In studies on the role of language in the process of enhancing one's body awareness, conflicting positions can be discerned (Table 1). In some contemplative traditions, language is said to stand in the way of experiencing one's body and being “an obstacle to deepening the practice” (Petitmengin et al., 2019, p. 56). Others, for instance, (Krägeloh 2019), say that giving words to body awareness is not possible at all, as this awareness is non-conceptual and therefore in principle cannot be expressed in language. Yet others claim that giving words to body awareness is not necessary for body awareness and should not be considered a good measure for body awareness either. For instance, according to Zen Buddhists interviewed by Christopher et al. (2014), there is a difference between being aware of how one feels and the ability to describe those feelings. Being good with words is not the same as being aware. By contrast, yet others argue that language can increase body awareness, in spite of the intricacies involved. Shusterman (2008), for instance, argues that, although language can be too limited for verbalizing what one feels, “linguistic tags or descriptions” (164) can help to discriminate what one feels. These linguistic tags may even transform bodily feelings.

Empirical research on the use of language in the learning practice of enhancing one's body awareness in mindfulness training is rather scarce. There has been some qualitative research exploring language use in meditative, potentially body awareness-enhancing practices. In an autoethnographic study on walking meditation, which is also practiced in MBSR, Ball (2015) described how linguistic instructions are necessary to become aware of the body. However, at the same time, “descriptions fail to reveal the fluid nature of the doing of the practical embodied activity” (399). In another study, based on qualitative interviews with three mindfulness trainers, Schuling (2012) found that these trainers avoided the use of personal pronouns; they talked about “breathing” instead of “your breath” (7). These findings concord with Mamberg et al. (2015), who analyzed a recorded version of the body scan (an exercise in MBSR to enhance one's body awareness). They found that bodily sensations were noted “impersonally, rather than possessed” (1). These findings align with Nutall (2024), who performed an analysis of a mindfulness app, and observed that “the” was frequently used to indicate body parts or bodily sensations, for instance “the feet” or “the breath” (10).

Empirical studies on the use of language in MBSR or other meditative practices that apply the philosophy of language to understand their study results are even more scarce. One of these studies was done by Petitmengin et al. (2017), 2019). According to the participants they interviewed, words did not express exactly their experiences of body awareness. However, all participants agreed that making the effort of finding the right words sharpened their awareness of what they experienced in their bodies (Petitmengin et al., 2019). Petitmengin et al. (2017) mentioned Austin's notion of perlocutionary effect—the effect that the speaker's words have on the listener—to understand that the interviewer's questions sharpened participants' body awareness. Another study that applies the philosophy of language is Mathews and Anderson's (2021) interview study. They found that some participants in MBSR struggled with the specific mindfulness language used in the course. For some participants, certain terms used in the instructions—terms not further specified by the authors—were too unfamiliar. Moreover, some participants found the way instructions were formulated as invitations too soft, regarding them as “sugar-coated” and “New-Ageist” (1,217). Others, by contrast, found this invitational language helpful. Mathews and Anderson referred to Wittgenstein to interpret their result that participants struggled with specific mindfulness language: learning to speak the language is an integral part of learning a practice.

None of the aforementioned studies analyzed the use of language in the learning practice of enhancing one's body awareness in the actual live situation of an MBSR training course. This is what we did in this study. This study is, to our knowledge, the first analysis of live training dialogue through a philosophy of language lens. The relation between language and body awareness is complicated, and words play an important role in the teaching setting. Therefore, it is important to explore how language is actually used in the learning process of enhancing one's body awareness during mindfulness training sessions.

This study addressed the following research questions: How do participants in an 8-week mindfulness training verbalize their experiences of body awareness? How are MBSR participants stimulated by the trainer to give words to their bodily experiences? How is language used by the MBSR trainer to enhance participants' body awareness? To address these questions, we used a theoretical framework built on concepts of the philosophy of language as developed by Wittgenstein and Austin. By means of this language philosophical framework, we were able to investigate how language was actually used in live MBSR sessions. This method differed from the post-hoc reflection of interview studies. This method also differed from linguistic methods such as word counting, documenting conversational turn-taking, or analyzing the use of different verb forms. This language philosophical method allowed us to investigate what verbalizing body awareness actually means in the live MBSR trainer-participant dialogue.

This study is based upon a qualitative research methodology informed by a language philosophical theoretical framework. Using participant observation for data collection, we stayed close to the participants' perspective. Drawing on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to analyze the transcript, we stayed close to the words participants used themselves to describe their experiences. Interpreting these data through the theoretical frame of language philosophy, we stayed close to how language was actually used. As we will elaborate on in the next paragraphs, this three-layered methodology was particularly apt to study how language was used in the process of enhancing one's body awareness in MBSR.

