Most mindfulness research treats it as a variable for population-level studies, which overlooks how it is experienced and enacted by individuals. This paper adopts a person-oriented phenomenological perspective, comparing it with von Fircks' (2023) approach. The first part discusses mindfulness as a phenomenological practice studied through experimental phenomenology, arguing for a wide variety of personalized mindfulness practices to support health and well-being. The second part explores mindful observation and reflection in psychological research, suggesting that mindfulness skills can improve phenomenological observation and foster creative thinking for theory development. A key implication is that integrating mindfulness and phenomenology can advance this process.
People have a need to feel embodied—to experience having a body as both an object that can be perceived and evaluated and as a subjective, felt body. This felt embodiment is crucial for developing self-identity, interpersonal relations, wellbeing, and flourishing. The paper argues that experiences of feeling embodied serve as important motives: embodiment motivation drives people to feel their body in its vitality, capacities, expressiveness, as part of wholesome environments, and in pleasurable contact with others, while disembodiment motivation drives people to avoid or reduce bodily self-experiences due to pain or discomfort. The paper outlines a new research area on embodiment motivation.