Verbalizing body awareness during Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training is difficult; participants often talked about emotions or made rational judgments instead of expressing bodily sensations. Analyzing a full MBSR course transcript with interpretative phenomenological analysis and applying Wittgenstein's concept of language-games and Austin's speech acts, the authors suggest that learning to verbalize body awareness involves learning a language-game of 'reporting sense perceptions.' The findings align with emotion regulation therapy, where the first step is feeling bodily sensations rather than making rational judgments. The authors hypothesize that mindfulness apps and recorded body scans, lacking live trainer-participant dialogue, may hinder this learning process.
Body awareness is central to mindfulness-based interventions, but little attention has been paid to how the body and body awareness figure in the teaching and learning process. This participant observation study of an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training uses a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to analyze what enhancing body awareness entails and how participants experience their bodies. Four modes of bodily appearance are identified: intermittently present, fragmented, while 'feeling good', and while 'not feeling good'. These are interpreted through Leder's concepts of disappearance and dys-appearance, Zeiler's eu-appearance, and Van Manen's phenomenological distinctions. The findings suggest new perspectives on the mindfulness tenet of non-judgmental present-moment awareness.