Five days of brief, daily meditation using the integrative body-mind training method improved attention and reduced stress more than relaxation training alone. In a randomized experiment with 40 undergraduate Chinese students, those who practiced 20 minutes of integrative meditation for five days showed greater improvement on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, higher vigor, reduced cortisol, and increased immunoreactivity compared to a relaxation control group. The findings suggest that even short-term meditation can produce measurable cognitive and physiological benefits, offering a practical way to study meditation using controlled experimental designs.
A brief mindfulness meditation intervention (Integrative Body-Mind Training, or IBMT) alters testosterone and cortisol responses to acute stress differently than relaxation training. In a pilot randomized controlled trial, 20-minute sessions of IBMT or relaxation training were given before and after a stress task. Both groups showed increased cortisol and testosterone after stress, but testosterone rise was not linked to cortisol rise. An additional practice after stress led to higher testosterone in the IBMT group and higher cortisol in the relaxation group. The authors suggest IBMT modulates a dual-hormone profile via the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal and hypothalamus-pituitary-testicular axes.