Varuna, if I understand your question correctly, then I would say the framework is the integration of eastern-oriented religious/philosophical tenets with western-oriented cognitive therapy.  You see similar ideas in Acceptance & Commitment Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.  In the early 1980s, Kabat-Zinn began integrating so-called Buddhist ideas into stress reduction therapy at the University of Massachusetts. If you email me ([email protected]), I can provide a list of recommended readings.

Cognititve-behavioral therapy is by its nature mindfulness-based.  It requires therapist and client to focus on the thoughts and feelings that emerge in response to situations in the client's life.  The focus is mainly on thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are self-defeating or interfere with the person's life.  The difference is that in Cognitive-behavioral Therapy, the goal is to develop messages that challoenge the negative thoughts and actions to change the negative behaviors.  In mindfulness, the goal is to observe and accept without judgment, gaining insight and gradually letting go of fears, avoidance and negative impulses that come from a sense of lack or want (attachments).

As a side note, Psychoanalysis is also related to mindfulness as a person learns to observe their subconscious thoughts and express them without judgment or editing, helping them to discover hidden inner conflicts.  Acceptance helps to free up constricted emotions.

Sorry for the long response. An article you might find useful:

"Mindfulness Group Therapy in Primary Care patients with Depression..." Sundquist, Lilja, Palmer, et al, The British Journal of Psychiatry. 2014.

and

Prevention of Relapse Recurrence in Major Depression with Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Teasdale et al (ling below)

http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~pgoldin/Buddhism/MBCTrelapsedepressionTeasdale2000JCCP.pdf

To. Richard E.Watts and John Krachenfels  Thank you all for your responses and articles

Cognitive behavioral  therapy is  intimately bound up with increasing mindfulness. Try to" think inside your head"  if a problem arises. For example, suppose that  your partner does not enjoy  bantering/teasing. although you do  like to do that. Think first. before acting//speaking in ways that  case turmoil. " Oh.This will just get  me a negative reaction.This is not pleasant for my partner." Your thoughts inside your head will l "head off at the pass " as it were,  your blurting  out or behaving in abrasive ways or unkind ways  that cause irritations or even rupture in the flow of your  relationships.

Another useful and positive  aspect of Cognitive therapy is  the tool " "FLIIP your response!". For example:  If  a traffic jam hols up your driving, instead of  letting yourself be flooded with angry tense feelings,  tell yourself"  "OK!. Now I  can listen  to more of this wonderful Brahmas symphony onhthe car radio". This  " flipping tool" also helps you change from a negative appraisal of a person to  changing your thoughts and thinking  of something positive to help smooth your interaction with that  person.  Very useful  when feeling exasperation with a child's mischief, , for instance!  All good wishes for helping yourself to more positive and more peaceful ways of feeling and thinking.about distressing /stressful situations or interactions.

Fellowships of A.A, N.A & G.A all preceeded Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Change the thought, change the behaviour and change one's own attitude in an interior reflective manner. 

In my clinical practice I have seen that the person must be in their body before anything productive or meaningful can happen on the cognitive level. Neurobiologically we know that if the person is overly aroused or shut down cognitive approaches have limited effectiveness. Mindfulness trained clinicians know that having the client present is key to any intervention and in itself is a crucial change agent.  From our understanding of our nervous system this explains the need to address the emotional/somatic charge that underpins our "irrational beliefs". That is why a client will say after they have dutifully challenged their beliefs, "I know I am not guilty for what happened to me YET I STILL FEEL THIS WAY." Mindfulness is not a just cognitive process nor is it just an adjunct to enhancing cognitive therapy. Being aware or mindful of ones thoughts may be a gateway to mindfulness. Mindfulness does not just happen because you have asked the person to be aware of their thoughts. I believe that when you add Mindfulness to any therapy approach it offers to transform the approach. It is like a Trojan horse or Jedi mind trick. It will change your thoughts, behavior and interior reflective manner as a therapist.

Mindfulness is a capacity that can be measured:patients come into treatment with mindfulness and some therapies have been shown to increase mindfulness; the best measure of mindfulness is Reflective Functioning or RF, although the interview that allows for reliable and valid measurement is in some settings too long and people are working on other ways of assessing mindfulness.

I have a lot more to say but will do so at a later time: in the meantime the work of Fogarty is a good place to start.

I agree with Joseph. MBCT would be a good platform for any therapeutic approach as  it increases the insight of the client. Therapist play a facilitator role than a intervention role. In this process client learn to accept the feelings, thoughts and any pain and observe that those are changing with time if you do not cling on to it. At the same time be in the present moment (here and now) help client to stop dwelling with past (worrying) and the future (Anxiety). Symbolically it is like you take the control of your self not giving it to a auto pilot. MBCT has developed as a pain management methods too. Pls read: "Acceptance-based interventions for the treatment of chronic pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis" which you find in science direct.

Another important point about MBCT is you should practice mindfulness by yourself. This help to a grater extent to facilitate the client.

For all practical purposes, mindfulness can be considered a cognitive intervention: by becoming more aware of thoughts and their influence on mood and behavior, you have an avenue to challenge those thoughts, and replace them with different thoughts.

Additionally, it can be considered to have a behavioral influence, similar to Jacobsonian relaxation strategies, usually identified as "systematic relaxation." Taking a deep breath, and exercising would be similar behavioral interventions, each with a presumptive physiological correlate to explain how it helps, psychologically.

Mindfulness meditation, when successful (the person tries and actually has some sustained stretches of time of mindfulness) is recognized to have a range of influences upon brain activity, as measured by EEG or Q-EEG (those terms can be googled). The literature is very heterogeneous on what brain activity changes are seen in those successfully meditating, so I am not confident in making a specific argument one way or the other. But the argument is that the meditation moves the brain into a mental state that is that of a less-distressed state of mind. So, just like taking deep breaths can relax you, possibly due to vagal nerve feedback to the brain, by meditation you deliberately move your brain activity profile to more closely be one of alert relaxation rather than alert alarm or distress.

Further, this can be classically conditioned to some degree, by being associated with deep breathing or a mental focus on the phenomenology of breathing.

My explanation removed the esoteric, or cosmological, or religious, or supernatural nature from meditation. In my view, meditation is not any of these. This is my opinion, and I may be right or wrong. An "Eastern" concept is that meditation upon breathing, the essence of life, can "yoke" you to the essence of life, the infinite or the cosmological.

The impression of losing some sense of yourself is thus explained as losing your self and getting closer to oneness with the universe. "Yoke" shares the same root word with "yoga," hence the term "yoga."

Some may disagree, but yoga is a form of meditation - a very physical form - more physical than slow-walking, meditatively eating a raisin in the well-recognized raisin exercise, etc.

So, if writing a paper or describing your practice, to stand on steady ground it might be safe to say meditation, as a mental health intervention, has aspects of cognitive and behavioral interventions, while some also believe it has unique spiritual or metaphysical aspects. Insurance companies and grant funders will not pay for spiritual interventions, and believers of many religious faiths are not supposed to dabble in practices outside their religion, including the occult, so you have solid ground on two sides for avoiding a portrayal of meditation as spiritual.

A good overview/intro is: "The Calm Technique: Meditation without Magic or Mysticism." The Kabat-Zinn books are good, also.