Doing what matters in times of stress: No-nonsense meditation and occupational well-being in COVID-19.

A six-month meditation practice of five to ten minutes daily improved emotional and physical well-being and prevented the development of cognitive well-being problems among 199 teachers who meditated with their pupils. A control group of 42 teachers showed worsening cognitive well-being over the same period. The effects were strongest for emotional and cognitive well-being and followed a linear trend. The findings suggest that focused attention meditation, a technique used in many mindfulness-based interventions, contributes to the well-being benefits of those interventions. Occupational groups facing emotional, cognitive, or physical well-being issues may benefit from a few minutes of this practice per day.

Study at a glance

Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the general public's health and well-being, it exacerbated the pre-existing well-being issues in the educational sector in many countries. Mindfulness-based interventions are often applied to protect and promote occupational well-being. To investigate how the well-being benefits of these interventions arise, we selected one accessible technique that is used in most of them: focused attention meditation. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, 199 teachers voluntarily practiced five to ten minutes of meditation together with their pupils, every morning for six months. We employed a three-wave longitudinal design to follow any changes in the meditating teachers' well-being and compared these changes to a waitlist control condition of 42 teachers. Three dimensions of well-being were measured at baseline, half-time, and post-intervention: emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being. Latent growth curve models revealed that the meditation technique not only improves well-being but also prevents the development of well-being problems. The practice of focused attention meditation resulted in improvements in emotional and physical well-being and prevented the development of cognitive well-being problems that were observed within the control condition. The effects were strongest for emotional and cognitive well-being and followed a linear trend. This paper shows that the well-being effects of mindfulness-based interventions are at least in part due to the focused attention meditation that is practiced in them. Occupational groups that experience emotional, cognitive, or physical well-being issues can benefit from a few minutes of focused attention meditation per day. Trial registration: ISRCTN ISRCTN61170784 (https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN61170784).