Browsing by Author "Kempton HM"

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    Holy be the Lay: A Way to Mindfulness Through Christian Poetry
    (LIDSEN Publishing Inc, 2022-03-11) Kempton HM
    Mindfulness practices have exploded in popularity in public awareness and in therapeutic applications. While mindfulness in a therapeutic context is presented as a secular practice, its primarily Buddhist heritage may make some Christian clients wary of engaging. Research indicates that both reflection (co-creation) on poetry and creation of poetry can be therapeutic, and that both Buddhist and secular/therapeutic mindfulness texts use poetry to convey meaning through key themes of nature, change/impermanence, stages of practice, and acceptance. Taken together poetry offers a pathway to mindfulness, which in this article is applied to the Christian client. Examples are given of: how mindfulness-based practices are in accordance with Christian teachings (e.g., grace theology), that poetic practices already exist in Christian traditions (e.g., Lectio Divina and the Prayer of the Heart), and themes previously identified in Buddhist and secular/therapeutic mindfulness related poetry, are also present in Christian poetry. It is argued that poetry can provide an appropriate and palatable vehicle for introducing Christian clients to mindfulness, which allows for the individual’s spirituality to be harnessed as a mediator of the benefits of mindfulness practice.
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    Mindfulness as practice: A network analysis of FMI data
    (John Wiley and Sons Inc on behalf of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2021-12-01) Smith JH; Kempton HM; Williams MN; van Ommen C
    Mindfulness research implicitly conceives of mindfulness as an identifiable real ‘thing’ that exists beyond what is directly observed. Recently, a new methodology has been developed which allows mindfulness to be modelled as a complex system or network at the level of self-report. In these models, items become a network's nodes, and the statistical relations between them, edges. Interpreted causally, nodes are thought to increasingly influence each other via their edges, such that they become increasingly correlated. This study hypothesises that at a cross-sectional level, this may result in differences in overall network connectivity (density) between practitioners and non-practitioners. Mindfulness networks were estimated for practitioners and non-practitioners using the Friedberg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI). A total of 371 regular mindfulness practitioners and 283 non-practitioners (including 59 irregular practitioners) were recruited online from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Comparisons of practitioners’ and non-practitioners’ networks indicated that network density did not significantly differ, whereas evidence was found in support of a significant difference in network structure. An exploratory analysis revealed substantive group differences in how items (practices) were connected. In particular, the practice of Acceptance appeared more central to the practitioners’ network relative to the non-practitioners' network, indicating Acceptance may be particularly useful for engagement in mindfulness practices. The study supports investigating mindfulness as a complex network at the level of self-report, with implications for how the development of mindfulness is conceptualised. The lack of difference in network density indicates that research is needed to examine network dynamics in the context of regular mindfulness practice.
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    Mindfulness or expectancy? The label of mindfulness leads to expectancy effects
    (John Wiley and Sons Ltd on behalf of British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2023-03) Noshari MG; Kempton HM; Kreplin U
    The increasing popularity of mindfulness practices has seen an accompanying growth in research that includes the development of several self-report mindfulness measures. However, while caution has been recommended in the use of these self-reports, there has been little direct assessment of their susceptibility to expectancy effects. This research aimed at understanding whether expectancy effects exist for self-reported mindfulness measures (Study 1; n = 60), and how expectancy effects might manifest in relation to positive and negative expectancy (Study 2; n = 60). The first study manipulated whether (i) the task (jigsaws) was labelled as “mindfulness,” and (ii) whether “authentic” mindfulness instructions were given. Given any increases in self-reported mindfulness might potentially occur due to engaging in the mindful and attentionally demanding task, the second study manipulated whether the introduction placed mindfulness in a positive or negative context. A pre-/post-test design was employed using the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and Applied Mindfulness Process Scale self-report measures for mindfulness and the Perceived Stress Scale for well-being. The findings revealed expectancy effects for simply using the term mindfulness and that the direction of effects could be manipulated. This research suggests that researchers need to be cautious in evaluating self-reports of mindfulness practice due to expectancy effects, especially in the context of brief interventions without objective measures.
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    Nature Connection, Mindfulness, and Wellbeing: A Network Analysis
    (LIDSEN Publishing Inc., 2023-11-06) Capizzi R; Kempton HM; Conboy LA
    Relationships between nature connection, mindfulness and wellbeing have been observed through nature based therapeutic interventions, where mindfulness and nature appear to reciprocally influence each other in relation to wellbeing and is potentially consistent with attention restoration theory. However, previous studies have relied on examining nature based interventions rather than the role of nature connection in everyday lives. This investigation explored the relationship between nature connection, mindfulness, and wellbeing within a general population sample in Auckland, New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants (n = 472) completed a survey questionnaire measuring nature connectedness (CNS), hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing (PANAS and MLQ), stress (PSS), and mindfulness (FFMQ). Given mindfulness consists of interrelated practices and the relationship between mindfulness and nature connection is thought to be reciprocal, an EBIC GLASSO network was constructed to investigate the pathways between nature connection, mindfulness, and wellbeing. The FFMQ subscale of Observing was central to the network in terms of closeness and betweenness and had a strong correlation with CNS where it bridged CNS and wellbeing scales. This study demonstrates that individuals in their daily lives show relationships between nature connection, mindfulness, and wellbeing, and indicates that the Observing aspect of mindfulness might be useful for harnessing nature connection and wellbeing effects.