Trainers

Alice Shires is a Clinical Psychologist based at the University of New South Wales, where she has been the Director of the Psychology Clinic for several years. Prior to this position, she worked as Clinic Manager at The University of Sydney and as Consultant Clinical Psychologist in acute and specialist mental health services in the UK. She has been involved in the teaching, training and supervision of clinical psychologists and their field supervisors for many years.

Alice was the Chair of the NSW Section of the APS Clinical College from 2006 to 2010 and is currently a University representative on the Psychology Advisory Committee for the NSW Department of Health.

 Alice has developed a keen interest in Mindfulness and its integration into CBT as a response to increasing frustration and awareness of the limitations of standard CBT. After attending ACT training with Stephen Hayes and MiCBT training with Bruno Cayoun, Alice set up some training courses given by Bruno Cayoun for both students and supervisors at UNSW. These workshops also provided data for some research on the effects of MiCBT training on clinicians.

 Since the start of 2007, Alice has implemented MiCBT with clients, taught MiCBT to professionals and supervised clinicians in training. She has been hosting a Mindfulness interest group for clinicians who are interested in the application of Mindfulness in Psychological therapy. Alice is particularly interested in establishing an accreditation process to support high standards of content and training, and has been involved in the MiCBT Vocational Graduate Diploma course construction.

She is currently undertaking a PhD research project in cognitive neuroscience under the supervision of Professor Louise Sharpe (USYD), investigating the possible effects of mindfulness training on the hippocampus of Multiple Sclerosis sufferers.

Sally  Francis is a psychologist and has worked for many years in education in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors as well as in the corporate sector managing HR and Learning and Development and in Quality Management in Technical and Further Education. She has developed many training and development programs including courses in communication skills, team development, coaching, performance management and change. She is the author of a textbook entitled "Workplace Communication: A Teacher's Guide"; Pitman 1993.

Her interest in personal growth led her to the study of Buddhist psychology and she has studied Buddhism in a number of centres; predominantly Tibetan Buddhism. She is a life member of the Jamchen Buddhist Centre in Melbourne and has attended meditation retreats in both Australia and Nepal over the last seven years.

Sally works with mindfulness and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behaviour Therapies utilizing the work  of Bruno Cayoun,  Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Segal, Teasdale, and Williams. Sally has run groups for both Stress Reduction and Depression, including 8-week programs for clients in remission from major depression. Sally has been trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (MiCBT).

Sally has trained in MiCBT for over 5 years and coordinated the 2008 8-week applied course for therapists in Melbourne. Her past research looked at measures of mindfulness and the relationship between mindfulness and well-being.

Sally is a psychologist in private practice in the CBD and Carlton, Melbourne, where she is also the Coordinator of the Melbourne's MiCBT Interest Group. She is Head of the Learning and Development Group at the MiCBT Institute, in charge of developing the course curriculum for Government-approved professional accreditation in MiCBT.

Dr Bruno Cayoun is Director of the MiCBT Institute and a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Hobart, Tasmania. He is the principal developer of Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (MiCBT) and has been teaching this approach to mental health professionals in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore for the past 8 years.  

He has practised mindfulness meditation and undergone intensive training in mindfulness centres in France, Nepal, India, and Australia for over 22 years.

Bruno is also an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Tasmania and supervises mindfulness research in collaboration with several universities in Australia and New Zealand. His current research projects include:

• The measurements of mindfulness in clinical groups
• The differential effects of group versus individual applications of MiCBT
• The differential effects of various mindfulness techniques in the general and clinical population
• The effect of mindfulness meditation on minimal cognitive impairment on older adults
• The effect of MiCBT on carers of a family member with a disability
• The effects of MiCBT on the experiences of addiction (AOD) and trauma.

 He is the author of 2 books, including Mindfulness-integrated CBT: Principles and Practice (Wiley-Blackwell, UK, 2011). He is also the principal developer of two questionnaires, the Short Progress Assessment and the Mindfulness-based Self Efficacy Scale, now translated in Portuguese and Dutch