This study was designed as a participant observation of a complete MBSR training. In participant observation, the researcher is embedded in a situation to understand the participants' perspective. The division between participation and observation varies per study (Conrad, 2001). In this study, the participating first author took fieldnotes and audio-recorded the whole training, which together formed the observation part of the study. During the MBSR training sessions, the participant author fully participated in the MBSR training, just like the other participants, which constituted the participating part of the study. Inherent to participant observation is that the participant researcher has a dual role: as a participant and as an observer. The participant researcher made an effort to disturb the MBSR sessions by her presence as little as possible and to prevent bias by her presence as much as possible. She made field notes in the same way as other participants also took notes for themselves. Additionally, the audio recording of the sessions was done in an inconspicuous, non-disturbing way. At the end of the last training session, a debriefing round was done by the participant researcher, in which the participants spontaneously said they had experienced the first author as a full fellow member of the group, and that the first author had been equally open about her own MBSR process as the other members. All three authors took good care to prevent bias as much as possible in interpreting the data. This, however, was not so different from preventing bias in research with a non-participating methodology: recognizing and bracketing prejudices. Preventing bias in the analysis part of the study was an intensive self-reflective process for the first author. To facilitate this self-reflective process, the first author also journaled about her emotions and feelings that arose during the analysis.

The number of participants in this study was 12. This number consisted of 11 MBSR participants, including the participating first author, plus the MBSR trainer (4 men, 8 women, age range 24–52 years old, all European participants). Most participants lived in an urban area (in three different cities in the South of the Netherlands). Some participants lived in rural villages (two different villages in the South of the Netherlands). The education level of the participants was mixed; however, most participants were theoretically educated. Nearly all participants had a job outside their own household, although some of them had been on longer sick leave. Marital status was mixed: some were married, some were unmarried, and some had been divorced. The majority of the participants had children. None of the participants had prior mindfulness experience, with the exception of the trainer. All participants were fluent in Dutch. All participants, including the trainer, signed informed consent to participate in the study. Participants were not compensated for their participation in the study. Ethical clearance was obtained from the research ethics board of Tilburg University (identification code: REDC # 2019/08).

We conducted this research at a private mindfulness training institute in an urban area in the South of the Netherlands, from March until May 2019. Data were collected during all 8 training sessions of the MBSR training, varying in length from 2 14 to 2 34 h. Table 2 contains a session-by-session outline of the formal and informal training elements of the full MBSR program investigated in this study. The first author participated in the MBSR training and recorded all eight sessions, which were entirely spoken in Dutch. In order not to interfere with the natural discourse in the training, we did not do interviews. This is the reason that we did not collect further background information from the participants, other than what was said spontaneously during the MBSR sessions. The first author transcribed the recordings verbatim. Pseudonyms were used for individuals and for geographical names to protect participants' anonymity. These transcripts formed the data for analysis.

The transcripts—covering all that was said by the trainer and the participants during the MBSR course—provided a large and rich dataset (179,512 words). We analyzed the transcripts in line with interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). IPA is a method for qualitative research that looks at how different people make sense of a phenomenon in a given context. Instead of focusing on the content of particular experiences, IPA looks primarily at how these experiences are put into words. We considered IPA a suitable qualitative method for analyzing our transcripts. Indeed, IPA intends to explore experiences in the words that people use themselves, instead of arranging these experiences into predetermined categories (Smith et al., 2009). The purpose of this study was precisely to find out how people verbalize body awareness. Therefore, it was crucial to avoid prefixed categories, as this would have prevented us from finding out the words that people used themselves. In this study, the use of IPA can be recognized in the small number of participants and the use of long excerpts in the results section. The use of the method of IPA can also be recognized in the detailed analysis of the excerpts within the results section. For reasons of readability and coherence of this study, the detailed analysis of the excerpts could not be separated from the excerpts themselves. However, we preserved the broader reflection on our data and the discussion of our results for the discussion section.

After reading and rereading the data, the first author coded emerging keywords and themes throughout the whole transcript, using the open coding software (ATLAS.ti Scientific Software development GmbH, Berlin, Germany). This phase of the coding process was inductive—not led by theory but by the data. To ensure reliability, codes were verified by the third author, and parts of the transcript were also coded by the third author. The first and third authors compared their coding, and in an iterative deliberative process, a consensus was reached.

