Practicing a daily mindful breathing exercise for 14 days helped parents of children with behavior problems become more aware and less stressed, but did not clearly improve their ability to respond with acceptance. In a small pilot study, four highly stressed parents with a child showing clinical behavior problems completed a baseline phase and then listened to an audio-recorded mindful breathing exercise twice daily for two weeks. Daily ratings showed gradual improvements in awareness, stress, and happiness linked to the practice, but acceptance did not show a similar functional relationship. The authors suggest that consistent, simple mindfulness exercises can benefit some aspects of mindfulness and reduce stress, while changes in acceptance may require more targeted practice.
Presenting mindfulness meditation as a 'scientifically proven tool' rather than a 'sacred Buddhist practice' can enhance its therapeutic benefits. College students who received a secular-primed mindfulness intervention reported greater increases in happiness compared to those who received a sacred-primed version, though both mindfulness conditions reduced depression, anxiety, stress, and negative affect while boosting positive affect and optimism relative to a control group. The findings suggest that how mindfulness is framed influences its effectiveness for specific outcomes.
Brief daily meditation exercises, whether focused on mindful breathing or loving-kindness, produced very large improvements over time in college students, regardless of which type they practiced. Only one measure of psychological flexibility (defusion) and one mental health outcome (depression) showed different effects depending on the meditation type. Individually, mindful breathing and loving-kindness meditation appeared somewhat more beneficial than combining them or using a relaxation control. The 10-minute guided audio meditations were well accepted by participants.
A brief, single-use mindful body scan practice did not reduce risk-taking behavior more than a mind-wandering control exercise in a laboratory setting. In a randomized trial with 153 undergraduate students, no significant interaction of condition by time was found on state mindfulness or risk-taking scores, though main effects of time emerged for both variables. A small, significant correlation between change in state mindfulness and change in risk-taking was observed for the full sample, but in the opposite direction than expected. The findings suggest that a brief body scan may not differentially affect risk-taking compared to mind-wandering.