ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Mindfulness
Language-Games in Live Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: A Philosophy of Language Analysis of Participant-Trainer Dialogue
Provisionally accepted
- Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
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It is important to explore how words are given to body awareness in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), as this impacts health and illness, while literature on this topic is scarce. This study is the first to explore the learning process of enhancing one’s body awareness live in MBSR sessions through a philosophy of language lens. It is the first known application of Wittgenstein and Austin to full-course, live MBSR dialogue, and it analysis language-games and all three speech acts in context. The full transcript of a complete MBSR training was analyzed. Our results indicate that verbalizing body awareness was difficult for MBSR participants. Participants talked about emotions or made rational judgments, while they found it hard to express what bodily sensations they felt. We suggest, using Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘language-games’, that in this case study, learning to verbalize one’s body awareness can be understood as learning a language-game of ‘reporting sense perceptions’. Referring to Austin’s concept, our findings also show what type of ‘speech acts’ are done in MBSR. The results of this study align with insights on emotion regulation therapy. The first step in these therapies is learning to feel bodily sensations instead of making rational judgments. Concluding, we suggest what our results contribute to the scientific debate on the relation between language and body awareness. We also hypothesize the implications for the widespread use of mindfulness apps and recorded versions of the body scan, that both lack the feedback of the living trainer-participant dialogue.
Keywords: Austin, Body awareness, Language-game, MBSR, mindfulness, philosophy of language, speech act, Wittgenstein
Received: 06 Jul 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 van den Bold, de Haan and Slatman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ingeborg van den Bold
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