1. Ashley Zhang is a social work student at Monash Oakeigh Legal Service who is researching how mindfulness can be applied to social worker self-care and client engagement. 2. Through a literature review, Zhang found evidence that mindfulness training can help reduce stress and improve well-being for social workers. Mindfulness practices like meditation can cultivate empathy, compassion, and non-judgement in interactions with clients. 3. Zhang recommends mindfulness-based stress reduction programs for staff and students at MOLS, including body scans, yoga, and informal mindfulness techniques to apply to daily activities.

1. Name: Ashley Zhang
Name of agency: Monash Oakeigh Legal Service
Title of research project:
1.Negotiation with agency:
Since I had started studying mindfulness course online and then found its positive
effects on my emotional wellbeing, I had the interest to combine what I had learned
with social work self care and clinic practice. I discussed my thoughts with
supervisor, she showed interest and encouraged me to think about how it could relate
to my placement practice for MOLS.
2. Researchquestion:
A Literature Review: How Mindfulness Could Be Applied to Social Worker Self-care
and Professional Development Regarding Clients’ Engagement at Monash Oakeigh
Legal Service (MOLS)
3.Method and data collection:
As it is a literature review, I mainly used qualitative method by collecting resources
from seminals books, literature review, peer-reviewed journals, secondary data
analysis and professional mindfulness websites.
4. Findings:
With the popularity and effectiveness of mindfulness practice in different fields
recently, including academic displines, health sectors, medicine, psychology etc (
Dylan and Coates, 2015 ). there has been a growing interest for social work to
explore and apply it into clinic practice. The essay will elaborate three parts: The
conceptoins of mindfulness, mindfulness practice for social worker self care and
professional development at MOLS, mindfulness practice training recommendation.
The conception of mindfulness
What is mindfulness? According to the founder of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn

2. (Dylan and Coates, 2015), mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives by
perceving the exquite vividness of each moment, non-judgementally. We also obtain
immediate access to our powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and
healing. There are 3 sequential components of mindfulness: intention (personal goal
and vision), attention (focus on the present, internal and external experience) and
attitude (equanimity and acceptance). While Langer, professor of Psychology at
Harvard University, explains that mindfulness is not just about paying attention to the
present moment. It is about making a conscious effort to be in the moment and not to
ignore the environment (Hick, 2009).
Mindfulness is originally from Asian Buddhism, but it has been taught detached from
this origin in a secularized fashion that risks cultural appropriation in western world.
Nevertheless, there is pointless questioning the integrity, wholeness and robustness of
such a decontextualized approach. (Dylan and Coates, 2015) Since there is nothing
particularly Buddhist about awareness, nor anything particularly geographically
different for that matter, the nature of mindfulness is truly universal and it has more to
do with the human mind regardless of ideology, beliefs, or culture as Kabat-Zinn
articulated (2005).
Mindfulness in social work practice
The meditative approach demonstrates a connection to reality, to nature, and to
human beings that includes the instrumental way of life and provides a guide of living
and being that fosters mind and body unity as well as individual and social
development. This is consistent with social work values of self-determination and
self-fulfillment, social and societal wellbeing, and social justice (Leonard, 2012).
Mindfulness training has been implemented as a self-care strategy, designed to
prevent or alleviate the potential for occupational stress, which is a serious concern
for helping professionals (Gockel, Burton, James & Bryer, 2013). At the inner level,
mindfulness involves a present-moment orientation. This enables us to engage with
what is actually happening to us and can shift our habitual tendency from worrying
about the past or fantasizing about the future to just simply being that moment. A
present-moment orientation can bring inner peace and contain practices to cultivate
self-compassion and self-acceptance. As social worker beginners at MOLS, we

