Rethinking Practice in Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Developmental Theoretical Model Integrating Formal Practice, Informal Practice, Practice Quality, and Dispositional Mindfulness

Research on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) has consistently framed home practice as a central therapeutic ingredient. Nevertheless, the empirical literature remains heterogeneous with regard to the amount of practice participants complete, the strength and consistency of associations between practice time and outcomes, and the relative contribution of formal versus informal practice. At the same time, a growing body of evidence suggests that practice quality and dispositional mindfulness may help explain why equivalent amounts of practice do not yield equivalent outcomes across participants. In this theoretical article, I argue that research on MBI practice has been constrained by an overly static and linear dose–response model. I propose a developmental framework in which different dimensions of practice play distinct functional roles across phases of training. Specifically, formal practice is hypothesized to be particularly important during the early stages of training, when participants are acquiring foundational capacities such as attentional stability, meta-awareness, and nonreactivity. As these capacities consolidate and dispositional mindfulness increases, the therapeutic relevance of informal practice and the quality with which mindfulness is enacted is proposed to become progressively more central to the maintenance and generalization of benefits. This model integrates findings from meta-analyses on home practice and dispositional mindfulness, empirical studies focusing on informal practice, and emerging research on practice quality. It offers a parsimonious explanation for the mixed findings in the literature on practice dose: practice may matter, but not uniformly, not linearly, and not in the same way across phases of training. The article concludes by outlining testable hypotheses and a research agenda for longitudinal and mechanism-focused studies, including those conducted in contextualized programs such as Mindfulness-Based Health Promotion.