Date

10-16-2025

Department

School of Behavioral Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology (Psy.D.)

Chair

Keith Lahikainen

Keywords

Christian mindfulness, existential mindfulness, meaning-centered therapy, Christian-accommodative mindfulness, centering prayer, existential meditation, Lectio Divina, religious mindfulness, mindfulness meditation

Disciplines

Psychology

Abstract

Mindfulness is a state of present moment-focused non-judgmental awareness, the purposeful practice of which has been shown to promote psychological well-being by alleviating past-oriented rumination, future-focused worry, and experiential avoidance. Because the most widely adopted mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) were developed based on Buddhist meditation practices, there have also been developed various religiously modified iterations of mindfulness–especially those tailored to Christian clients who are wary of engaging with Buddhist-derived practices. While secular and Buddhist MBIs promote non-judgmental awareness for the sake of mere nonattachment to external and internal experiences, Christian mindfulness promotes detachment from these things in order that one may more fully attach or attend to the presence of God; there is an additive component to these alternative iterations, in comparison to the mere subtractive nature of traditional mindfulness. There have also been attempts to integrate traditional mindfulness with existential therapy. These interventions orient one’s attention to internally held worldviews, or ontological core schema. I thus broadly characterize these alternative, philosophically modified MBIs (i.e., religious, existential) as being qualitatively distinct from traditional mindfulness with respect to their aim of attachment-directed detachment. A mixed methods (systematic and thematic) literature review was conducted via the PsycInfo, Medline, and SocIndex databases, evaluating the effects of these additive worldview components in light of effect sizes and identified themes. Search terms included ‘Christian [accommodative] mindfulness,’ ‘existential mindfulness,’ ‘meaning-centered therapy randomized controlled trial,’ and ‘centering prayer,’ plus a variable ‘RCT,’ ‘themes,’ or ‘mixed methods’ after each of these.’ Findings supported the proposed construct of additive mindfulness, with worldview-oriented MBIs demonstrating larger effects in spiritually and existentially aligned domains. These results underscore the population-specific value of alternative MBIs.

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