Meta Flow Experience: Exploring Group Mindfulness Meditation in the Immersive Environment with Multi-senses Feedback

Abstract

This research presents an exploratory study focusing on developing the immersive mindfulness meditation group experience. The primary goal is to observe the impact of Extended Reality (XR) on enhancing people’s awareness and cultivating inner tranquility. Previous works have explored the benefit of group meditation and the potential of utilizing multisensory feedback in XR. Our study designs an activity that employs interactive digital art to help the therapist verbally convey the concept of mindfulness meditation through participants’ senses, including visual, olfactory, gustatory, auditory, haptic, interoceptive, and proprioceptive perceptions. Unlike the traditional mindfulness meditation experience, the XR experience provides multiple channels for participants to engage in mindfulness, extending beyond mere imagination. By surrounding the therapist’s healing script in immersive projection, the experience can stimulate participants in the space in which they exist physically. To collect participant feedback, we did a short questionnaire with 68 responses. The result shows that few attendees would connect the activity with other traditional psychological therapy activities they attended, but most participants indicated that they had a different experience. Like the conventional activity, it brings them a calm and peaceful mind. The study gathered considerations for designing group mindfulness meditation, including participant preparation and selection, the provision of multisensory stimulation, and essential factors when collecting feedback.