A brief mindfulness-based mobile app (BM-MA) is being tested for feasibility and preliminary effects among 60 Indonesian senior high school teachers experiencing anxiety and stress. The three-week program involves 10-20 minutes of daily mindfulness practice. Outcomes measured include anxiety, stress, life satisfaction, self-efficacy, trait mindfulness, self-compassion, and physical and social dysfunction, assessed at baseline, postintervention, and one-month follow-up. The protocol describes a randomized controlled trial with an intervention group and a wait-list control group. Results are expected in December 2024.
A 15-minute session of Stillness Meditation, which involves skillfully doing nothing, is calming, pleasant, and easy for meditation-naive adults, not aversive as earlier research suggested. In a randomized trial with 165 participants, those practicing Stillness Meditation reported the session as calm, pleasant, and easy, and showed increases in heart rate variability and interbeat interval from baseline. While focused attention led to higher self-reported calm than Stillness Meditation or an audiobook, there were no differences in easiness, pleasantness, or cardiac measures between groups. The findings validate Stillness Meditation as a tool for studying pure consciousness.
People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are especially sensitive to social rejection. This experiment tested whether brief mindfulness or loving-kindness meditation (LKM) could help. One hundred eighteen adults with high BPD traits were randomly assigned to 10 minutes of mindful breathing, LKM, or a no-instruction control before experiencing social rejection. The mindfulness group recovered faster from negative affect and feelings of rejection than the control group, and also recovered faster from negative affect than the LKM group. Groups did not differ in immediate emotional reactions or aggressive behavior. Higher baseline trait mindfulness predicted less aggression overall. Brief mindfulness may help reduce the emotional impact of social rejection in people with high BPD traits, but brief LKM showed limited benefit.
Brief mindfulness meditation, but not loving-kindness meditation (LKM), reduces shame in adults with high borderline personality disorder (BPD) traits. In a laboratory experiment, 88 participants with high BPD traits recalled a negative autobiographical memory to induce shame, then were randomly assigned to 10 minutes of mindful breathing, LKM, or a no-instruction control. Shame decreased significantly more in the mindfulness group than in the LKM or control groups. Social problem-solving abilities did not differ among groups after the intervention. The findings suggest mindfulness is effective for regulating shame in this population, while LKM may be less useful under high emotional arousal.