Social workers' narratives of integrating mindfulness into practice
- Authors:
- LYNN Robyn, MENSINGA Jo
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Work Practice, 29(3), 2015, pp.255-270.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
Mindfulness is increasingly important as a professional intervention in social work; however, little is known about how practitioners integrate a practice of eastern origins into a western context. To explore the integration of mindfulness in social work, the authors collected written stories from social workers who participated in two workshops in regional Australia. The participants developed their own individual written narratives about their understanding of and experience in using mindfulness, and contributed these to a larger group discussion. The authors identified four scenarios/plotlines within the collected stories and ‘restoried’ four examples of the participants' written narratives. The stories reveal that participants experience little dissonance when integrating mindfulness into their personal lives, but the process of incorporating it into their practice requires a complex negotiation between the participant's story of themselves as a practitioner of mindfulness, their ‘professional story’, stories of themselves as social workers and the story of social work in their professional knowledge landscape. (Edited publisher abstract)
- Subject terms:
- social workers, social work approaches, mediation, social work, professional role, mindfulness;
- Content type:
- research
- Location(s):
- Australia
- Link:
- Journal home page
- ISSN online:
- 1465-3885
- ISSN print:
- 0265-0533