Breath Versus Emotions: The Impact of Different Foci of Attention During Mindfulness Meditation on the Experience of Negative and Positive Emotions.
The Behavior Therapist December 1, 2017 T. Beblo, S. Pelster, Christine Schilling et al.
Both breathing meditation and emotion-focused meditation, compared to a control condition, led to a more preferable delayed emotional reaction to negative stimuli in 65 adult novice meditators. Participants watched positively and negatively valenced film clips while either focusing on their breath, focusing on their emotions, or focusing on nothing in particular; ten minutes later, they watched comparable clips without any mindful attitude. The two meditation conditions appeared equally effective as emotion regulation strategies for dealing with negative emotional states.