The ACT Matrix


Book Description

If you are an ACT practitioner or mental health professional, this eagerly awaited resource is an essential addition to your professional library. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based therapy that has been successful in treating a variety of psychological issues, such anxiety, depression, substance abuse, trauma, eating disorders, and more. In contrast to other treatment options, ACT has proven extremely effective in helping clients who are “stuck” in unhealthy thought patterns by encouraging them align their values with their thoughts and actions. However, the ACT model is complex, and it’s not always easy to use. Traditionally, ACT is delivered with a focus around six core processes that are often referred to as the hexaflex: cognitive defusion, acceptance, contact with the present moment, observing the self, values, and committed action. Each of these core processes serves a specific function, but they are often made more complex than needed in both theory and in practice. So what if there was a way to simplify ACT in your sessions with clients? Edited by clinical psychologists and popular ACT workshop leaders Kevin L. Polk and Benjamin Schoendorff, The ACT Matrix fuses the six core principles of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) into a simplified, easy-to-apply approach that focuses on client actions and behavior as workable or unworkable, rather than good or bad. Most importantly, you’ll learn how this innovative approach can be used to deliver ACT more effectively in a variety of settings and contexts, even when clients are resistant or unmotivated to participate. This is the first book to utilize the ACT Matrix model, and it is a must-read for any ACT practitioner looking to streamline his or her therapeutic approach.




The Essential Guide to the ACT Matrix


Book Description

The ACT Matrix revolutionized contextual behavioral science. Now, the creators of this pioneering new model present the first detailed, step-by-step guide to help professionals implement the ACT Matrix in clinical practice and improve clients’ psychological flexibility. If you’re a clinician, you know that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is extremely effective in helping clients who are “stuck” in unhealthy thought patterns by encouraging them align their values with their thoughts and actions. However, the ACT model is complex, and it's not always easy to use. Enter the ACT Matrix, a seamless fusion of the six core processes of the ACT hexaflex—cognitive defusion, acceptance, contact with the present moment, observing the self, values, and committed action—into a simplified, easy-to-apply approach. From the editors of The ACT Matrix, The Essential Guide to the ACT Matrix offers professionals a comprehensive guide to using the innovative Matrix model in-session. With this book, you’ll learn how to help your clients break free from painful psychological traps and live more meaningful lives. You’ll also learn how client actions and behavior should be viewed as workable or unworkable, rather than good or bad. Most importantly, you'll discover how this unique approach can be used to deliver ACT more effectively in a variety of settings and contexts, even when clients are resistant or unmotivated to participate. This book is essential for any ACT clinician looking to simplify their therapeutic approach in client sessions.




The ACT Matrix


Book Description

If you are an ACT practitioner or mental health professional, this eagerly awaited resource is an essential addition to your professional library. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based therapy that has been successful in treating a variety of psychological issues, such anxiety, depression, substance abuse, trauma, eating disorders, and more. In contrast to other treatment options, ACT has proven extremely effective in helping clients who are “stuck” in unhealthy thought patterns by encouraging them align their values with their thoughts and actions. However, the ACT model is complex, and it’s not always easy to use. Traditionally, ACT is delivered with a focus around six core processes that are often referred to as the hexaflex: cognitive defusion, acceptance, contact with the present moment, observing the self, values, and committed action. Each of these core processes serves a specific function, but they are often made more complex than needed in both theory and in practice. So what if there was a way to simplify ACT in your sessions with clients? Edited by clinical psychologists and popular ACT workshop leaders Kevin L. Polk and Benjamin Schoendorff, The ACT Matrix fuses the six core principles of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) into a simplified, easy-to-apply approach that focuses on client actions and behavior as workable or unworkable, rather than good or bad. Most importantly, you’ll learn how this innovative approach can be used to deliver ACT more effectively in a variety of settings and contexts, even when clients are resistant or unmotivated to participate. This is the first book to utilize the ACT Matrix model, and it is a must-read for any ACT practitioner looking to streamline his or her therapeutic approach.




Playing the Matrix


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Infinite Possibilities and Life on Earth Playing the Matrix is a master class for creating the life you want to live. Tried and true, delivered and perfected over a decade while being shared live with tens of thousands of students in 132 cities, in 34 countries, upon 6 continents. This is Mike Dooley’s advanced course on living deliberately and creating consciously. The concepts he shares were born of material he’s delivered to live audiences the world over, culminating in his most impactful, most transformational program ever. Now, for the first time in 17 years of touring, these ideas are to be shared in book form. At the heart of the Matrix lies a simple yet highly unexpected concept for creating major life change that’s unlike anything shared by other teachers, past and present. It clearly reveals why “manifesting” sometimes works with incredible ease, why it sometimes doesn’t work at all, and why, on occasion, it works, and yet in hindsight we wish it hadn’t. Readers will not only learn about the “Bermuda Triangle of Manifesting” that too often leads to heartbreak and loss, they’ll learn how to navigate around it, under full sail, with their own new “a-ha” moments that will teach them: • How to achieve clarity in purpose and desire and thereby avoid contradictions and self-sabotage • How to fuel their dreams with passion while not attaching to unimportant details and outcomes • How to plan and take action on their dreams without “messing with the cursed how’s”! And so much more...




