Leyi Mental Training: Bridging Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science to Reduce Anxiety via Altered Brain Dynamics

Abstract

Leyi is a set of physical and mental cultivation methods established by Professor Changle Zhou after many years of practice. It combines modern psychological adjustment and Chinese ancient Buddhist practice methods, including relaxation, breathing, meditation, koan, and cognitive regulation. Its purpose is to achieve the state of enlightenment (a high-level ideology in Buddhism). More than ten years of practical experience has proved that Leyi Mental Training can improve people's physical and mental health, especially most participants reported that their anxiety reduced after training. Before and after the training, we recorded the participants' EEG during the task of judging emotional pictures and administered the POMS Scale to them after the task. The results showed that their anxiety subscale scores were significantly reduced after training, and the accompanying brain activity was that the power of frontal gamma was reduced considerably. Studies have found that frontal gamma power is related to DMN activity, and a decrease in frontal gamma power indicates a reduction of internal network activity. We speculate that this may be because Leyi's training changed the way of self-referential processing, which in turn affected the activities of the internal network, which may be one of the brain mechanisms for reducing anxiety