Clear(ing) space: mindfulness‐based reflective practice

Abstract

This paper reports on an enquiry into how practitioners working in healthcare environments bring mindfulness, a particular type of practice of reflection, into their professional and personal lives. Nine participants engaged in group discussion, Haiku poetry writing and the recording of personal audio diaries. Thematic analysis of the diaries indicates a transcending theme that being in the here and now can highlight discomfort, pain and uncertainty. Within this, sub‐themes illustrate that mindfulness can act as a support to personal and professional development, to the content and process of clinical work and as a means to support dealing with work‐related stress. A final theme illustrates participants’ experiences of using the research process to facilitate their ongoing reflective practice. The paper concludes with a note on what has been identified as ‘mindfulness‐based reflective practice’: a practice that can bring vitality and fluidity to critical reflection.

Keywords:

• mindfulness
• critical reflective practice
• personal and professional development

Acknowledgements

The author gives warm and many thanks to my research supervisors, authors 2, 3 and 4, for their wise, patient and encouraging support throughout this research process. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and the nine participants for engaging in a heartfelt and intimate way, and for instigating our on‐going mindfulness‐based reflective practice group.

Notes

1. A Haiku created by one of the research participants.

2. Although we use the term ‘reflective practice’ in the singular throughout this paper, we wish to acknowledge that there are many different types of practice that use reflection, of one kind and another, as the key process.

3. In this paper we privilege the ‘voice’ of the first author, to reflect both her lead role in en‐visioning this study, but also to highlight a more ‘first person’ perspective in the paper.

4. The terms ‘mindfulness’ and ‘meditation’ are frequently used interchangeably. For example, some people might describe their practice as mindfulness meditation. A simple way to distinguish the two for the purpose of this paper is to view meditation as a much broader concept that can include mindfulness, but can also incorporate other features such as altered states of consciousness.

5. Mindfulness‐based practice is not exclusively Buddhist. It is more a universal phenomenological experience of the nature of the mind, emotion and suffering and its potential release. Mindfulness is about attention, therefore we are all mindful to a greater or lesser extent; it is an inherent human capacity.

6. The term ‘practice’ does not mean a ‘rehearsal’ or perfecting of some skill so that it can be put to good use at some other time. In the meditative context ‘practice’ means being in the present on purpose. The means and the end of mindfulness practice are really the same. Through practice a person should not try to get somewhere, only work at being fully where they already are (Kabat‐Zinn, 1990).

7. It is widely recommended that those who offer mindfulness as a clinical intervention should have their own personal practice (Kabat‐Zinn, 2003).

8. The traditional haiku consists of a defined pattern of 5‐7‐5 syllables, which are spread over three lines respectively. Its simplicity can invite widespread participation even among those who would not ordinarily consider themselves creative (Blasko & Merski, 1998).

9. These courses and workshops had been facilitated by authors 2 and 4 (both experienced mindfulness practitioners and group facilitators) and had taken place at the same location.

10. Quotes are not used from participant 5 as this diary was particularly short in comparison and therefore contained less material to use.