Embodied Mindfulness: A New Perspective on Recreating Learning Experiences, Attention Training, and Intersubjective Interactions

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.

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Abstract

Mindfulness is the method of studying attention and discovering experience; it is increasing in educational research in Western universities and demonstrates itself in publications and curricula. Therefore, applying mindfulness in the educational system can improve the methods of learning and attention. This paper first studies modern mindfulness and its results. Then criticizes its challenges & limitations that are affected by theoretical foundations. Originally, mindfulness took a holistic position and was not confined to one aspect. Today, neuroscience, cognitive science, and clinical psychology reduced mindfulness to the psychological dimension. In comparison, it is extended in many aspects like ethical, spiritual, cultural, and social. Although mindfulness achieved brilliant results, it might act as an inner technological control tool that is normalized and internalized. In neurophenomenology, however, the Buddhist origins and ethical-spiritual features would be kept, respected, and accepted results from empirical areas. Neurophenomenology proposes enactive & embodied mindfulness awareness to preserve all mindfulness features. Mindfulness is something more and beyond recovering from mental illnesses. It follows healing in ethical conduct to reach self-transcendence and intersubjectivity relation. Thus, this paper explains embodied mindfulness and considers its educational implications according to the neurophenomenology perspectives.