What Students Think About When Told Not to Think: Student Experiences With Mindfulness

• In Event: 25.067 - Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: 25.067-16 - Thoughtfulness, Mindfulness, and Wellness

Abstract

What do students think about when told not to think? This paper explores this question by analyzing the journal entries of 33 undergraduate participants of a week-long mindfulness retreat during Spring 2016, mostly conducted in silence and for which students were requested to stay in the present moment. Coding revealed over 700 codes, which were preliminarily distilled into 20 themes and further clustered into 9 meta-themes: physical sensations, emotional sensations, retreat experiences, cognition and mental states, awareness, significant life experiences, social/peer perceptions, pondering big questions, and religion. The nature of the students’ thought processes, particularly those that reflected upon broad and complex themes, lends itself to important questions that faculty and student affairs practitioners should consider when working with students.

Authors

• Jason S Jones, University of Virginia

• Karen K. Inkelas, University of Virginia