Abstract
In the recent years, mindfulness-based research has experienced a boom. Yet, the majority of those studies treat mindfulness in a positivistic way, thus solely as a variable. Within such a lens of inquiry, we ignore the theoretical and historical underpinnings of mindfulness that are still important, nowadays. For that purpose, I instance a theoretical and historical framework of mindfulness grounded within Taoism – relying on the notion of the polarity of life and wu wei (the principle of not-forcing) and try to bridge that focus with Mead’s Social Psychology. By means of an autoethnography, I show that mindfulness-based activities such as meditation unfold the power of an individual to experience and own a new I which then acts in a new fashion upon the demands of the (social) environment (Me). In this process, a new personality is born that integrates wholistically the polar sides of life within himself/herself.
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It is sufficient to browse the leading journal mindfulness and assess the qualitative nature and quantitative nature of the published studies. From the 1st of August to the 25th of August, 13 of 17 published studies were quantitative which makes the proportion of quantitative studies 76% and 14% qualitative. Mostly those studies want to shed light onto how much variance is explained for instance in the depression scores or rumination scores by mindfulness (see Keune et al., 2023 for persons with mild dementia). Other studies focus on the moderating role of mindfulness between loneliness and psychological distress for instance (Coutts-Smith & Phillips, 2023). Kabat-Zinn is one of the exceptions in this regard. The American professor does not get tired of repeating the historical features of mindfulness that has been already practiced over centuries and in many different cultures (2005). Kabat-Zinn underlines that if one wants to study mindfulness, s/he should do so by many different angles including the traditions from the past (2003).
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Acknowledgements
Für Anna Ghazi, für Reinhard Semmerling, für Jaan Valsiner, ohne die ich heute nicht schreiben würde. Ihr habt mir geholfen, mich besser kennenzulernen und den Weg des Tao zu gehen.
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von Fircks, E. Understanding The Process of Taoistic-Informed Mindfulness from a Meadian Perspective. Integr. psych. behav. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09805-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09805-9