Mindfulness to me: A qualitative investigation of college student-athletes’ personal understanding of mindfulness

In recent decades, mindfulness has grown in popularity in modern society and culture. This popularity extends to the field of sport psychology. Due to this popularity, many college student-athletes have exposure to mindfulness with or without the guidance of a sport psychology consultant or mindfulness teacher. Most mindfulness research in sport psychology has centered on the effectiveness of formal mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for performance enhancement and wellbeing. However, little to no evidence exists demonstrating how student-athletes understand mindfulness, and how this understanding might connect to motivation for continued practice or benefits received. Further, no research to our knowledge exists exploring the use of mindfulness practice by individual student-athletes outside of formal MBIs delivered in a group or team format. Moreover, some research proposes that the oversimplified incorporation of mindfulness in Western Psychology might be a factor in decreased participation and compliance with MBIs. The purposes of the present study were to investigate how athletes engage in and understand mindfulness practice and to explore potential benefits, barriers, and adverse experiences related to their practice. The Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) protocol (Hill, 2012) was utilized to examine the experiences of 15 college student-athletes with varying degrees of mindfulness exposure and practice. The analysis yielded three distinct domains, including (a) conceptual understanding, (b) details of mindfulness practice, and (c) contextual factors influencing practice. Results offer sport psychology professionals insight into how athletes understand mindfulness, and how this might affect their engagement with, and benefits received from utilizing mindfulness-based approaches.