An exploration of mindfulness and its experiential benefits: Taiwanese backpackers in Australia

Abstract

Stress in everyday life is common in our postmodern society leading some people to seek relief and fulfilment from a range of leisure and lifestyle activities such as travel experiences. Travel in itself, even adventurous or unstructured travel does not guarantee that travellers will receive positive benefits from their experiences. However, the notion of mindfulness may play an important role in producing positive consequences from different experiences. Thus, this study explores the nature and experiential benefits of 'meditative mindful' tourist experiences that can be experienced during travel.Mindfulness is a mental state that may facilitate positive experiences. Understanding the importance of mindfulness is becoming a mainstream field of academic study in many therapeutic settings.However, there has been little discussion of mindfulness theory as it might be applied to tourism studies. Previous research in tourism has mainly focused on socio-cognitive mindfulness related to visitor learning rather than meditative mindfulness experiences. These include contexts such as tourist-wildlife encounters, appreciation of scenery, or through interaction with other people. The conceptual framework in this thesis is based on the Eastern notion of meditative mindfulness and has been used in Western therapeutic studies. In the past decade, evidence of the effectiveness and application of meditative mindfulness has grown dramatically due to a developing dialogue between Buddhist traditions and Western clinical psychology. There is a growing interest in whether meditative mindful experiences can occur outside of formal therapeutic settings, including travel.However, it is not clear how meditative mindful tourism experiences might be defined or whether they occur at all during travel. Furthermore, few studies have investigated the antecedents and consequences of meditative mindful experiences in tourism contexts.This thesis presents an exploratory study of the occurrence as well as the antecedents and consequences of the meditative mindfulness phenomenon in a tourism context. A qualitative methodology based on an interpretive constructivist paradigm was adopted for the data collection.Taiwanese backpackers in Australia were selected as respondents and snowball sampling was used to recruit participants. In total, 43 semi-structured interviews were completed, and a total of 77 instances of meditative mindful experiences were identified. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in Brisbane (at backpacker hostels) and at Uluru (Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park), as these two main sites provided the best opportunities to meet Taiwanese backpackers. Two interview protocols were used in screening and extended interviews for qualifying and exploring the three research objectives. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. NVivo 10 qualitative analysis software was used to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the data analysis process.iii The findings indicated that meditative mindful ...

Cognitive psychology and tourism research: state of the art

“…While there is no tourism literature that discusses consciousness, mental states related to consciousness such as mindfulness and flow have been studied. Mindfulness is the quality or state of conscious awareness in which the individual is implicitly aware of the context and content of information (Chen, 2015; Langer, 1992). It is a style of thinking that is created through analysing personal behaviour and, as a result, the ability to think about old situations in new ways (Langer, 1992, p. 289).…”

“…It is a style of thinking that is created through analysing personal behaviour and, as a result, the ability to think about old situations in new ways (Langer, 1992, p. 289). Mindfulness has been considered a tool to manage tourist experiences since the middle of 1980s (Chen, 2015; Frauman and Norman, 2004; McIntosh, 1999; Pearce and Moscardo, 1986). The concept is used to design interpretation at built heritage sites that “produces” visitors who are active, interested, questioning and capable of reassessing the way they view the world (Moscardo, 1996).…”

“…An alternative notion of meditative mindfulness is defined as “[…] the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment to moment” (Kabat-Zinn, 2003, p. 145; Chen, 2015). This is a cognitive approach, as it provides a mechanism for achieving the mental state linked to other concepts such as attention and consciousness.…”

“…Similarly, Tung et al (2016) highlight the relevance of mindfulness in the encoding of experience in memory. Mindfulness is instructive, providing insight into the conscious state that engages tourists (Chen, 2015). Mindfulness is a trigger that can facilitate retention of knowledge in a tourist’s memory, highlighting the importance of attention and emotional states during encoding of memory (Chen, 2015; Tung and Ritchie, 2011a; Brown and Ryan, 2003; Frewen et al , 2008).…”

“…Flow is a state of emotional arousal that occurs when individual’s skills match the level of challenge engaged with, leading to a feeling of harmony with the environment (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Filep, 2009). In a flow state a person is immersed in the experience and may tune out of their immediate surroundings (Chen, 2015). Flow and mindfulness therefore are distinct states of consciousness that are related to different experiential contexts.…”