The effects of four days of intensive mindfulness meditation training (Templestay program) on resilience to stress: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

The interest in mindfulness meditation interventions has surged due to their beneficial effects in fostering resilience and reducing stress in both clinical and non-clinical populations. However, the relaxation benefits that may occur while practicing mindfulness meditation and long-term benefits of these interventions remain unclear. Fifty-one participants were recruited and randomized into the experimental and control groups, which underwent 4 days of Intensive Meditation (Templestay program, n = 33) and Relaxation (Control, n = 18), respectively. The self-report measures of Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale-Revised (CAMS) and the modified Korean version of the Resilience Quotient Test (RQT) were administered pre-, post- and 3 months after the intervention to measure participants' levels of mindfulness and resilience. Participants in both the Templestay program and Control groups showed significant increases in their scores on CAMS and RQT after completing the program. During the 3-month follow-up, a significant interaction effect of the intervention method and time was revealed for the individuals' CAMS and RQT scores. Our findings support the hypothesis that while relaxation practices may have certain stress reduction effects, the effects are predominantly mediated by the mindfulness meditation practice. Furthermore, the long-term benefits of increased resilience observed in the Templestay program group suggest that the practice may be a possible treatment strategy in clinical populations, such as patients with depression and anxiety.

The Immediate and Sustained Positive Effects of Meditation on Resilience Are Mediated by Changes in the Resting Brain

“…The brain imaging data were collected at two time points, baseline and immediately after the intervention, while self-report questionnaires were measured at three time points: baseline, immediate follow-up, and at a 3-month follow-up (Figure 1). The recruitment strategy, intervention program, and results from the self-report questionnaires were described thoroughly in a previous report (Hwang et al, 2017). A brief introduction to the materials is included in the Supplementary data and Supplementary Figure S1.…”

“…However, most previous studies, which adopted meditation intervention for a few weeks, included possible limitations, such as isolation of the effects of meditation from other confounding factors or difficulty for subjects to regularly participate in the intervention. Therefore, recent studies have adopted several-day intensive residential meditation retreats designed to maximize training compliance and minimize the effects of non-meditative factors (Tang et al, 2007, 2015; Xue et al, 2011; Hwang et al, 2017).…”

“…Despite the growing interest in meditation and the significant progress achieved in understanding the associated dynamic neural changes via meditation (Lazar et al, 2005; Tang et al, 2015, 2007; Jang et al, 2011; Kang et al, 2012), only a few studies have focused on the maintenance of the effect. According to studies involving several months of follow-up after the intervention, both the meditation and active control groups exhibit improvements in stress-related psychological or physiological characteristics immediately after the intervention, but the effect is maintained only in the meditation group (Epel et al, 2016; Hwang et al, 2017). These findings suggest that meditation practices may induce changes in neural mechanisms to maintain the improvement, but the putative neural correlates underlying the maintenance of the effect have not yet been explored in neuroimaging studies.…”

Biological and Psychological Perspectives of Resilience: Is It Possible to Improve Stress Resistance?

“…Improvements in resilience in humans have been reported as a result of psychological and cognitive therapies, such as child caregiver advocacy resilience (Li et al, 2017 ), a life skills education-based program (Sarkar et al, 2017 ), the iNEAR programme (Tunariu et al, 2017 ), intensive mindfulness meditation training (Hwang et al, 2018 ) and stress inoculation training (Horn et al, 2016 ). Although all the above achieved good outcomes, the same method may have different therapeutic effects in different individuals.…”

Three Simple Mindfulness Practices to Manage Holiday Stress

“…Although the exact mechanisms of mindfulness are not yet fully known, the benefi ts seem to run far and wide. Across a wide variety of populations, including nurses (Guillaumie, Boiral, & Champagne, 2017), there is evidence that mindfulness eases anxiety, depression (Bajaj, Robins, & Pande, 2016), and pain (Zeidan & Vago, 2016); boosts resilience to stress (Hwang et al, 2017); and cultivates greater compassion (Fernando, Skinner, & Consedine, 2017), attention (Fountain-Zaragoza & Prakash, 2017), and connection (Adair, Fredrickson, Castro-Schilo, Kim, & Sidberry, 2017) with others.…”