Cardiovascular effects of brief mindfulness meditation among perfectionists experiencing failure

Abstract

Research links perfectionism, the tendency to hold and pursue unrealistically high standards, to negative mental health outcomes such as eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. Previous research used high frequency heart rate variability (HF‐HRV) to measure recovery from stress during a mindfulness meditation in perfectionistic university students and found that only nonperfectionists demonstrated HF‐HRV recovery from stress, suggesting that mindfulness was not effective for perfectionists. However, the mindfulness meditation did not incorporate a nonjudgment element, which may be a key component for perfectionists. In the current study, we examined whether mindfulness with a focus on nonjudgment helps university student perfectionists (n = 120) recover from failure (measured by heart rate (HR), HF‐HRV, pNN50). Students were randomly assigned to one of four meditation groups: nonjudgment mindfulness, general mindfulness (i.e., attentional awareness without a nonjudgment component), progressive muscle relaxation, and nothing. Cardiac data were recorded during a 5‐min baseline, failure task, and 10‐min meditation session. HR results suggest that both mindfulness conditions and “nothing” encouraged cardiovascular recovery, but that the mindfulness conditions showed even further recovery during the last five minutes of the meditations. HF‐HRV results indicated that participants in the nonjudgment mindfulness condition had marginally higher HF‐HRV during the last five minutes of the meditation than at baseline, while participants in the other conditions did not. Therefore, mindfulness with a focus on nonjudgment of emotions may be especially important to help perfectionists improve HF‐HRV after failure.

Short Term Effects of Inner Engineering Completion Online Program on Stress and Well-Being Measures

“…Focusing on inflammatory mediators, cortisol, or epinephrine and norepinephrine may provide supporting evidence to participants’ self-reports. Other means of investigating the mechanism of action would be by looking at heart rate variability, which is a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation and could be affected by meditation ( Libby et al, 2012 ; Muralikrishnan et al, 2012 ; Koerten et al, 2020 ) or the anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the activation of which is associated with meditation-related reduction of anxiety ( Zeidan et al, 2014 ). An exciting direction for meditation research would be to investigate the mechanism by which meditation may affect sleep architecture and quality ( Maruthai et al, 2016 ).…”

“…Meditation practices are associated with positive effects on autonomic nervous system activity ( Libby et al, 2012 ; Koerten et al, 2020 ), brain functionality ( Tang et al, 2015 ), and immune function ( Househam et al, 2017 ). Further, these practices have shown to improve concentration, emotional balance and positive emotions, with an enhanced sense of productivity, and self-confidence ( Allen et al, 2021 ).…”

Short mindfulness-based intervention for psychological and academic outcomes among university students

“…Building on results of previous studies of the benefits of brief meditation for stress reduction (Koerten et al, 2020 ; Shearer et al, 2016 ) and cognitive processing (Jankowski & Holas, 2020 ), the main aim of this study was to investigate the benefits of a short MBI for university students with high levels of perceived stress, depression or anxiety symptoms. To fit into students’ busy schedules, we developed an experimental design with a short version of the MBI consisting of a self-administered 30-minute body scan meditation (BSM), without any face-to-face interaction with a therapist.…”

Psychological and Cardiovascular Effects of Meditation and Yoga

“…However, compelling evidence indicates that meditative practices have the potential to facilitate handling negative thoughts and emotions, induce a state of calmness and presence, and increase the activity of the vagal nerve [38,39]. In a recent laboratory experiment conducted by Koerten and colleagues [12,40], the authors investigated the effects of mindfulness, with a focus on nonjudgment, on recovery from stress in perfectionists. In the aforementioned experiment, the authors made use of heart rate variability analysis to further understand the impact of brief mindfulness meditation on cardiovascular responses.…”

“…One of the most impactful and immediate effects of meditation and yoga is the downregulation of psychophysiological arousal [10,11]. The state of calmness induced during meditative practices naturally facilitates the reappraisal of negative thoughts and emotions, leading to a series of physiological adjustments that are beneficial to one's health [12,13].…”