looks Like
No two sessions look quite the same — the work is shaped around you and where your practice is. A session usually moves between practice done together — sitting with the breath, a body scan, or resting in open awareness — and conversation: what came up while you were practicing, what tends to get in the way, and how to keep the practice alive between meetings. In mindfulness-based therapy, that same practice is woven into the clinical work, so the hour moves between formal practice and the concerns that brought you in.
You do not need any experience to begin, and you do not need to arrive calm or clear-headed. You only have to show up as you are.
Meditation instruction is offered in person in Westport, CT and by video anywhere; mindfulness-based therapy is available in Westport and online for clients in Connecticut and Virginia.
Meet Your Teacher
Mindfulness at Gofman Therapy and Consulting is taught by David Gofman, MA, LPC — a certified MBSR teacher through Brown University’s Center for Mindfulness and a mindfulness practitioner for more than a decade. His personal practice is rooted in Insight (Vipassana) meditation, and he has sat silent retreats across the country, most often at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) retreat center in Barre, MA.
What Mindfulness Can Help With
A steady practice won’t make difficulty disappear, but it changes your relationship to it. People come to mindfulness to:
- Steady themselves amid stress and reactivity
- Work with anxiety and overthinking
- Build focus, attention, and the capacity to stay present
- Meet painful emotions with less struggle
- Rest and sleep more easily
- Live more of their life in the moment it’s actually happening
For a fuller picture, read Why Mindfulness? and 5 Easy Ways to Be More Present.
Getting Started
Beginning a practice — or bringing one into therapy — usually starts simply, with a single conversation. If you are curious about meditation instruction or mindfulness-based therapy, you are welcome to reach out for a free 15-minute consultation to talk through what you are looking for and whether it feels like a good fit.
Book a consultation whenever you are ready. There is nothing to prepare and no experience required — only a willingness to begin.
