Traversing the time of COVID-19 lockdown with mindful leisure

During the anxiety of COVID-19, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of incorporating mindfulness into daily life in response to the human needs of wellbeing. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of the Eastern (meditative) mindfulness approach (Chen et al., 2014, 2017) this paper discuss how to engage in leisure and tourism activities more mindfully, such that people relieve their anxiety and restore their mental ease. This paper identifies sensory awareness and relaxed attention as the fundamental pathways for evoking mindful mental processing embodied in meditative mindful experience episodes in lifestyle leisure and tourism mindfulness retreats. This is the first paper to introduce meditative mindful experiences in action through informal mindfulness activities in leisure and tourism contexts and to understand their therapeutic-like benefits.