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Medicinal Mindfulness: Effects of the Western Adaptation to the Ancient Eastern Tradition
A Qualitative Study
Tiffany N. Hairston
Department of Sociology University of Texas at San Antonio
Sociology, 3373. Qualitative Research Methods
“Buddha was asked. What have you gained from meditation? He replied, nothing, however, Buddha. Said, let me tell you what I lost. Anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age and death”
Introduction
Meditation is a mindfulness practice from the Indian subcontinent dating back 2,600 years. Buddhist masters were the first practitioners of meditation on record using it as a sacred ritual to achieve their goal of Nirvana, a state where desires and suffering of an individual simply go away. Western cultures first began experimenting with mindfulness meditation over 30 years and condensed version of the sacred Buddhist method. Since that time medical discoveries about the benefits of meditation have been overwhelmingly positive among many American practitioners. Although critics claim Western medicines fast track methods to enlightenment may be dangerous as vehicles of therapeutic treatment could be dangerous the benefits are undeniable. Since 2012 the number of people meditating across the world has tripled. My research into the origins of meditation deepened my understanding of the highly structured complexity involved in the sacred Buddhist tradition. American practitioners who have customized methods for such things like childbirth stand by this Eastern inspired tool. In my investigation I will examine the effects of using the traditional Buddhist model as opposed to various customized variations of meditation used by Western societies. I want to know if there is a greater potential to achieve desired outcomes when practicing meditation dependent upon the technique.
The Benefits of Meditation
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Schedule
1.How do (You) western born meditation practitioners understand the eastern spiritual concept of self?
2.What do they (You) perceive as advantages and disadvantages of holding what they see as a more Buddhist interest eastern spiritual concept of self?
3.How has meditation practice directly influenced their own view of self and wellbeing?
4.What kind of experiences have you had because of meditation?
5. What is the reason you associate these experiences with meditation?
6. Are there any factors that you think influenced the nature or course of your meditation experience?
7. How did you start mindfulness meditation?
8. How did your regular meditation practice affect you?
9. How did you experience your emotions before you started your regular meditation practice?
10. How do you experience your emotions now after incorporating the meditation practice?
The Benefits of Meditation in Western Society: A Literary Review
This review examines the benefits of the Eastern based practice of meditation on the overall well-being of its Western practitioners. The objective is to gain deeper insight to understand the benefits of adopting and maintaining the Eastern tradition of meditation concerning physical, mental, and spiritual wellness of practicing individuals. The study will use symbolic interactionism theory to examine how effectually meditation practices are once translated and operationalized in such different cultural settings. Over the last few decades, the method popularized and embraced by the Western health community is the Buddhists concentrative meditation style, also known as insight meditation, or mindfulness meditation (MM). The benefits of meditation are various and include studies that show practitioners improving relationships, combatting mental conditions like depression and PTSD, and deepening spiritual connections. Meditation is something Americans can utilize as a tool regarding the high levels of stress included in their daily lives. Western medicine and ideology focusrs on treating symptoms with medication without considering ways of reducing stress or coping with stressful experiences. Emotions are what make human beings unique, however the common practice in western societies is to ignore, block, and invalidate our emotional state or feelings. Meditation helps people become more aware of their emotions and can assist in coping with everyday stressors that affect our overall health. Addiction, depression, relationship problems, anger, anxiety, and many other human conditions could be easier maintained if we could learn how to properly experience and cope with our emotions in a healthy way. Repression and ignoring our feelings result in disconnection with the self. Confronting our state of emotions will help us too.to strengthen our mind body connection to improve acceptance toward emotions through self-awareness and reflection, two pillars of Eastern meditation practices.
Purpose of Study
Exploring the benefits of meditation when applied in Western society is the purpose of this study. Further examination is needed to gauge how effectively Americans are applying a structured comprehensive spiritual tradition such as Buddhism to health conditions therapeutically.
Symbolic interactionism suggests that our identity or sense of self is shaped by social interaction we develop our self-concept by observing how others interact with us and label us by observing how others view us we see a reflection of ourselves. Using this theory, I will demonstrate how important it is to have a clear reflection of ourselves stemming from our own self-awareness. When we have a more balanced emotional state our social interactions will improve followed by the improvement of our self-image and conceptions of others.
