Summit Counselling Services — Modality
Mindfulness & Positive PsychologyYou already have more than you think. These approaches help you access it.
Mindfulness builds the capacity to be present with your experience without being swept away by it. Positive psychology focuses on your strengths, resilience, and what makes life meaningful. Together, they offer a genuinely different relationship with yourself and your life.
Two Complementary Approaches
Not about fixing what's broken — about building what's possible.
Most therapy focuses on reducing suffering — and that's necessary and important. Mindfulness and positive psychology do that too. But they also do something distinctive: they focus on developing capacities rather than just addressing deficits. On building present-moment awareness, cultivating strengths, and orienting toward what makes life meaningful — not just what makes it bearable.
These approaches are grounded in strong research. Mindfulness has decades of clinical evidence behind it for stress, anxiety, depression, pain, and wellbeing. Positive psychology emerged from Martin Seligman's work at the University of Pennsylvania and has produced robust findings on the science of flourishing, resilience, and what actually makes people thrive.
Our therapists integrate both approaches alongside other evidence-based modalities — using mindfulness and positive psychology techniques as tools within a broader therapeutic framework, rather than as standalone interventions. They complement everything from CBT to ACT to somatic work.
"Mindfulness is not about achieving a peaceful state. It's about being able to be present with whatever state you're in — including a difficult one."
The Two Approaches
Mindfulness and positive psychology — what each one offers
They share an orientation toward presence and possibility. Here's how each one works distinctly.
MindfulnessAwareness without judgement
Mindfulness is a quality every human being already possesses — the capacity to pay attention to present-moment experience with openness and without automatic reactivity. It's not something you have to create. It's something you learn to access. Research consistently shows mindfulness is effective at reducing anxiety, depression, stress, and chronic pain — and at building the psychological flexibility that makes life more navigable.
In therapy, mindfulness is not just a relaxation technique. It's a fundamental shift in how you relate to your inner experience — learning to observe thoughts and emotions rather than being driven by them, noticing what's actually happening rather than what you fear is happening, and developing the capacity to stay present with difficulty rather than avoiding it.
- Present-moment awareness and attention training
- Observing thoughts without being controlled by them
- Reducing reactivity and increasing response flexibility
- Body-based awareness and grounding
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and MBCT techniques
- Integration with breathing, movement, and daily practice
Positive PsychologyBuilding what's possible
Positive psychology is the scientific study of what allows people to thrive — not just the absence of disorder, but the presence of wellbeing, meaning, engagement, and connection. Developed by Martin Seligman and colleagues, it focuses on strengths, resilience, and the conditions under which people genuinely flourish. We are resilient in nature — and sometimes when life gets tough, we forget that.
In therapy, positive psychology doesn't mean toxic positivity or ignoring what's hard. It means bringing the same rigour that psychology has applied to suffering into the study of what goes right. It adds tools for identifying and building on strengths, cultivating gratitude and meaning, developing resilience, and moving toward a life that reflects your values rather than just managing away from pain.
- Identifying and building on personal strengths
- Developing resilience and post-adversity growth
- Cultivating meaning, purpose, and engagement
- Gratitude and positive emotion practices backed by research
- Goal-setting aligned with values rather than avoidance
- Building positive relationships and social connection
What These Approaches Help With
Evidence-based support for a wide range of concerns
Mindfulness and positive psychology have strong research bases across many presentations — often used alongside other therapeutic approaches for a more complete picture.
Anxiety & Stress
Mindfulness directly addresses the ruminative and future-focused thinking that drives anxiety — building present-moment awareness that interrupts worry cycles. Positive psychology adds resilience and values-based tools for managing the stress that anxiety generates around daily life demands.
Depression
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is one of the most evidence-based treatments for preventing depression relapse. It helps people recognize early warning signs, disengage from rumination, and relate differently to depressive thoughts. Positive psychology adds activation, meaning, and engagement — the building blocks of recovery.
Burnout & Chronic Stress
Mindfulness builds the capacity to be present with what's actually happening rather than running from it or being overwhelmed by it — including at work. Positive psychology reorients away from what's depleting and toward what's sustaining, helping people rebuild a sense of meaning and engagement that burnout erodes.
Self-Compassion & Self-Esteem
Mindfulness is foundational to self-compassion — the capacity to notice when you're suffering without amplifying it with self-criticism. Positive psychology builds on this by identifying genuine strengths and developing a more accurate, kind self-perception. The combination is particularly powerful for chronic self-criticism and low self-worth.
