Effects of Brief and Sham Mindfulness Meditation on Mood and Cardiovascular Variables

Abstract

These results indicate that brief meditation training has beneficial effects on mood and cardiovascular variables that go beyond the demand characteristics of a sham meditation intervention.

Heart rate variability is enhanced in controls but not maladaptive perfectionists during brief mindfulness meditation following stress-induction: A stratified-randomized trial

“…awareness of breathing sensations) yet included verbal cues suggestive of meditative experiences. The study reported greater decreases in distressed mood and HR following the meditation condition compared to the sham condition (Zeidan et al, 2010). The present study extends this research by observing a stress phase prior to randomizing novice meditators to a mindfulness instruction or a mindfulness description condition.…”

“…In a recent controlled experiment on mindfulness meditation that used cardiac measures, Zeidan et al (2010) studied 82 undergraduates with no meditation experience in a design comparing traditional meditation training with a sham condition. The sham condition lacked the essential instructions of mindfulness (i.e.…”

“…Firstly, as suggested by Zeidan et al (2010), the inclusion of stress-induction prior to randomization to mindfulness meditation or a rest condition helped show the benefits of brief mindfulness training after the experience of stress. Secondly, the lack of adequate control conditions in meditation research has been a source of criticism (Toneatto and Nguyen, 2007).…”

Effects of a Brief Meditation Training on Negative Affect, Trait Anxiety and Concentrated Attention

“…There are only isolated studies, whose results seem to be in consonance with the meta-analysis of Sedlmeier et al (2012), in particular regarding the effect on the emotional variables and attentional processes (Tang et al, 2007;Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010;Zeidan, Johnson, Gordon, et al, 2010). Nevertheless, it is also possible to observe divergences among some of these findings.…”

“…Although, in these reviews, the interventions are considered to be medium and long-term, with 30 days being the shortest duration analyzed, studies evaluating short-term training -such as that lasting a few days -have also found encouraging results (Creswell, Pacilio, Lindsay, & Brown, 2014;Ding, Tang, Tang, & Posner, 2014;Tang et al, 2007;Zeidan, Johnson, Gordon, & Goolkasian, 2010). It is worth emphasizing that there is no consensus in the literature in relation to the use of the terms "short-term" and "brief ", as these have been used for designating different quantities of practice, such as a single session of 10 minutes (Dickenson, Berkman, Arch, & Lieberman, 2012), five days (Tang et al, 2007), two weeks (Cavanagh et al, 2013), and experience of up to five years (Sukhsohale & Phatak, 2012).…”