Social workers' narratives of integrating mindfulness into practice

Lynn, Robyn, and Mensinga, Jo (2015) Social workers' narratives of integrating mindfulness into practice. Journal of Social Work Practice: psychotherapeutic approaches in health, welfare and the community, 29 (3). pp. 255-270.

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Abstract

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, we 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. We 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.

Item ID: 39102
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1465-3885
Keywords: mindfulness; social work practice; meditation; epistemology; narrative
Date Deposited: 04 Jun 2015 03:36
FoR Codes: 16 STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY > 1607 Social Work > 160701 Clinical Social Work Practice @ 50%
16 STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY > 1607 Social Work > 160702 Counselling, Welfare and Community Services @ 50%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920209 Mental Health Services @ 30%
92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920299 Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified @ 70%
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