Language-games in live mindfulness-based stress reduction: a philosophy of language analysis of participant-trainer dialogue
Frontiers in Psychology March 17, 2026 Ingeborg van den Bold, Sanneke de Haan, Jenny Slatman
Verbalizing body awareness during Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training is difficult; participants often talked about emotions or made rational judgments instead of expressing bodily sensations. Analyzing a full MBSR course transcript with interpretative phenomenological analysis and applying Wittgenstein's concept of language-games and Austin's speech acts, the authors suggest that learning to verbalize body awareness involves learning a language-game of 'reporting sense perceptions.' The findings align with emotion regulation therapy, where the first step is feeling bodily sensations rather than making rational judgments. The authors hypothesize that mindfulness apps and recorded body scans, lacking live trainer-participant dialogue, may hinder this learning process.