A Portfolio of Academic, Therapeutic Practice and Research Work Including an Investigation of Clients' Perspectives on the Relationship Between Buddhist Meditation and Psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation have a history of interest in what each can offer the other, including how they may or may not be integrated. The literature focuses on clinical views on the matter, and this study addresses the lack of clients’ perspectives on the subject by interviewing eight therapy clients who were also meditators and subjecting the interview data to grounded theory analysis. The analysis generated an initial theory (due to not achieving theoretical saturation) constituted by three core categories: ‘Relationship between meditation and therapy’, ‘Therapist stance on meditation’, and ‘Process of integration of therapy and meditation’. The process of integration seemed to be affected by 1) the extent to which the functions of meditation and therapy were seen to be similar or different, in terms of relating to inner experience, and 2) therapists’ perceived views and use of meditation. Possible implications for practice are considered