Despite the aura of innovation that characterizes the contemporary application of contemplative practices in medical and mental healthcare treatment, the Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) are framed within the same psychologically reductionistic individualism that ultimately maintains the oppressions of neoliberal power. That is, pathologies are located “inside” the individual, to be solved by “inner” changes that are actuated and controlled by professional expertise. This view is nearly unchallenged in the scientific evidence base that has supported the dramatic growth of the MBIs.
However, when we insist on the overlooked facts that the MBIs are group-based and relational—that is, when we turn the MBIs inside out—we become aware of new and powerful possibilities that extend far beyond individual wellness and recovery, and that can open into considerations of deepened community. From this reversed perspective, an MBI group may be seen as a site of resistance to the isolation and subjectification that is the experience of people with diagnoses of mental and physical disorders — and of all who are embedded in what Gergen (1994) refers to as a culture of “deficit.” MBI curricula, then, and the atmosphere created in the unfolding actions of such groups, might be analyzed at a different level as vehicles or catalysts for a larger undertaking of building just and caring communities.
The final hour of our program will be a community-building retreat — with guided mindfulness practices and dialogue. Please join us in our new space!
Don McCown is Associate Professor of Health. He holds a PhD in Social Science from Tilburg University, a Master of Applied Meditation Studies degree from the Won Institute of Graduate Studies, and a Master of Social Service from Bryn Mawr College. He is author of The Ethical Space of Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, co-author of Teaching Mindfulness: A practical guide for clinicians and educators and New World Mindfulness: From the Founding Fathers, Emerson, and Thoreau to your personal practice, and co-editor of Resources for Teaching Mindfulness: An international handbook.