3. might not be so experienced about dealing with our negative emotions when facing
confronting cases or difficult clients during the clinic time. Especially when working
at a legal based service with law students, we might feel frustrated that some clients
only attend here for legal advice, instead of seeking help from social worker students
or wanting to disclose their other issues. Consequently, we would possibly be
stressful or negatively judgmental about ourselves. However, by allowing and
embracing whatever comes up in the present moment, we can change our relationship
to negative emotions and mind states. We begin to see those thoughts as thoughts, not
as facts or as representative of our core personality (Hick, 2009). Also, I believe we
have tried the best to meet client’s needs at the moment when we were having
interviews.
Based on the previous study ((Gockel, Burton,James & Bryer, 2013), Shapiro et al.
compared counseling students who participated in an 8 week course of mindfulness
training to a cohort control group and found that those exposed to mindfulness
training reported lower levels of perceived stress, negative affect, anxiety, and
rumination, while reporting higher levels of positive affect and self-compassion. Only
when we care for ourselves first with kindness and acceptance, could it be effective
for us to care about others.
As for client’s intervention, mindfulness shifts the practitioner’s focus to a stance of
observing rather than operating within and through conceptual thinking, mindfulness
practice may promote the novice clinician’s capability to hold hypotheses more
tentatively, to be alert to new or contradictory information and to be more flexible and
responsive to the client’s needs in the moment (Gockel, Burton,James & Bryer,
2013), thereby alternating how we interact with clients. At the micro-practice level,
the present-moment orientation allows us to tune into what is happening within and
around us during the clinic time. As international social work students at MOLS, due
to our diverse cultural backgrounds and different personal values, we would highly
likely bring our own judgment and jump to conclusions to our diverse clients
unconsciously. However, by pausing and relaxing into what our clients are saying, we
are able to listen deeply—to really be present—not think about what we are going to
say next or how we can fix their problems. With mindfulness, we can be open to the
flow of understanding without judgment and with acceptance. Finally, mindfulness

4. involves practices that actively cultivate compassion and empathy toward others
(Hick, 2009).
Mindfulness practice training recommendation: Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction
Since mindfulness practice regarding social worker self care and clients ‘intervention
has been discussed, then how could we improve mindfulness skills in our work and
daily life? Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, as one of approaches, has
been utilized and approved effectively in a variety of clinical settings for patients and
providers, including stress, depression, heart disease, chronical pain and cancer. The
formal practices mainly include body scan (focusing attention first on breath and then
on each part of body), sitting meditation (full awareness on inbreath and on outbreath
and on the space between inbreath and outbreath), mindful yoga (a unity of body and
mind with full awareness moment by moment). The daily informal practices include
mindful awareness to routine activities such as washing the dishes and/or eating a
meal, being aware of how we experience and process pleasant/unpleasant experience,
etc. (Palouse Mindfulness, 2016).
Last but not least, all staff, including law students, social work students and
supervisors at MOLS are highly encouraged to have certain time and venue for having
good self-care by practicing one of formal practices together as mentioned above
considering the stress they might have as well as effective engagement with clients in
the future. As for informal practices, they could be done at anytime and anywhere as
long as individuals can be fully aware of we they are doing and be in that moment, on
purpose, non-judgmentally.
5. Reflection
From the literature review I have done, I found mindfulness can be a very practical
strategy for social work clinic practice, what mindfulness can grow is quite similar to
social work micro skills, such as actively listening, empathy and non-judgment,
openness, etc. The evidence of mindfulness applied to the social work self care and
client intervention has been demonstrated appropriately and has the practical guidance
for social workers, especially for novice clinicians. I would like to conduct a few

5. semi-structure interviews with mindfulness professionals and randomly choose a
group students with mindfulness meditation experience for a focus discussion in order
to better support my project.
(Word count: 1336)

6. Reference list
Dylan, A. and Coates, J., 2016. Introduction to Special Issue: Mindfulness and Social
Work. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 35(1-2),
pp.1-6.
Hick, S.F., 2009. Mindfulness and social work: Paying attention to ourselves, our
clients, and society. Mindfulness and social work, pp.1-30.
Gockel, A., Burton, D., James, S. and Bryer, E., 2013. Introducing mindfulness as a
self-care and clinical training strategy for beginning social work
students. Mindfulness, 4(4), pp.343-353.
Kabat-Zinn, J., 2005. Coming to our senses: Healing ourselves and the world through
mindfullness. Hachette UK.
Leonard, A. L 2012, ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out: Utilizing Mindfulness in the Social
Work Practicum’ Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 124. Utah State University
Palouse Mindfulness, 2016, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, viewed 4th
September 2016, http://palousemindfulness.com/selfguidedMBSR_week0.html