Qualitative research in which an author uses self-reflection to explore personal experiences to inform and connect wider cultural political and social meanings and understandings using self-observation and reflexive investigation in field work in writing is known as autoethnography. My project is an autoethnography with recruited participants from a Meetup Meditation group I belong to that will form a focus group and provide personal interviews to increase my understanding of individual experiences and benefits from meditation practices. A focus group is usually demographically similar with common traits and the group representation helps researchers open discussions about perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and experience on topics they would like to gain information about in a convenient way from multiple participants at once. By interviewing respondents about their meditation practices and the residual positive effects they perceive I will be able to provide a more in-depth account regarding benefits of meditation. Following the traditional two-person interview format that allows direct questions and follow-ups which enable the person interviewing to guide the conversation and respondent answering in groups an open-ended format to retrieve the most information used as research data. My project will have two groups one that meditates and one that does not meditate and will survey different aspects of how they handle experiences improved by meditation. The group that does not meditate will begin meditative practices and evaluate the affects that incorporating meditation into a daily routine offers.
Cultivating an Eastern self: A qualitative study of the impact of mindfulness meditation on Western-born practitioners’ views of self and well-being, one of the first articles I discovered focused mainly on how people conceptualize the self, helped form the proper spiritual approach for inquiry of benefits gained from meditation. Reporting that meditation practice had more favorable than negative effects on the self-regarding resilience, self-awareness, better relationships, and stronger mind body connection. This literature helped me comprehend the underlying challenges Americans and Western societies face in the very important function of viewing the individual self. Eastern practices include mindfulness, a state of active attention or increased awareness, and meditation, the contemplative practice that cultivates it. (Martin 2018). Martin suggests that as Western Cultures adopt eastern meditation practices as a new healthcare resource, it is important to understand how differently they influence our self-concept and wellbeing.
Martin, S. (2018). Cultivating an Eastern self: A qualitative study of the impact of mindfulness meditation on Western-born practitioners’ views of self and well-being. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 21(7), 667-685. doi: 10.1080/13674676.2018.1538204
The Benefits of Meditation Vis-à-Vis Emotional Intelligence, Perceived Stress and Negative Mental Health
Romantic relationship experiences and emotion regulation strategies of regular mindfulness meditation practitioners: A qualitative study, provides the data on benefits of emotional regulation and how that improves the quality of practitioner relationships. Mindfulness meditation and securely attached relationships are also involved in the neural integration—the linkage of differentiated elements of a system—between the body and brain areas such as the limbic and cortical regions. This neural integration is claimed to be a result of an attuned relationship (Erkan 2020). Attachment to primary caregivers at infancy has been linked to mindfulness claiming adults with secure attachments tend to be more capable of regulating their emotions. This article approached connections between lovingkindness and mindfulness, claiming that it resembles the internalizing both sides of a caring, loving attachment relationship (Erkan 2020). The unique perspective offered in this study allowed the audience to compare the emotional experiences surrounding the romantic relationship of a meditation practitioner and a non-practitioner. Erkan and colleagues research questions investigated perceived intra and interpersonal implications of regular meditation practice. Presented in seven themes organized in three different levels a) interpersonal level themes of the regularly meditating partner to explore the practitioners emotional, cognitive and sexual processes emotional regulation strategies.; b) relationship level themes of the regularly meditating partner to discover the experience of being in a romantic relationship for the RMP and their emotional bond in their adult attachment system; and; c) theme of the non-regularly meditating partner to describe the observations of the NMP regarding the hypothetical effects of the regular meditation practice of their partners and their general relationship experiences (Et 2020). In the article the term meta-awareness is used describing the experience of being aware of the mind working and the changes observed regarding the emotional state. Of the 10 participants in the study, six underlined benefits of being aware that emotions are transient and when not immediately acted upon will easily pass. In this research article “shifts” are identified according to the specific theme and denotes the altering of a relationship that occurs beginning a regular meditation practice. The accounts of Intrapersonal shifts are fascinating with six out of 10 participants stating an increase in self compassion, additional benefits of higher self-esteem, feeling more empowered, and clear evidence of a more self-appreciative stance experienced by regular meditators, overall. When asked to describe the relationship dynamics before the group of regular practicing meditators first started RPMs gave negative accounts of having anxiety, jealousy, Control and power struggles, Insecurities. Feeling threatened. And not being able to ask word for it.
Erkan, I., Kafesçioğlu, N., Cavdar, A., & Zeytinoğlu‐Saydam, S. (2020). Romantic relationship experiences and emotion regulation strategies of regular mindfulness meditation practitioners: A qualitative study. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 47(3), 629–647. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12462