The next phase in this analysis was deductive—informed by our research questions regarding verbalizing body awareness. In this phase, all three authors were involved. First apart, and then together, we looked for overarching themes. These themes were all relevant to our research questions, as they were informed by them.

The last phase of our analysis was also deductive—informed by the philosophy of language discussed in our theoretical framework. The three authors together reflected on the overarching themes in the analysis, and we looked at how we could bring them down to just a few main themes.

After having completed the inductive and deductive phases of our analysis, we selected fragments from the transcripts to present in the results section. We translated the selected fragments from Dutch to English, doing justice to the stuttering and faltering parts, as our focus in this study was precisely on the use of language.

The first phase of our data analysis resulted in 120 descriptive codes. Examples show their variety: “Experiencing what stress does to your body” (n = 6); “The body says stop” (n = 51); “Now I will have to put myself as number 1 priority” (n = 53); “It is a learning process” (n = 84); “Trainer's specific suggestions what participants could feel” (n = 294).

The second phase of our analysis resulted in 8 overarching themes. We listed them in Figure 1.

The third phase of our analysis resulted in two main themes. First, the diverse ways participants verbalized their body awareness and how they were instructed or corrected in this by the trainer, and second, how verbalizing body awareness affected one's body and body awareness as such. Formulated in Wittgenstein's and Austin's vocabulary: (1) Shifting to the language-game of sense perception, and (2) Words acting on the body. In this section, we organized the presentation of our data according to these two main themes.

One of the trainer's core interventions in the learning process of enhancing one's body awareness during MBSR sessions was asking: “How does it feel?” or “What does it do to you?” It was salient in our data that participants were guided by the trainer to answer these questions by reporting what they felt in or on their bodies. We will show this in detail in the following subsection. We called this “the language-game of reporting sense perception.”

It was also salient in our data that participants were inclined to play various language-games. Language-games such as: making rational judgments, reporting emotions, reporting felt inclinations, making sense of a situation by putting things into perspective, or looking for causes. We will provide examples of these in the following subsections.

In this study, we analyzed how language is used in the training practice of enhancing one's body awareness in MBSR, based on a participant observation study. Our first research question was how participants verbalize their experiences of body awareness in an 8-week mindfulness training. We found in our study that verbalizing body awareness was difficult for participants. It was hard for them to give words to the bodily sensations they felt in and on their bodies. When asked to verbalize their body awareness, participants talked about feeling emotions, rationalized about causes, or put what happened into perspective, instead of reporting bodily sensations. For instance, we analyzed that the expression used, “My body said stop,” was a rational judgment that bypassed what can actually be felt in one's body. Additionally, “putting things into perspective” is a form of cognitive reappraisal, a psychological strategy for emotion regulation that taxes cognitive resources (Wenzel et al., 2023). When participants talked about feeling emotions, they found it hard to put into words what they actually felt in their bodies. Instead, they only mentioned the name of an emotion, for instance, “being fed up.”

Our second research question was how MBSR participants were stimulated by the trainer to give words to their bodily experiences. We found that the trainer stimulated the participants to talk about their bodily feelings, what they felt in and on their bodies. It was salient in our data that when the trainer asked the participants how they felt, he stimulated them to give an answer that was related to their bodily feelings. This was not an answer that was related to the feeling of an emotion. Nor was it an answer related to a “felt inclination” (Stout, 2022, p. 286), for instance, being inclined to run to the bathroom to cry, nor to rational thoughts, nor to judgments. According to our results, the kind of feelings that the trainer stimulated the participants to report as an answer to the question “What do you feel?” were interoceptive and proprioceptive feelings. These are, for instance, feeling warmth, feeling one's heartbeat, feeling the movement of one's chest, feeling a tickle in one's belly, feeling the tension in one's muscles, or feeling the position of one's joints (Leder, 1990; Mehling et al., 2009; Meijsing, 2022). Our results on the trainer's preference on how to report about one's experiences with body awareness align with Mehling et al.'s (2009) definition of “body awareness.” These authors define body awareness as “the subjective, phenomenological aspect of proprioception and interoception that enters conscious awareness” (2).

