The WellMind Method
A contemplative practice for healing, growth, and creating a life guided by awareness, appreciation, and love.
A Path Toward Healing and Flourishing
Trauma and painful life experiences can affect our ability to feel lovable, connect with others, and live with greater peace and joy. Whether or not you have experienced significant trauma, the WellMind Method offers practices designed to support healing, recovery, and personal growth.
The method is centered around three questions and affirmations:
- “What is this?” — Attend to what you are experiencing.
- “This is sacred.” — Appreciate the full experience of life.
- “What would love do?” — Choose to act with love.
These steps are practiced alongside meditative and contemplative exercises that cultivate mindfulness, appreciation, and loving awareness.
About Awakening Therapy
Dr. Michael McGee developed Awakening Therapy as a contemplative and relational approach to healing and recovery. It focuses on cultivating loving awareness and living a life guided by love.
The compassion, wisdom, and clarity that grow from this practice can help people recognize the sources of their suffering and identify meaningful steps toward healing. Awakening may also foster experiences of wholeness, gratitude, peace, connection, and reverence.
The Three A’s of Awakening
Attending
Attending means paying careful attention to the present moment and exploring the conditions that shape our experiences, actions, relationships, and consequences. By repeatedly asking, “What is this?”, we deepen our awareness of ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Appreciating
Appreciation grows from greater awareness. It involves understanding ourselves and others while recognizing the sacred nature of each person and moment. This practice can help replace harmful judgment with discernment, compassion, forgiveness, reverence, and wisdom.
Acting with Love
The awareness and wisdom developed through attending and appreciating help us act in ways that benefit ourselves, others, and life as a whole. We practice this by repeatedly asking, “What would love do?”
Supporting the Practice with Professional Care
The WellMind Method requires commitment and ongoing practice. It can be a meaningful complement to healing, but it is not necessarily a replacement for professional care. People who have experienced severe trauma, neglect, or mental illness may need to practice the Three A’s alongside appropriate medical or therapeutic treatment.
