Duncan Moss

Clear(ing) space: Mindfulness-based reflective practice

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.

Birdsong and footprints: tangibility and intangibility in a mindfulness research project

In this paper we attempt to describe and reflexively consider our journey through a particular qualitative health research project as experienced within a practitioner–researcher partnership. Our particular partnership was between a clinical psychologist and a conversation analyst who came together to explore participants’ experiences of a mindfulness‐based self‐help group. Using extracts from participant interviews and actual self‐help group discussion we tell our story, in order to practically demonstrate the challenges that arose. We consider the impact of mindfulness on the research process itself, in particular notions of tangibility and intangibility that were made increasingly relevant within our partnership.