Grief & Loss
Mindfulness supports the grieving process by developing the capacity to be with grief rather than fleeing it — allowing the natural movement of emotion rather than blocking or prolonging it. Positive psychology's meaning-making tools help people eventually rebuild a sense of purpose and connection after significant loss.
Sport & Performance
Mindfulness is one of the most evidence-based mental performance tools available — building focus, managing performance anxiety, and developing the present-moment awareness that's central to flow states. Positive psychology's strengths-based approach and resilience tools translate directly to athletic and professional performance contexts.
Why These Approaches Work
Presence isn't passive. It's one of the most powerful things you can develop.
One of the most consistent findings in mindfulness research is that the ability to be present — actually present, not ruminating about the past or planning against the future — changes the brain in measurable ways. It reduces activation in the default mode network (the "wandering mind"), builds regulatory capacity in the prefrontal cortex, and reduces the reactivity of the amygdala. These aren't small effects.
Positive psychology's research is equally striking. Gratitude practices produce measurable increases in wellbeing and decreases in depression. Strength identification leads to higher engagement and motivation. Meaning-based goal setting produces more sustained behaviour change than avoidance-based goals. These are not self-help platitudes — they are findings from rigorous research programs.
What makes both approaches powerful in therapy is that they complement rather than replace work on what's difficult. They don't ask you to pretend things are fine. They build the internal capacities that make it possible to work through what isn't — and to experience what is genuinely good more fully when it's there.
Specific Practices & Approaches
Tools your therapist may use — and what they're for
Mindfulness and positive psychology encompass a range of specific evidence-based practices. Here are some of the most common ones used at Summit.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
Combines mindfulness practices with cognitive therapy to prevent depression relapse. MBCT teaches people to recognize when they're entering a depressive thought pattern and to disengage from it — rather than being pulled into the ruminative spiral. One of the most evidence-based treatments available for recurrent depression.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR uses structured mindfulness practices — body scan, sitting meditation, mindful movement — to build present-moment awareness and reduce the impact of chronic stress. Extensively researched across medical and psychological populations.
Strengths-Based Approaches
Identifying and building on existing strengths rather than focusing exclusively on deficits. Research shows people who use their signature strengths regularly experience higher wellbeing and lower depression. Therapists use validated strength assessments and integrate strength-building into the therapeutic work.
Gratitude & Savoring Practices
Structured practices for noticing and amplifying positive experience — not by ignoring difficulty, but by building the capacity to register and hold what's genuinely good. Research consistently shows gratitude practice produces measurable wellbeing benefits beyond the practice itself.
Values Clarification & Meaning-Making
Identifying what actually matters — what you want to move toward rather than just what you want to escape. Positive psychology's research shows that meaning-based motivation is more sustainable and more deeply satisfying than avoidance-based motivation. Values work is also central to ACT.
Resilience Building
Developing the capacity to navigate adversity and recover from setbacks — not by becoming invulnerable, but by building the internal resources that make difficulty more manageable. Resilience research identifies specific, trainable capacities that predict how well people cope with and grow through hard times.
Book a Session
Find us in Edmonton, St. Albert & Windermere
Mindfulness and positive psychology approaches are available in person at all three Summit locations, and virtually for clients anywhere in Alberta.
Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver)
Grandin Plaza, 2nd Floor
Edmonton, AB
Common Questions
Mindfulness & positive psychology — your questions answered
Our Therapists
Summit therapists who use mindfulness & positive psychology
The clinicians below integrate mindfulness and positive psychology approaches into their work. Start with a free 15-minute consultation to find the right fit for your specific situation and goals.
Related Approaches
Other modalities we work with
You already have more than you think. Let's build on it.
Your first consultation is free — no commitment, no pressure. Just a conversation about where you are and whether these approaches are the right fit for you.
We acknowledge that our practice is located in Treaty 6 territory, on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux Peoples, including our Brewery District office in Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver). We recognize that healing and reconciliation is a responsibility shared by all.
Summit Counselling Services is a counselling practice operating our of Edmonton and St. Albert. We provide clinical services to children, adolescents, adults, seniors, couples, and families. We have a talented team of Edmonton psychologists, therapists and counsellors with a wide range of specializations and trainings at Summit Counselling Services who would be honoured to walk beside you on your journey. At Summit, we believe in therapy your way. Our goal is to customize your psychotherapy and counselling sessions to best suit your needs. We believe in the differences and unique perspectives each person brings to therapy and incorporate these into our work with you.