Immediate Body Experience and Reflexive Awareness
Journal Title: Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy - Year 2014, Vol 17, Issue 1
Abstract
Introduction: The present study is focused on the dynamic process of self-experiencing that involves immediate, felt experience, related symbolization and a reflexive awareness of the already symbolized past experience. Several authors have considered that self-pathology begins with an imbalance between knowing the self reflexively and through sentient experience. For this reason, a number of techniques have been adapted in order to increase or enhance the client's sentient (body) experiencing. Many recent researches have evaluated the efficacy of mindfulness meditation practice both in clinical and non-clinical population (for the treatment of depression, anxiety, pain and stress) and have argued that people with specific psychological problems experience difficulties in practicing mindfulness meditation correctly in the initial phase. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of a brief mindfulness meditation exercise (awareness of the body). We supposed that an exercise focused on immediate body awareness would facilitate an increased awareness and would reduce negative automatic thoughts compared to an exercise focused on reflexive awareness (a situation reactivating a past self-experience). Methods: A quasi-experimental design, observation, psychodiagnostic instruments (USAQ – Unconditional Self-Acceptance Questionnaire, ATQ - Automatic Thinking Questionnaire, PHLMS – Philadelphia Mindfulness Scale) and statistical methods (Independent Samples t Test) were used in this study. Results: After the participation in this type of brief mindfulness meditation exercise (awareness of the body), the participants experienced increased awareness and less intense negative automatic thoughts compared to the control group. Conclusions: Our results suggested that mindfulness meditation could facilitate the process of self-experiencing, revealing the deficits in emotional self-experiencing and increasing awareness, while more emotionally challenging experiences lay the stress on problematic aspects of self. Both of them can be used for different purposes in the psychotherapeutic process, according to the therapeutic goals. Secondarily, it highlights the impact of the affective state on the automatic thinking
Authors and Affiliations
Ileana L. Vitalia, Nicoleta Răban-Motounu
Keywords
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