The art of allowing: co-accomplishing meaning in mindfulness training

Stein, Verena 2025. The art of allowing: co-accomplishing meaning in mindfulness training. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

	PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (15MB)
	PDF (Cardiff University Electronic Publication Form) - Supplemental Material Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB)

Abstract

In this thesis I explore how Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teachers and learners co-accomplish a therapeutic setting, drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. My focus is the reflective dialogue called ‘inquiry’, where participants share their subjective experiences following a guided meditation. Meditation is typically considered an internal practise. I show how meaning is co-accomplished in ‘inquiry’ in a collaborative process I call the ‘art of allowing’. This describes how a participant’s experience is jointly explored with the teacher and repositioned as a learning opportunity. For example, a participant might share that they were distracted during a mediation. This experience is then positioned as a subject for exploration rather than a problem to be fixed. The participant’s account then becomes the basis for a teaching, e.g. how mindfulness is more about noticing distractions, not eliminating them. Thus the subjective experience becomes a shared insight and the basis of a mindfulness lesson. The structure of ‘inquiry’ shows recurring patterns of interaction, which I describe in terms of sequence organisation, phenomenological mapping, objectives, preference organisation, and embodying mindfulness. My data collection consists of audio recordings from an MBSR course (24 hours), an MBSR teacher training course (82 hours), and a focus group with student teachers (3 hours). I selected transcripts for analysis from each site. A key part of my analysis focuses on a breaching incident in which a student teacher blows a whistle during a meditation. The disruption is collaboratively repaired by reframing it as a learning opportunity. This shows how robust these conversational and interactional practises are. This thesis contributes to mindfulness research by offering an analysis of the transformative process in ‘inquiry’. It also demonstrates the value of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis for studying the collaborative accomplishment of an inner practise.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 August 2025
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2025 11:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/180408

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item