Mindfulness What-Skills
If you first want to take the three basic steps of mindfulness as a coherent practice.
Arrange the three what skills as the basic structure of mindfulness so that observing, describing and participating can be read as a coherent practice.
When does this fit?
If, before individual what skills, a common overview of observing, describing and participating is needed.
Priority in the path
This node fits early in the path when inner restlessness or strong emotional activation are in the foreground.
What this is about
The Mindfulness What Skills are the three foundational practices of DBT mindfulness: Observe, Describe, and Participate. Each addresses a different aspect of conscious attention. Observe is noticing what is present — through the senses and internally — without immediately reacting. Describe is putting words on what has been observed, labeling without adding interpretation or judgment. Participate is entering fully into activity, becoming what one is doing without self-conscious separation.
Together they form a progression: observing brings awareness, describing builds precision and clarity, participating puts that awareness into full-contact engagement with life. They are taught before the How Skills because they define what mindfulness is attending to.
The components
Observe: Beobachten
When, before speech, evaluation or action, one must first gather what is actually happening internally or externally.Describe: Beschreiben
When what is observed must be named in order to distinguish between fact and attribution or to facilitate feedback, classification and regulation.Participate: Teilnehmen
When Observe and Describe have already done their clarifying job and the situation now needs more presence, flow or immediate follow-through than further analysis.
Continue in practice
Sources and references
Show where this node comes from and how source-near or practice-near it is.