Abstract
Meditation has shown positive results in improving the psychological disorders such as anxiety. There is a need to study the therapeutic benefits of Anapanasati meditation, a mindfulness meditation technique. The study aims at investigating the effect of Anapanasati meditation on individuals with moderate anxiety. A total of 112 participants who were willing to participate in the study were recruited for the study. Anapanasati meditation was used as an intervention. The participants were divided into two groups experiment and control groups. Experiment group had 56 persons performing Anapanasati meditation and Control group had 56 persons not performing any type of meditation. The experiment group practiced one hour of Anapanasati meditation daily under the supervision of experts for six months and continued their daily routine and control group was not given any intervention, but they continued their daily routine. State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is used to assess the anxiety level. The STAI score before and after Anapanasati meditation was analysed for both experiment and control groups using Paired Samples T test. The experiment group has shown significant reduction in the STAI (P < 0.05) score after the intervention whereas in the control group the reduction in STAI score was not significant. This study has shown that after six months of intervention, the subjects with moderate anxiety who practiced Anapanasati meditation had a significant decrease in their STAI score and the control group has not shown significant change in the STAI score.
Highlights
Anxiety is an emotional state such as nervousness, tension, worry or apprehension which a person perceives for various reasons [1]
The experiment group has shown significant reduction in the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (P < 0.05) score after the intervention whereas STAI score has increased in the control group
Data is represented as mean ± standard deviation STAI: State Trait Anxiety Inventory N: Number of Participants Pre: Pre data taken before intervention Post: Post data taken after intervention *P Value significance at 0.05 level CI: 95% Confidence Interval of the difference between pre and post BDI scores
Summary
Anxiety is an emotional state such as nervousness, tension, worry or apprehension which a person perceives for various reasons [1]. It is well known that meditation, one of the limbs of Patanjali Yoga [9], plays a significant role in improving the psychological disorders and research suggests the use of mindfulness meditation for reducing depression and anxiety levels [10,11,12]. The experiment group practiced one hour of Anapanasati meditation daily under the supervision of experts for six months and continued their daily routine and control group was not given any intervention, but they continued their daily routine. Conclusion: This study has shown that after six months of intervention, the subjects with moderate anxiety who practiced Anapanasati meditation had a significant decrease in their STAI score and the control group has not shown significant change in the STAI score
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