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Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an 8-week training that is designed to teach participants mindful awareness of the present moment. In randomized clinical trials (RCTs), MBSR has demonstrated efficacy in various conditions including reducing chronic pain related distress and improving quality of life in healthy individuals. There have, however, been no qualitative studies investigating participants' descriptions of changes experienced over multiple time-points during the course of the program. This qualitative study of a MBSR cohort (N=8 healthy individuals) in a larger RCT examined participants' daily diary descriptions of their homepractice experiences. The study used a two-part method, combining grounded theory with a closeended coding approach. The grounded theory analysis revealed that during the trial, all participants, to varying degrees, described moments of distress related to practice; at the end of the course, all participants who completed the training demonstrated greater detail and clarity in their descriptions, improved affect, and the emergence of an observing self. The closed-ended coding schema carried out to shed light on the development of an observing self, revealed that the emergence of an observing self was not related to the valence of participants' experiential descriptions: even participants whose diaries contained predominantly negative characterizations of their experience throughout the trial were able, by the end of the trial, to demonstrate an observing, witnessing attitude towards their own distress.Conclusion-Progress in MBSR may rely less on the valence of participants' experiences and more on the way participants describe and relate to their own inner experience.

Each of twenty-four 11-month-old infants watched his mother leave him from an exit in the home that was either normally or rarely used by the mother. The incidence of crying, staring, and crawling to the exit was greater when the mother left by the unfamiliar exit suggesting that cognitive components are a factor in the phenomenon of separation anxiety.

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