Thus, we saw in our data that MBSR participants were inclined to answer the question “How does it feel?” in many different ways. However, these were all different from the way the trainer encouraged the participants to verbalize what they felt. We reflected on this through the lens of our theoretical framework. “How does it feel?” is a question that is open to multiple interpretations. The answer “I feel angry” is, obviously, no less adequate than “I feel my heart beating.” It is just another interpretation of “feeling.” In Wittgenstein's (1953/2009) vocabulary, we can say that these different uses of “feeling” are different language-games. We concluded that in our data, the language-game that was instructed by the MBSR-trainer in this particular MBSR training is about reporting bodily feelings. We named this “the language-game of reporting sense perceptions.” We can understand the process of enhancing one's body awareness in MBSR as the process of learning the language-game of reporting sense perception. Mindfulness is about being aware in the present moment and cultivating a non-judging attitude (Santorelli and Kabat-Zinn, 2014; Kabat-Zinn, 2020, 21). Therefore, we can understand enhancing one's body awareness in MBSR—learning the language-game of reporting sense perception—also as learning the language-game of reporting what one can actually be aware of. This is reporting what one can actually feel here and now in and on one's own body, instead of jumping to judgments or conclusions whilst bypassing what can be felt.

It is important to note that in this study, we explored and did not prescribe how words are used to verbalize body awareness in one particular MBSR course. However, we concluded from our findings that there is a prescriptive element involved in this MBSR training about how participants should verbalize their body awareness. We described this prescriptive element by making use of the concept of language-games. One could say that in this prescriptive element, the trainer's authority emerges. We see the same trainer authority already in Kabat-Zinn's (1982) early study on mindfulness practice. In his study, the learning process of becoming aware of the difference between feeling emotions and feeling bodily sensations, which we found in our study, was already mentioned. In this early study on mindfulness practice, chronic pain patients learned to separate the feeling of bodily pain signals from the emotional part of the pain experience. In mindfulness vocabulary, we could say: participants learned to cultivate a non-judging attitude (Santorelli and Kabat-Zinn, 2014; Kabat-Zinn, 2020, p. 21). The findings in our study align with current insights on emotion regulation therapy. The first step in these therapies is not recognizing one's emotions, nor looking for causes or solutions: the first step is learning to feel, learning to become aware of bodily sensations (Price and Hooven, 2018). As we found in our study, in mindfulness practice, feeling bodily sensations is practiced by directing one's awareness to one's body.

In our data, participants who were not able to express what they felt in and on their bodies were stimulated by the trainer to say that they did not know. Instead of saying “I think.” This privileged position of not knowing over theorizing is reflected in the notion of the “beginner's mind”—one of the attitudes cultivated in mindfulness practice (Kabat-Zinn, 2020, p. 24). In Zen meditation, consistent with mindfulness practice, a practice can be found of responding “I don't know” to every thought that comes up (Fronsdal, 2004). MBSR participants were instructed to feel their body instead of thinking about it. Others have criticized this emphasis on feeling instead of thinking: Sauerborn et al. (2022) argue that in mindfulness interventions, an idealized body is constructed, which handles emotions in an allegedly authentic, bodily, non-cognitive way. They discern in mindfulness's imperative to just feel your body without thinking about it, a paradox of ‘glorification of authenticity and manipulation of emotions' (1,055). The paradox they discern is that this prescription of “feeling without thinking” is commodified as a means to control your feelings and emotions. Moreover, we can discern another paradox here, which Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 408) described as the paradox of expression. When we speak, we make use of existing words, trying to express something new that was not expressed in words before. There is thinking involved in expressing what one feels. Therefore, it is paradoxical to speak about the pre-reflective body, the body that is felt without thinking about it. One of us elaborated on this paradox of expression in relation to mindfulness practice elsewhere (Van den Bold, 2023).

Our third research question was how language was used by the MBSR trainer to enhance participants' body awareness. We analyzed this language use, drawing on Austin's (1962) concept of speech acts. Based on our data, we analyzed that the trainer's detailed verbal descriptions of what participants could feel in and on their bodies were intended to help participants feel. The trainer's verbal descriptions were intended to help participants enhance their body awareness. This is the illocutionary act, what the trainer intended to do with his words. The perlocutionary act, which is what is actually achieved by the words spoken, differed per person and per situation. We saw in our data that the trainer's suggestion on what to feel, according to the participants, sometimes helped them to feel, and sometimes not. We also found that Austin's concept of the locutionary act, the way the words were actually uttered, was important for the participants.

