Common Factors

'Common factors', which include empathy, warmth, & acceptance, are clearly important in mental-health-related talk therapies. Common factors refers to the observation that the common features of effective psychotherapies operate similarly, independent of the ideologies of individual practitioners.

Nancy McWilliams. "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. A Practitioners Guide." The Guilford Press, NY, 2004.

'Common therapeutic factors': empathy, warmth, congruence, & the therapeutic alliance are “helpful to extremely helpful with virtually all clients ... and may, in fact, be at the core of therapeutic change. Many researchers and critics of counselor education suggest that training programs do not do enough to develop the person of the counselor or the requisite cognitive skills for establishing a strong working alliance. Together, this suggests that new training approaches may be needed. Mindfulness meditation practice may fill this gap." Bentley Greason P, Welfare LE. "The Impact of Mindfulness and Meditation Practice on Client Perceptions of Common Therapeutic Factors." Journal of Humanistic Counseling 2013; 52: 235-53.

The same 'common factors' that are so important in psychotherapies, can be cultivated through mindfulness meditation practice (see Bentley Greason & Welfare's paper above). Meditators will immediately recognize that psychotherapy's common factors have much in common with factors found in fine meditation teachers: http://www.johnlovas.com/2016/07/common-factors-for-meditation-teachers.html

Meditation teachers (& likely also those who practice spiritual guidance, mentoring, mediation work) benefit profoundly from establishing & maintaining solid meditation practices.