Mindfulness flows over the West. It is often branded as a method rooted in Buddhism, but in academical research its relations to a series of Buddhist and spiritual concepts remain undefined. We've conducted a systematic reading of 63 self-presentations from women with breast cancer that have participated in mindfulness intervention. Through a simple count of words and meaning units we find that patients describe the effect as becoming more attentive of the present moment and not worrying about the past or the future as much as before. But in a linguistic analysis we find that beginner-meditators are strikingly unarticulated. Common phrases about ‘being more present in the now with an accepting attitude’ may be related to spiritual experiences, but are more frequently inserted in a phenomenology of attention in recent neuroscience. This branch of research lacks qualitative studies that can provide a better understanding of how the mindfulness-phenomenology is related to neuroscience, spirituality and religion