Embodied Mindfulness: A New Perspective on Recreating Learning Experiences, Attention Training, and Intersubjective Interactions
Pizhūhish/nāmah-i Mabānī-i Ta̒līm va Tarbiyat. April 14, 2025 Zainab Mahdavi
Mindfulness, originally a holistic practice encompassing ethical, spiritual, cultural, and social dimensions, has been reduced in modern Western research to a psychological tool by neuroscience, cognitive science, and clinical psychology. While achieving notable results, this narrowed focus risks turning mindfulness into an internal technological control mechanism that becomes normalized. Neurophenomenology offers an alternative by preserving mindfulness's Buddhist origins and ethical-spiritual features while accepting empirical findings. It proposes enactive and embodied mindfulness awareness that maintains all dimensions of mindfulness, viewing it as more than a recovery from mental illness—a path toward healing through ethical conduct, self-transcendence, and intersubjective relations. The paper explains embodied mindfulness and considers its educational implications from a neurophenomenological perspective.