Event Title
Discursive Analysis Shifts MBSR Research Away from Self-Reification
Location
Hart 113
Start Time
10-5-2017 2:25 PM
End Time
10-5-2017 2:55 PM
Description
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) aims to teach new ways of being. Highly-trained instructors employ particular language forms to teach mindfulness practices. Yet the scholarly literature, replete with empirical validation studies, has little to say about mindfulness discourse. A critique of MBSR research shows quantitative methods presuppose a reified self. In contrast, the philosophical underpinnings of mindfulness practice treat self as a fluid process. To articulate how MBSR discourse reframes our understanding of persons, this FLRG-supported study explored how participants constituted themselves in talk about mindfulness. Transcripts of interviews with MBSR practitioners (N=20) were subjected to a discursive analysis. The intention was to delineate how practitioners take up a unique MBSR voice in their self-portrayals. Findings were laid out along a developmental continuum in which the most developed portrayals described mindful awareness without recourse to a reified self. Analyses display how mindfulness discourse can be understood as encouraging de-reification of self.
Discursive Analysis Shifts MBSR Research Away from Self-Reification
Hart 113
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) aims to teach new ways of being. Highly-trained instructors employ particular language forms to teach mindfulness practices. Yet the scholarly literature, replete with empirical validation studies, has little to say about mindfulness discourse. A critique of MBSR research shows quantitative methods presuppose a reified self. In contrast, the philosophical underpinnings of mindfulness practice treat self as a fluid process. To articulate how MBSR discourse reframes our understanding of persons, this FLRG-supported study explored how participants constituted themselves in talk about mindfulness. Transcripts of interviews with MBSR practitioners (N=20) were subjected to a discursive analysis. The intention was to delineate how practitioners take up a unique MBSR voice in their self-portrayals. Findings were laid out along a developmental continuum in which the most developed portrayals described mindful awareness without recourse to a reified self. Analyses display how mindfulness discourse can be understood as encouraging de-reification of self.
Comments
Moderator: Heather Pacheco-Guffrey