Ann McNeil blends traditional therapeutic practices with a mindfulness viewpoint to work effectively with clients. Therapy is really about a change that you desire to create for yourself. Sometimes the change you need most is to simply accept what has happened in your life. You can also create change by considering a different interpretation of your past and your responses to it. Choosing to improve your life is helped immensely by becoming mindful enough to recognize and break non-useful patterns of emotion and behavior.

The skill known as mindfulness is finding its way into mainstream therapeutic interventions. For instance, in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), mindfulness practice is referred to as Core Mindfulness. This skill is aptly named because mindfulness is core, or central, to all the other skills that are taught in this type of cognitive behavioral therapy. In DBT, developed by Marsha Linehan, clients are taught Core Mindfulness skills that are the psychological and behavioral applications of meditation practices from Eastern spiritual training and Western contemplative practices. The client learns how to balance emotions with rational thinking through mindfulness practice.

Ann also incorporates work from Jon Kabat-Zinn and his long-time practice of using mindfulness with chronically ill patients. The client can only really know the usefulness of mindfulness by actually experiencing it. Intellectually knowing that it is important to be aware of each passing moment has little real impact on our lives unless we practice being fully present or "mindful." To summarize, we need to practice meditation and observation of our thoughts.

To quote Tara Bennett-Goleman from her book Emotional Alchemy, "Mindfulness helps us cultivate refined awareness, detecting the subtlety of our emotional and cognitive patterns, which we otherwise so easily overlook amid the distractions of everyday life. It allows us to distinguish between distortion and reality--that is, between how things seem and how they actually are." (p. 147) Practicing mindfulness and meditation are encouraged because these tools are so effective in intervening in a variety of psychological stressors. Clients do not need to be concerned that their religious beliefs would not be respected or compromised in any way. Meditation is not religious. Meditation is a way to train the mind, a fabulous tool to assist the client in deep, permanent change.