Conceptualizations of Mindfulness Among Experienced Practitioners

Despite ongoing interest in the study of mindfulness, there remain differences in the way the construct is defined in research, with some questioning whether current definitions are reflective of experienced practitioners’ understandings, including those from Buddhist backgrounds. The present study sought to investigate how experienced mindfulness practitioners define mindfulness and how they evaluate 13 definitions of mindfulness found in research and historical sources.

One hundred thirty-four participants, with an average of 20.3 years of mindfulness practice experience, completed an original online survey. Participants were first asked to provide their own definition of mindfulness in an open-ended format, then to evaluate how consistent 13 established research and historical definitions of mindfulness were with their own understanding. An exploratory mixed-methods data analytic approach was used to identify areas of agreement and disagreement between experienced practitioners’ and researchers’ conceptualizations.

Results revealed common language used to describe mindfulness: Both experienced practitioners and the established definitions included terms such as attention, awareness, and present moment. On average, participants rated most of the definitions from research and historical sources as at least slightly consistent (5 out of 7 on a Likert scale) with their own understanding. Conceptual disagreements by the experienced practitioners were observed related to a possible overemphasis on present-moment focus, whether mindfulness is best conceptualized as a state and/or a trait, and Buddhist concepts which may be missing from researchers’ definitions.

While the present study demonstrated broad general agreement in understandings of mindfulness among experienced practitioners and researchers, future research is needed to account for specific differences in understandings to work toward more comprehensive operational definitions of mindfulness.