#Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens. A lot of varieties of #meditations exist such as concentration meditation or open awareness meditation. Mindfulness meditation practice is often learned in mindfulness-based programs (MBPs).
A new study, called "The relationship between mindfulness meditation and well-being during 8 weeks of ecological momentary assessment", showed the main effects of 8-week mindfulness-based programs (MBP) on anxiety and depression.
457 participants ranging from 15 to 24 years old volunteered to take part in the online mindfulness-based programs (MBP) for a period of 56 days. 88% of the participants were females and 80.6% went to upper secondary school.
Participants were asked, via an application, questions such as the number of minutes practised per day before 9 am. They meditated 0 to 90 minutes per day. Once a week, they had to report the anxiety scale, as well as measured the happiness and sleep problems with a global item. To maximize the participant response rate, the weekly questionnaire was designed to be as light as possible while attempting to maximize the extent to which it operationalizes well-being.
The beneficial effect was immediate, as there was a marked decrease in anxiety and sleep problems and an increase in happiness in the first weeks of the program. In MBP studies that only use pre - and post measurements, it is hard to know whether salutary effects occur in the beginning, in the middle, in the end, or throughout the course of the MBP. The amount of practice was not a major contributor to benefit in the data.
According to the results, anxiety and sleep problems decreased while happiness increased. This means that the benefits from the MBP were associated with lower baseline anxiety, higher happiness level, and fewer sleep problems.
Other studies have concluded that these MBPs have mostly shown to benefit participants by alleviating or preventing depression and anxiety. In these studies, the amount of MBP participants practice appears to be related to the magnitude of benefit derived from practice.
There is required additional research to show exactly why and how does MBP affects anxiety, stress, or depression. But according to the present studies, it is suggested that mindfulness meditation positively impacts the wellbeing.