Abstract
A contextual action theoretical framework for investigating and understanding mindfulness, and mindfulness-informed counseling, is presented in this chapter. The action of mindfulness in counseling, while on one level experienced privately and individually, on another level, is constituted in the intersubjective space and is manifest in the words and behaviors of the dyad in dialogue, and thus can be systemically observed and analyzed. A clinical example is provided as a way of demonstrating how contextual action theory can be used for conceptualizing the target processes of teaching and learning mindfulness within counseling. In the vignette, the dialogical actions of mindfulness are seen to jointly embody and enact counseling projects such as attention, insight, compassion and attunement. The mindful counselor attends to the client’s experience moment-by-moment with compassionate curiosity, drawing the client into these joint projects. The negotiated goal of the working alliance within the acceptance-based theory of change that underlies mindfulness-informed counseling becomes paradoxically to move closer to and even embrace the presenting issue that the client initially hoped to eradicate. The relevance of contextual action theory for investigating relational, intersubjective psychotherapeutic processes such as mindfulness is highlighted.
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Notes
- 1.
I am positing that mindfulness may be enacted through counseling dialogue. It was observed to be enacted through the Dialogue and Inquiry component of MBSR, a dialogue between mindfulness teacher and participants which are typically conducted after participants do the formal meditation practices of the curriculum (Dyer 2011).
- 2.
- 3.
I would like to recognize the contributions of the participants of the research study from which the case vignette for this chapter was taken. In addition, I am grateful to Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Canada Graduate Scholarship) and the Mind and Life Institute (Francisco Varela Grant), for their generous financial support.
- 4.
Kabat-Zinn (1990) states that MBSR is not therapy, but rather, is an educative process. The facilitator of the MBSR group of my study was not a counselor. However, many of the micro-processes in the dyadic exchanges of the group would be familiar in a counseling context. For the purposes of this chapter, I have named the two participants in the dyad as counselor and client.
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Dyer, B. (2015). The Action of Mindfulness in Counseling. In: Young, R., Domene, J., Valach, L. (eds) Counseling and Action. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0773-1_15
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