Research
Theoretical architecture, candidate mechanisms, and the Gemelli/Komen clinical programme.

Mindtrek proposes a nature-based integrative approach in which the natural environment functions not as a restorative backdrop and not as a relational third party, but as a direct epistemic mirror — a field in which certain mental mechanisms become perceptible through direct engagement, rather than through symbolic interpretation of the landscape.

Mindtrek's conceptual framework draws on two elements of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition — the bhavacakra, read as a psychology of mental mechanisms rather than a cosmological map, and three central principles of the Nyingma school's ngöndro (the preciousness of life, the direct experience of impermanence, and the compassion-centered bodhicitta practice) — translated into secular, clinically accessible language.

In practice, this becomes four overlapping contemplative movements, mostly left implicit rather than explicitly taught: attention to the preciousness of life; direct perceptual encounter with impermanence; a gradual softening of body-based identification; and an expansion of attention from individual identity toward a shared relational field, cultivated through altruism and nying-je (compassion).

These four movements are a structuring device for the programme's sessions — a working architecture, coherent with a long-standing contemplative tradition — not a set of empirically validated stages.

Alongside this architecture, we propose candidate neurophysiological mechanisms that make the method's design plausible and offer specific, testable targets for future research: Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis; Porges's polyvagal theory; van der Kolk's sensorimotor and interoceptive work on trauma; and Andy Clark's predictive processing account of the embodied mind. These are testable hypotheses we are working on.

Mindtrek has been delivered as integrative therapy — not as a research study — in a collaboration with the Komen Italia Center for Integrative Oncology within the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli, Rome, under a programme-based agreement renewed for each new cycle.

Two complete eight-week cycles have been conducted (winter 2025 and winter 2026), each involving breast cancer patients, their family caregivers, and a clinical team together. Clinical governance — including patient selection, informed consent, and care — rests entirely with the Gemelli medical staff, under the oversight of Claudia Maggiore.

The material gathered so far is experiential and qualitative in nature — real-world observations that point toward promising directions, motivating the more structured pilot below.

A structured mixed-methods pilot is planned for the programme's next cycle, winter 2027, incorporating the WHO-5 Well-Being Index and the PHQ-4 alongside continued qualitative data collection.