Clear My Aching Mind: Justifications for Adopting and Persisting in Mindfulness Meditation

Event Center A & B

To date, little research has examined participants’ adoption decisions regarding mindfulness interventions, or factors related to treatment persistence. The current exploratory study addresses this scarcity of information by investigating factors involved in participants’ decisions to initiate a mindfulness based wellness activity and persist in its use. Semi Structured qualitative interviews were conducted with participants of a drop-in university based mindfulness meditation program. Interviews were conducted by a trained graduate research assistant who contacted participants approximately one week – one month after their initial meditation experience. Among other questions, participants were asked why they decided to try the activity, what they were hoping to experience or get from it, what the actual meditating was like, how much effort it took, any difficulties that came up during the experience, whether they had continued to meditate after their initial experience, and the likelihood that they would continue to engage in meditation in the future. Demographic information was also collected and participants were asked to rate their general level of stress. Transcribed interviews were examined for emergent themes and a content analysis will be performed on responses to develop coding categories. Preliminary analysis revealed several important themes. Participants regularly indicated that they believed thinking (“thinking about stuff”) contributed to their stress or discomfort and that they were engaging in meditation to “kind of make thoughts go away”, and “clear my mind.” These findings, along with others will be discussed in the context of tailoring future mindfulness interventions to better address participants’ expectations and needs.