Since its introduction to the behavioral science research community 25 years ago, interest in mindfulness has burgeoned. Much of that interest has been among clinical researchers testing the efficacy of mindfulness-based or mindfulness-integrated interventions for a variety of conditions and populations, and this volume is testament to the vitality of investigation and diversity of applied knowledge that now exist in the field. In the last 5 years or so, researchers have also become interested in describing and operationalizing the mindfulness construct itself. This more recent line of work is important for four reasons: The first concerns the basic scientific principle that a phenomenon can be studied only if it can be properly defined and measured.
Natural objects … must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur. Husserl E. (1981)
Portions of this chapter were drawn from Brown, Ryan, and Creswell (2007).
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Notes
- 1.
It is important to note that an active–passive dynamic also occurs in object-oriented, second-order processing, but in that case, the activity is not about opening to what is, but rather concerns evaluation, discrimination, and other cognitive activities that attention has been affectively turned to.
- 2.
It is this integration of attention and meta-awareness that helps to distinguish mindfulness from concentration. As Georges Dreyfus (personal communication, October 17, 2007) notes, attention may become focused on an object but without sufficient clarity or presence to retain that focus. That is, the mind may become concentrated, but without meta-awareness to help preserve that focused attentiveness, it would be lacking in mindfulness.
- 3.
We refer to “mindfulness practice skills” as the variety of practice-based supports for the expression of mindful attention, including an attitude of acceptance toward experience, discursive description of subjective experiences as they arise (e.g., labeling), and so on.
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Brown, K.W., Cordon, S. (2009). Toward a Phenomenology of Mindfulness: Subjective Experience and Emotional Correlates. In: Didonna, F. (eds) Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09593-6_5
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