A Working Definition of Basic Attendance

The term “Basic Attendance” was first coined in 1981 to name the therapeutic means of the Windhorse approach that creates sane environments for persons recovering from mental disorders. The discipline of Basic Attendance is “basic” because it deals with the most basic and fundamental of situations: synchronizing body, environment, and mind by gathering attention and sharpening perceptions, within the ordinary activities of life; it is “attendance” because the therapist’s intention and training is to be of compassionate service by tending to the needs of someone during the process of recovery from mental disturbance. Basic Attendance means the therapist is getting down to what is immediately relevant (i.e., “basic”) to being with someone and doing what is required at the time (i.e., “attendance”), from taking walks to more traditional psychotherapy. Basic Attendance is primarily used in the treatment of major mental disorders and can also be applied to a wide variety of human service needs and activities. 

◈ There are 10 specific clinical skills of Basic Attendance:

1.  Being Present with the client;

2.  Letting In significant empathic contact;

3.  Bringing Home attention to body and ordinary activity;

4.  Letting Be the ebb and flow of the relational process;

5.  Bringing Along the client into the wider community; 

6.  Recognizing the six landmarks of the client's history of sanity;

7.  Finding Energy in sensory appreciation of environmental details;

8.  Leaning In to productive and disciplined activity;

9.  Discovering Friendship based on truthfulness;

10. Learning as a mutual path of development.

Basic Attendance is an application of “contemplative psychotherapy,” particularly as taught at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The specialized training in Basic Attendance is most effective when based on the therapist’s on-going, personal practice of a contemplative discipline such as meditation, martial arts, or prayer. Basic Attendance, as an interpersonal contemplative method, develops the therapist’s experiential awareness of his/her full presence, the flow of inner experience, and the contextual environment. The therapist is then able to be empathically present moment-to-moment with the client and to respect this relationship as a creative collaboration.

◈ The goals of Basic Attendance are to:

1. Help the client to relax;

2. Increase the client’s level of individual resourcefulness and responsibility;

3. Expand the client's community of social relations.

It is the concerted effort of the group of people who practice Basic Attendance—with the client and with each other—that constitutes the work of the Windhorse healing team.