Mindfulness teacher training enhances interoceptive awareness and reduces emotional distress: a controlled study.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2025 Alberto Chiesa, Cristiano Crescentini, Fabio D'Antoni et al. 5 citations
A nine-month mindfulness teacher training program enhanced the ability to perceive and interpret bodily signals—known as interoceptive awareness—in 38 individuals training to become mindfulness-based intervention teachers, compared with 24 matched controls. The trained group showed significantly greater increases in awareness of mind-body integration. Although overall emotional distress did not differ between groups, increases in self-regulation scores within the training group were linked to decreases in depression and total emotional distress. The findings suggest that mindfulness training for future teachers further improves their capacity to attend to, regulate, and interpret bodily signals.