Contemplative Training and Psychological Stress: an Analysis of First-person Accounts
Liudmila Gamaiunova, Pierre-Yves Brandt, Matthias Kliegel
Mindfulness June 5, 2021 DOI: 10.1007/s12671-021-01661-1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study with mixed methods Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 45 |
| Population | Meditation practitioners and meditation-naïve controls |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Contemplation Thematic analysis Affect linguistics Feeling Stress linguistics Task project management Clinical psychology Applied psychology Qualitative research Psychotherapist |
| Citations | 6 |
| Key findings | Meditation practitioners experienced psychological stress differently, using humor, positive affect, combined emotion regulation strategies, and adaptive attention allocation. |
Abstract
Abstract Objectives Several studies have investigated the relationship between contemplative approaches and psychobiological stress response; however, this area of research is still new, the mechanisms of the relationship between the stress response attenuation and contemplative training have not been fully delineated, and little is known about the effects of contemplative practice on the ways psychological stress is experienced. This study aimed to explore the first-person experience of psychological stress in meditation practitioners.
Methods: We conducted short semi-structured interviews with twenty-five meditation practitioners and twenty meditation-naïve controls immediately after they had undergone a laboratory task (the Trier Social Stress Test). A mixed-method approach was used to analyze the interviews. Thematic analysis was combined with descriptive statistics of the qualitative information that had been converted to quantitative data.
Results: Experiences instantiating main themes were identified as follows: (1) primary experiences encountered, describing the most salient experiences associated with the task; (2) reasons for stress, delineating the analyses of why the task was stressful; (3) affect, dealing with emotional experiences during the task; (4) emotion regulation; and (5) attention allocation describing regulatory strategies employed by the participants. Responses to subjective stress experience in meditation practitioners included use of humor, presence of positive affect, combinations of different types of emotion regulation strategies, and adaptive attention allocation.
Conclusions: This study elucidates particularities of meditators’ subjective experience of psychological stress, provides new insights on the mechanisms of meditation effect on the stress response, and proposes new directions for research.