Clinicians' journey of becoming mindfulness practitioners

Introduction: Growing interest in the use of mindfulness-based interventions and increasing empirical evidence for its effectiveness suggest that more clinicians may become interested in mindfulness. Although there are studies on clients, as yet, there are no published studies exploring trajectories and experiences of clinicians developing as mindfulness practitioners. Objectives: This study aimed to explore mental health professionals’ experiences of becoming mindfulness practitioners in order to enrich our understanding of what facilitates and hinders development in this area. Design: Since this was a new area of investigation, an exploratory qualitative study was used to gain information. A method focused on generating rich accounts of participants’ experiences, seemed most suitable methodology. Methods: Six clinicians with previous experience of mindfulness meditation were interviewed. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers & Larkin 2009) was used to examine the transcripts and generate superordinate themes. Results: Clinicians reported several benefits from the development of mindfulness practice in both, personal and professional lives. Main supportive factors in the development and maintenance of mindfulness practice were presence of like-minded others, certain flexibility towards mindfulness use and expected gains, and integration of mindfulness into one’s personal and professional life. Conclusions: Experiences of mindfulness reported by clinicians were congruent with those found in clinical and non-clinical populations, in previous studies using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Findings were consistent with the framework described by Kristeller (2004). Additional research is needed to further investigate the developmental trajectories of mindfulness practitioners.