The Effects of Different Stages of Mindfulness Meditation Training on Emotion Regulation

Qin Zhang,Lei Liu,Renlai Zhou,Jing Zhang,Zheng Wang,Xinqiang Wang

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00208

Abstract

This study examined mood enhancement effects from 4-week focusing attention (FA) meditation and 4-week open monitoring (OM) meditation in an 8-week mindfulness training program designed for ordinary individuals. Forty participants were randomly assigned to a training group or a control group. All participants were asked to perform cognitive tasks and subjective scale tests at three time points (pre-, mid-, and post-tests). Compared with the participants in the control group, the participants in the meditation training group showed significantly decreased anxiety, depression, and rumination scores; significantly increased mindfulness scores; and significantly reduced reaction times (RTs) in the incongruent condition for the Stroop task. The present study demonstrated that 8-week mindfulness meditation training could effectively enhance the level of mindfulness and improve emotional states. Moreover, FA meditation could partially improve individual levels of mindfulness and effectively improve mood, while OM meditation could further improve individual levels of mindfulness and maintain a positive mood.

Highlights

Mindfulness can be defined as nonjudgmental attention to the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994)
The present study provided empirical evidence that an 8-week mindfulness meditation training program could effectively improve the level of individual mindfulness and the regulation of anxiety, depression, and rumination
This study confirmed that the change of mindfulness level and mood was a dynamic process and focusing attention (FA) meditation could partially improve mindfulness level and mood, while open monitoring (OM) meditation could further enhance mindfulness level and maintain the effect on mood regulation

Summary

Introduction

Mindfulness can be defined as nonjudgmental attention to the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mind wandering was defined as a lack of relation to the current task (Klinger and Cox, 1987; Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010). Irving (2016) proposed that mind wandering is unguided attention. The main techniques of mindfulness intervention include meditation, body scanning, walking meditation, breathing, and mindfulness yoga (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Different mindfulness skills are some of the possible specific practices that allow people to understand the core of mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Tang and Posner (2013) proposed that these various mindfulness skills had a common goal, which is being in a state of placidity and awareness of what is occurring within the phenomenological field. More than the conceptual and emotional classifications, mindfulness training requires increasing acceptance of whatever happens and reducing mental judgments

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