The authors offer a preliminary exploration of the theory underlying the ways in which mindfulness might be incorporated into social justice approaches to social work (such as structural, critical, and anti-oppressive social work) as a method to link the personal and political in direct practice. Mindfulness may provide a window for observing and investigating events in our everyday lives that can inform, while also being structured by, larger social relations and structures. Mindfulness and social justice approaches to social work theory, in particular critical social science theory, converge around the ideas of social relations, dialectics, consciousness, and self-reflection or reflexivity. There are tensions, however, and further development is needed of a social work practice that incorporates knowledge from both mindfulness and social justice approaches