Phenomenology of Body Awareness in Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Body awareness is considered to be an important element of mindfulness-based interventions. Although studies have been done on the effects of enhanced body awareness on health and well-being, none of these studies focused on the meaning of the body and body awareness in the teaching and learning process of enhancing one’s body awareness. In this paper, we provide a phenomenology of the body in the practice of a mindfulness-based intervention. We present a participant observation study about an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training. We analyzed, by taking a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, what enhancing one’s body awareness entails in this practice, and how participants experienced their bodies in this process. We identified four ways in which the body (not) appears in MBSR: as intermittently present, as fragmented, while ‘feeling good’, and while ‘not feeling good’. We discussed how these body appearances can be understood through the analytic lens of Leder’s disappearance and dys-appearance, and Zeiler’s eu-appearance, and with Van Manen’s phenomenological distinctions of the body. At the end of this paper, we considered how our findings may cast new light on one of the central tenets in mindfulness practice: to be non-judgmentally aware in the present moment.