Mindfulness meditation among South African psychologists: a pathway to ‘being’ amid existential suffering in contemporary South Africa

Mindfulness is currently regarded as a life skill as well as part of an approach to life that can generate beneficial intrapersonal and relational outcomes. Given the centrality of intrapersonal and relational outcomes in psychotherapeutic encounters, it seems logical that the practice of mindfulness by psychologists would be relevant to explore, especially in contemporary South African contexts where high levels of trauma, interpersonal distress, and resultant existential and intrapsychic struggles prevail. The study seeks to address an identified gap in existing research concerning the experienced relevance of long-term mindfulness meditative practice for counselling psychology and therapeutic practice generally, particularly in the South African context. Located within an interpretivist paradigm and interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study explored the mindfulness and mindfulness meditation practices of 11 South African counselling psychologists and the ways in which these practices informed their being in both personal and psychotherapeutic settings. Each participant was invited to participate in a semi-structured interview and reflexive journalling task as part of the research process. The findings centralise the being capacities afforded to psychologists through a mindfulness practice and identify how the related elements of non-judgement, nonattachment, and (re)connection enable enhanced relational encounters with clients. The findings contribute to the limited literature related to the value of psychologists’ mindfulness practices in relation to the way in which they manage their own responses to clients, as well as the potential for mindfulness practices to help clients manage presenting trauma responses.