Edinburgh Napier University

  The research purpose is to establish how people with differing forms of enduring conditions construct, make sense of, and apply meaning to, mindfulness as they undertake the 8-week introductory MBSR programme and continue to develop skills over a twelve month period. Scientific phenomenological methods based upon both descriptive and hermeneutic phenomenology will be employed to examine participant perspectives using the Lifeworld fractions as a heuristic guide (Ashworth & Ashworth, 2003). The fractions which include selfhood (identity), sociality (relationships), embodiment (felt sense) and temporality encompass intrinsic aspects of what it is to be human and provide a set of lenses through which various elements of experience can be analysed.