Meditation Awareness Training (MAT) for Improved Psychological Well-being: A Qualitative Examination of Participant Experiences

Abstract

Mindfulness-based interventions are reported as being efficacious treatments for a variety of psychological and somatic conditions. However, concerns have arisen relating to how mindfulness is operationalized in mindfulness-based interventions and whether its 'spiritual essence' and full potential treatment efficacy have remained intact. This qualitative study used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to examine participant experiences regarding the acceptability and effectiveness of a newly designed secularized intervention called Meditation Awareness Training (MAT) that follows a more traditional Buddhist approach to meditation.Participants (with issues of stress and low-mood) reported experiencing improvements in psychological wellbeing due to receiving MAT. The wider implications are discussed.

The Treatment of Workaholism With Meditation Awareness Training: A Case Study

“…For senior-level workaholics in particular, this approach may be more realistic and cost-effective vis-à-vis treatments that require a dilution of responsibilities or segregation from the work-environment. Consistent with findings from studies of MAT involving sub-clinical populations, 7 insight meditation techniques appeared to broaden perspective and induce a re-evaluation of life priorities. Although superficially this may appear to contraindicate job performance, a more balanced level of organizational identification is likely to be psychosocially (and commercially) adaptive.…”

“…Steve's interest levels increased whenever the topic of salary was raised, and he frequently remarked that "I'm a top earner for my age." Treatment: Meditation Awareness Training (MAT) 7,8 is an eight-week secular intervention that can be delivered in group or one-to-one format. Existent mindfulness-based therapies tend to teach mindfulness "out of context" and in isolation of enabling meditative agents.…”

“…9 Consistent with a traditional (Buddhist) approach to meditation instruction, the objective here is to elicit a co-produced form of insight that can be shared by therapist and participant alike. 7,8 Thus, although the one-to-one dialogs are conducted according to meditational theory and principles, they nevertheless exert a therapeutic effect and inherently integrate many of the conditions employed during contemporary psychotherapeutic modes (e.g., conditions of active listening, unconditional positive regard, accurate empathy, genuineness, and congruence). 9 A further unique attribute of MAT is that participants are not assigned a specific amount of daily meditation practice time.…”

“…The purpose of this is to avoid separations being formed between meditation during formal sitting sessions and practicing meditation (or mindfulness) while engaging in daily tasks and activities. 7 In this manner, participants are less likely to become dependent on a fixed routine of formal seated meditation sessions and are thus able to conduct their practice in a manner that is adaptive to the demands of contemporary work and living environments.…”

“…A primary treatment mechanism of these techniques involves the regulation of psychological and autonomic arousal by increasing perceptual distance from faulty thoughts and mental urges. 7 A "meditative anchor," such as observing the breath, is typically used to aid concentration and to help maintain an open-awareness of present-moment sensory and cognitiveaffective experience. The purpose of this case study was to conduct the first evaluation of a treatment employing a meditation-based recovery model for a workaholic.…”