A two-week meditation intervention of low or high body-focus does not grant the ability to sense the heart rate at rest
Tim Neville Palmer, Clémence Alméras, Joshua Marquez, Nicolas Legrand, Elsa Fouragnan, Jacqueline Scholl
PsyArXiv December 16, 2025 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/d9yj3_v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Counterbalanced within-subject intervention study |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 26 |
| Population | Participants practicing meditation at home |
| Intervention | Low body-focused meditation |
| Duration | Two weeks at home |
| Measures | Heart Rate Discrimination task, psychometric survey of psychotic-like experiences, mystical experiences, and interoception |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key points | Two weeks of high versus low body-focused meditation produced no significant differences in interoception, psychotic-like experiences, or mystical experiences. On the Heart Rate Discrimination task, participants' responses were driven only by the external auditory cue and not by their heart rate, indicating that heart rate perception at rest is difficult even after body-focused meditation training. |
Abstract
Meditation techniques have been identified as relating differently to mental health outcomes, challenging experiences (e.g. anxiety, somatic effects, and psychotic-like experiences) and cognitive and emotional processes. Our aim was to better understand the differential relationship between ‘low body focused’ and ‘high body focused’ meditation techniques with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), mystical experiences and interoception. To achieve this, we employed the Heart Rate Discrimination task (two-alternative forced choice task requiring comparing of perceived heartrate to a subsequent series of auditory beeps), and psychometric survey of PLEs, mystical experiences and interoception in a counterbalanced within-subject intervention study. 26 participants were assigned to practice a meditation with high or low body focus for two weeks at home using audio guidance. We did not find any significant differences between the low vs high body focused technique intervention for task-based or questionnaire measures for interoception, PLEs or mystical experiences. Further analysis suggested that on the group level, participants’ trial-wise responses were only influenced by the auditory external cue and not their heart rate. This suggests that heart rate perception at rest is very difficult for participants, even after undergoing a body-focused meditation training. In conclusion, a short-term high vs low body-focused meditation did not differentially affect markers of interoception, psychotic-like or mystical experiences.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |