Women who practiced either self-compassion or nature-focused guided imagery meditations for one week showed significant increases in self-compassion and body appreciation, and significant decreases in body shame. There was no change in appearance-contingent self-worth. The study found no advantage of self-compassion meditations over guided imagery, suggesting that common elements between the two practices may improve body image. The authors call for further research to isolate specific effects.
A one-week Internet-based self-compassion meditation training, shortened from three weeks to reduce dropout, was tested in 80 undergraduate women with body image concerns. Those randomly assigned to the training showed improvements in self-compassion and body image distress compared with a waitlist control group. Attrition was low, but compliance with daily meditation practice was poor. The authors suggest that even brief exposure to self-compassion principles may help reduce body image distress, though better engagement strategies are needed.