Taking the Red Pill


Book Description

Dive into the world of The Matrix ahead of the 2021 release of Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections! Taking the Red Pill is a thought-provoking, mind-expanding thrill ride through The Matrix, examining the technological challenges, religious symbolism, and philosophical dilemmas the film presents. Renowned scientists, technologists, philosophers, scholars, social commentators, and science fiction authors provide engaging and provocative perspectives: • Inventor and technologist Ray Kurzweil reveals the technological trends that make The Matrix more prophetic than anyone suspects • Sun chief scientist Bill Joy’s classic essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” describes the horrors that await as these technologies are developed • Yale philosopher and occasional standup comic Nick Bostrom calculates the odds that we are in the Matrix • Best-selling science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer explores the history of artificial intelligence in science fiction culminating with The Matrix • Economist and philosopher of science Robin Hanson shows how we are controlled by a power as malevolent as that of the Matrix Taking the Red Pill will change how you view The Matrix—and the world around you.




The Matrix of the Mind


Book Description

This book is exciting, original, and above all accessible–a rare combination for a text which deals in depth with psychoanalytical theory. Non-analysts are frequently both baffled and alienated by the jargon and the complexity of works which extend psychoanalytical thinking, but Ogden is revealed in this book as an outstanding communicator as well as a major theoretician. The book's subtitle is a guide to the main focus of the work, which reinterprets the work of Melanie Klein, with its focus on phantasy, in relation to the biological determinants of perception and the meaning and organization of experience in the interpersonal setting of human growth and development. Ogden re-interprets Klein to illuminate Freudian instinct theory, using the contributions of Bion, Fairbairn, and particularly Winnicott–British object relations theorists–to clarify and extend aspects of their work and to move towards an impressive exposition of the way in which the human mind develops." –Pamela M. Ashurst, The British Journal of Psychiatry A Jason Aronson Book




Nonnegative Matrix and Tensor Factorizations


Book Description

This book provides a broad survey of models and efficient algorithms for Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF). This includes NMF’s various extensions and modifications, especially Nonnegative Tensor Factorizations (NTF) and Nonnegative Tucker Decompositions (NTD). NMF/NTF and their extensions are increasingly used as tools in signal and image processing, and data analysis, having garnered interest due to their capability to provide new insights and relevant information about the complex latent relationships in experimental data sets. It is suggested that NMF can provide meaningful components with physical interpretations; for example, in bioinformatics, NMF and its extensions have been successfully applied to gene expression, sequence analysis, the functional characterization of genes, clustering and text mining. As such, the authors focus on the algorithms that are most useful in practice, looking at the fastest, most robust, and suitable for large-scale models. Key features: Acts as a single source reference guide to NMF, collating information that is widely dispersed in current literature, including the authors’ own recently developed techniques in the subject area. Uses generalized cost functions such as Bregman, Alpha and Beta divergences, to present practical implementations of several types of robust algorithms, in particular Multiplicative, Alternating Least Squares, Projected Gradient and Quasi Newton algorithms. Provides a comparative analysis of the different methods in order to identify approximation error and complexity. Includes pseudo codes and optimized MATLAB source codes for almost all algorithms presented in the book. The increasing interest in nonnegative matrix and tensor factorizations, as well as decompositions and sparse representation of data, will ensure that this book is essential reading for engineers, scientists, researchers, industry practitioners and graduate students across signal and image processing; neuroscience; data mining and data analysis; computer science; bioinformatics; speech processing; biomedical engineering; and multimedia.




Matrix Meditations


Book Description

65 dynamic meditation techniques for manifesting your desires and multiplying the power of your mind • Contains meditation practices from both Eastern and Western traditions • Includes proven techniques for increasing mental clarity, replacing negative behaviors that have become habits, and realizing your desires Matrix Meditations offers dynamic meditation practices derived from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions to develop intuition, manifest desires, and empower the self by forging a strong heart-mind relationship. The authors provide a systematic 16-week program that is designed to develop heightened awareness and deeper states of consciousness for readers with any level of meditation experience, moving from lessons in classical Eastern techniques to advanced levels that employ methods not found elsewhere. Four key forms of meditation are used in the book: concentration, mindfulness, contemplation, and adventures in awareness. These are applied to specific practices that range from improving mental clarity and memory to replacing self-limiting patterns of thinking and behaving in which you may be trapped. Each of the 65 meditations offers a doorway into a different chamber of your consciousness and an opportunity to learn more about your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual nature. The matrix can also be used as an oracle to guide you to the most valuable meditation you need for the present moment--be it love, balance, conflict, dreams, renewal, or celebration. These meditation techniques are designed to create healing and harmony between the mind and emotions, allowing you to attain not only greater financial and emotional security and well-being but also life-long spiritual growth.




The Happiness Trap


Book Description

A guide to ACT: the revolutionary mindfulness-based program for reducing stress, overcoming fear, and finding fulfilment – now updated. International bestseller, 'The Happiness Trap', has been published in over thirty countries and twenty-two languages. NOW UPDATED. Popular ideas about happiness are misleading, inaccurate, and are directly contributing to our current epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression. And unfortunately, popular psychological approaches are making it even worse! In this easy-to-read, practical and empowering self-help book, Dr Russ Harries, reveals how millions of people are unwittingly caught in the 'The Happiness Trap', where the more they strive for happiness the more they suffer in the long term. He then provides an effective means to escape through the insights and techniques of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a groundbreaking new approach based on mindfulness skills. By clarifying your values and developing mindfulness (a technique for living fully in the present moment), ACT helps you escape the happiness trap and find true satisfaction in life. Mindfulness skills are easy to learn and will rapidly and effectively help you to reduce stress, enhance performance, manage emotions, improve health, increase vitality, and generally change your life for the better. The book provides scientifically proven techniques to: reduce stress and worry; rise above fear, doubt and insecurity; handle painful thoughts and feelings far more effectively; break self-defeating habits; improve performance and find fulfilment in your work; build more satisfying relationships; and, create a rich, full and meaningful life.




Simulacra and Simulation


Book Description

Develops a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure. This book represents an effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.