Enhancing Psychosomatic Well-being through Traditional Mindfulness Practice of Vipassana

Description

Page: 138-142

Vandana Gupta (Department of Psychology, Mahila Mahavidyalaya Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh)

Traditional mindfulness practice vipassana is a popular non-religious and secular meditation method relevant to the contemporary world. It is an effective technique for mental refinement and achieving inner peace and well-being. Vipassana-based mindfulness therapeutic practices are very prevalent in the West. Many experimental and correlational studies have shown the efficacious role of this in healing physical and psychological problems. The present study explored the motivation behind experiencing Vipassana and its relevance to health and wellbeing in meditators’ lives. A total of eight participants were interviewed during January 2023 to March 2024. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews following snowball purposive sampling. Participants who had attended at least three long courses and maintained a one-hour practice at home were interviewed. An interpretative phenomenological approach of qualitative research was used to analyze transcribed interviews. Results of meditators’ experience identified three major themes. These were individual context, equanimity, and awareness agency, and enhanced psychosomatic well-being. The individual contexts are those extrinsic (psychosomatic complaints) and intrinsic (spiritual exploration) factors of meditation that motivated participants to attend Vipassana. Equanimity and awareness are quality states of mind that facilitate unconditioning past-learned thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that cause distress and illness. Psychosomatic well-being is a condition of physical and psychological health and virtues, as reported by all participants. The key findings have discussed many implications for improving the health and well-being of students, homemakers, working women, and men.