The Ecopsychological, Spiritual, Physiological Health and Mood Benefits of Zikr Meditation and Nature for Muslim University Students

Abstract

Muslim students' wellbeing is said to be impacted by zikr meditation because it fosters a sense of connection between the self and nature. Consequently, this study attempts to look into how zikr meditation and being in nature might help Muslim university students' ecopsychological, spiritual, physical, and mental wellbeing. Using the random selection method, this study assigned 160 Muslim university students to either (i) engage in zikr meditation or (ii) not engage in meditation in both green outdoor and indoor settings. Blood pressure and pulse rate were then measured to assess physiological responses; Results: The level of mood disturbances, heart rate, and systolic blood pressure are all significantly reduced by the combination of nature-zikr exposure. Spirituality score and the ecopsychology value score were both significantly greater in the meditation group than in the control group. Spending time outside is an effective way to increase spirituality and eco-psychological selfvalue, according to differences between pre-and post-test results. Although further research is needed to replicate these effects in other populations/environments, this study implies that Muslim university students gain significantly from zikr meditation and exposure to nature.

What is a mantra? Guidance for practitioners, researchers, and editors.

“…Standardized Meditation (American Meditation Society) VH 1 Mantra integration Formal and informal use of Jesus Prayer (Knabb & Vazquez, 2018) X H 1 Mantra chanting Maha Mantra chanting (Wolf & Abell, 2003) X H 1 Islamic Dhikr (e.g., Roslan et al, 2022) V H ≥2 h Maha Mrtyunjaya Mantra chanting (Raghuwanshi et al, 2022) C 1 "Om" chanting (Perry et al, 2023) C 1 Kirtan Kriya (e.g., Moss et al, 2012) C 2…”

“…Among the mantra interventions in Table 1, for example, several simply assigned each participant an ostensibly individualized mantra (as done in Transcendental Meditation) or assigned all participants the same mantra (interventions studied by Rubinart et al, 2017 and many others). Some interventions were offered in cultural contexts where the task of matching appears to have been eased and anchored by prior participant recognition and cultural familiarity with multiple suitable mantras, from which they were instructed to choose (e.g., El-Salamony & El-ayari, 2023;Roslan et al, 2022). Other interventions have used lists to guide participants to valid selfchosen mantras.…”