New study results show that a mindfulness-based intervention may help to improve mental and physical outcomes critical to the success of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) treatment. Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy (MABT) is an intervention that promotes self-care and enhances the management of emotional and physical needs by teaching interoceptive awareness skills, or the way a person senses and understands sensations in the body. The study examined whether receiving MABT along with MOUD could reduce opioid or substance use, decrease pain and physical symptom frequency, and improve mental health symptoms to support MOUD treatment and recovery.

Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT)

MABT combines manual techniques, including gentle touch and bodywork, with mindfulness practices and education to help people learn to tune into their body’s experience.  The goal is to help develop and increase capacity for physical awareness (introspection), emotional awareness and related care strategies. The therapeutic intervention administered by trained, certified therapists was developed by Cynthia Price, Ph.D., a research professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Washington. MABT is designed so that different types of health care practitioners can easily incorporate the approach into current care strategies.

MABT and MOUD Research

During the MABT study, which lasted for one year, 303 participants from six outpatient clinics were randomly assigned to receive either MABT with MOUD or MOUD treatment only. The MABT program was administered by trained, certified therapists over the course of three months: eight sessions total, once per week for 75 minutes each. The study found that participants who received MABT with MOUD showed significant improvement in mental and physical symptoms critical to the success of MOUD treatment. These include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, interoceptive awareness, pain severity, pain activity interference, and physical symptom frequency. However, levels of substance use among both groups of participants were low at the start of the study and did not change significantly during the course of the research.

Participants stated that learning this approach helped them to develop new ways to manage or regulate their emotions and highlighted the importance of these skills for supporting their treatment and long-term recovery. One participant said, “Learning to connect with what my body is telling me has helped strengthen my recovery process and taught me how to better cope with certain things during stressful times.”

 “For many in treatment, MABT gives them the one-on-one therapeutic support needed to learn to deeply attend to their bodies,” says Dr. Price. “People learn to develop, practice, and trust their own ability to use new strategies for awareness and self-care, and shift away from the automatic responses to stress and pain that undermine the goals of recovery.”

These initial findings expand on prior research showing that MABT has the potential to improve treatment outcomes for people with substance use disorder.

Read more about the MABT Study
Watch a video on MABT
Learn about MABT training