University of Ljubljana
MEDITATION RESEARCH GROUP - OBSERVATORY

We believe that thorough, systematic experience research relies on researchers themselves becoming precise and skillful "instruments" for observing and reporting their own lived experience (Varela, 1996). To work towards this aim, the members of our research group cultivate the so-called gesture of becoming aware (Depraz, Varela & Vermersch, 2003) - a detailed and non-judgmental way of viewing one's experience, which is central to a variety of mindfulness-based practices. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a novel mindfulness-based scientific method for the study of consciousness: a goal approached by way of longitudinal studying, describing, and training the practice of mindfulness. If the project succeeds, the results could eventually allow us to use mindfulness as a tool for exploring almost any selected cognitive phenomenon.

From September 2016 to September 2017, the Meditation research group carried out the first cycle of the project. In this pilot cycle, the team of eight researchers participated in five meditation retreats lasting 2-6 days. A typical day on the retreat involved 8-9 35-minute-long joint meditation sessions. At a random moment during each session, a beep prompted all meditating researchers (simultaneously) to sample their ongoing lived experience of meditating by noting down whatever was going on in their consciousness at the moment(s) just before the beep. The samples of experience were later further investigated in interviews. In addition, each researcher kept a detailed experiential journal throughout the days of the retreat, in which he or she described the general experiential dynamics of each meditation session, as well as noted down any relevant observations and suggestions for further research.

In addition to cultivating and beginning to better understand the experiential dynamics of mindfulness practice, the pilot cycle already allowed us to:
a) Identify and begin to describe certain interesting experiential phenomena, such as "the feeling of pull", "the feeling of gist", and the distinction (and relationship) between "thought content" and "sensory illustration of thought content."
b) Beginning to sketch the ethnography of mindfulness-related experience. The acquired empirical data on what was simultaneously going on in the experiential fields of eight meditators 8-9 times per day provides us with a unique insight into the actuality of meditation practice. Whereas the few existing studies of the phenomenology of mindfulness tend to focus on a handful of meditation's "peak moments", we are interested in describing the full, minute-to-minute experience of mindfulness practice - including the types of experience such as being bored, being annoyed with the pain in the left knee, or trying not to fall asleep.

The second cycle of the project is planned to begin in October 2018.

REFERENCES
Depraz, N., Varela, F. J. & Vermersch, P. (Eds.). (2003). On becoming aware: A pragmatics of experiencing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Varela, F. J. (1996). Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem. Journal of consciousness studies, 3(4), 330–349.

FURTHER READING
Kordes, U., Oblak, A., Smrdu, M., & Demšar, E. (2019). Ethnography of Meditation: An Account of Pursuing Meditative Practice as a Tool for Researching Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26(7-8), 184-237.