Summing up, our results extend existing scholarship, as we not only found that learning the practice is learning the language, as Mathews and Anderson (2021) did. We described which language-game was considered to be a proper one for enhancing one's body awareness in MBSR. Moreover, we also described and analyzed the language-games that participants were inclined to play instead of reporting sense perceptions. This detailed insight into language-games in MBSR is new. Our findings also extend existing scholarship regarding the application of Austin's theory of speech acts. Others described the performativity of words on participants' body awareness, based on interviews (Petitmengin et al., 2017). In our study, however, we analyzed the actual linguistic practices in an MBSR training course, including the verbal interactions between the trainer and the participants. Moreover, not only did we describe and analyze the performativity of speech acts in MBSR, but we also described and analyzed all three sorts of speech acts within Austin's concept: the locutionary act, the illocutionary act, and the perlocutionary act. By doing so, this study showed extensively how enhancing one's body awareness is done with words in MBSR.

A strength of this study is that it analyzed what is said live by the participants and by the trainer in an MBSR training course. This method, opposed to post-hoc reflection and as opposed to the analysis of meditation apps, revealed how language was actually used during an MBSR course. Another strength of our study is that we analyzed all eight complete sessions of the MBSR training. Moreover, we analyzed our data through the lens of Wittgenstein's and Austin's philosophies, which has rarely been done before.

Our study also has limitations. This participant observation study was analyzed in a qualitative way, guided by a philosophy of language approach. As such, our method can be considered more subjective than quantitative linguistic analyses, such as counting occurrences of specific words or analyzing patterns of turn-taking in conversations. It is in the nature of qualitative studies that their outcomes are not generalizable. Moreover, our study consisted of the analysis of just one particular MBSR course. Because of that, we investigated only the language use of one particular trainer and of a small culturally homogenous group of participants. Therefore, our results cannot be extrapolated directly to similar MBSR courses in different demographic contexts, including participants and trainers with different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. A suggestion for further research would be to see whether our philosophical analysis holds for other MBSR courses led by other trainers. It would be interesting to see what differences and invariants could be detected between the various trainers in their use of language, seen through a philosophical lens of language-games. Our study design did not include triangulation. However, it would have been interesting to see how the trainer and participants would have responded to our study results.

Another limitation of our study is that we did not collect individual background characteristics. This was a deliberate decision, not to interfere with the training's natural course. However, it turned out to be a drawback, as language use is related to socioeconomic status and to education level.

In this study, we applied philosophical categories to live dialogue. These philosophical theories provided us with a lens to look at our data. However, using these theories may also have a drawback. These philosophical theories may not only have functioned as a lens to look at the data, but may also have guided our interpretation in a certain direction.

Our results contribute to the debate on the relation between language and body awareness. They corroborate both the view of language as an obstacle to body awareness and the contradictory view of language being helpful for body awareness. We showed that the relation between language and body awareness is ambiguous, and that it differed per participant and per situation. Our results contradicted a third view that body awareness cannot be expressed in words, as it is considered non-conceptual. We can admit that it is paradoxical to speak about the pre-reflective body, the body that is felt without thinking about it. However, when we looked at how enhancing one's body awareness in MBSR is done, and how language is used in this practice, we saw that participants learn to master a proper language-game. We suggested that the language-game of reporting sense perception—instead of reporting emotions or reporting causes—is a way MBSR participants learn to speak about being aware of their bodies. As our findings are based on a single case study, one particular MBSR training with one particular trainer, we recommend replicating the study for other MBSR training groups and trainers, in diverse cultural groups and diverse languages. We also suggest focus group studies to explore how MBSR trainers receive the concept of language-games applied to trainer-participant dialogue.

We tentatively suggest what our findings may mean for mindfulness practice, as it is in the nature of our qualitative study method that we cannot generalize our findings. Audio tapes and apps with mindfulness instructions can provide the words acting on the body, but they cannot deliver personal feedback on the use of language-games. Listeners to these tapes will not be corrected when they stray into other language-games, for instance, on emotions or causes. Therein lies the trainer's added value. Someone present who will not rest, saying: “That is thinking, go feeling.” This conclusion has implications for the widespread use of mindfulness apps and for the popular use of recorded versions of the body scan. We suspect that these forms of practicing mindfulness might hinder the actual learning process of feeling one's own body. We hypothesize that the use of these apps, without the possibility of engaging in a living dialogue with a trainer, could involve the risk that users bypass their bodily experiences and go on rationalizing about their experiences instead of feeling them. This hypothesis requires further research.

Another implication of our study is that it may contribute to mindfulness pedagogy. Our study makes explicit that a dialogue in the form of expressing sense perceptions may contribute to participants' body awareness. The implication would be that this could be made more explicit in training materials. Another implication of our study would be that in training materials, the difference between reporting sense perceptions and reporting emotions could be clarified explicitly. Further research is warranted to see how the results of this study of MBSR language use may differ from language use in various cultural contexts.