Abstract:The purpose of the present study was to test the efficacy of an 8-week online intervention-based Positive Mindfulness Program (PMP) that integrated mindfulness with a series of positive psychology variables, with a view to improving wellbeing scores measured in these variables. The positive mindfulness cycle, based on positive intentions and savouring, provides the theoretical foundation for the PMP. The study was based on a randomised wait-list controlled trial; and 168 participants (128 females, mean age = 40.82) completed the intervention which included daily videos, meditations, and activities. The variables tested included wellbeing measures, such as gratitude, self-compassion, selfefficacy, meaning, and autonomy. Pre-and post-intervention data, including one month after the end of the intervention, were collected from both experimental and control groups. The post-test measurements of the experimental participants showed a significant improvement in all the dependent variables compared with the pre-test ones and were also significantly higher than those of the control group. One month after the intervention, the experimental group participants retained their improvement in 10 out of the 11 measurements. These positive results indicate that PMP may be effective in enhancing wellbeing and other positive variables in adult, non-clinical populations.
This paper explores the gendered, disruptive effects and affective intensities of COVID-19 and the ways that women working in the sport and fitness sector were prompted to establish more-than-human connection through technologies, the environment, and objects. Bringing together theoretical and embodied insights from object interviews with 17 women sport and fitness professionals (i.e., athletes, coaches, instructors) in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper advances a relational understanding of the multiple human and nonhuman forces that shape and transform women's wellbeing during pandemic. Drawing upon particular feminist materialisms (i.e., Barad, Braidotti, Bennett), we reconceptualize wellbeing to move beyond biomedical formulations of health or illness. Through our analysis and discussion, we trace embodied ways of knowing that produce wellbeing as a more-than-human entanglement, a gendered phenomenon that can be understood as an ongoing negotiation of affective, material, cultural, technological and environmental forces during a period of disruption and uncertainty.
This article engages Rosi Braidotti’s writing on COVID-19 and affirmative ethics to expand understandings of the purpose of leisure and physical activity in women’s lives during the pandemic. Utilizing a feminist methodology informed by an ethics of affirmation, care, and creativity, the authors share insights from in-depth interviews with five dedicated Yoga practitioners living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Herein, they reveal how Yoga’s physical, mental, and ethical practices supported women as they navigated numerous challenges during the pandemic. The authors discuss the women’s complex experiences of affect, including shared exhaustion and compassion. Finally, they illustrate how experiences of discomfort encouraged some women to rethink collective responsibility and experiment with communal solutions to better support others in the face of uncertain futures.
In this article, we draw upon the work of leading new materialist Karen Barad to explore the possibilities for knowing women's yoga bodies differently. Engaging insights gathered from an embodied ethnography on contemporary Yoga in dialogue with Barad's concept of entanglement, we contemplate the complexity of a lived experience in a Yoga body. Engaging the voices and movement experiences of 19 committed women yoga practitioners, we explain ‘Yogic union’ as states of absorption facilitating an awareness of an existence that is complex, interconnected and involving both human and non-human materiality. Specifically, we work within and between the embodied experiences of the researcher and her participants, feminist new materialist theory, and creative writing to present Yoga bodies as phenomena that are always entangled.
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