Why Do People Begin to Meditate and Why Do They Continue?

Theumer, Jan

doi:10.1007/s12671-020-01367-w

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…Furthermore, the eight-fold yoga path was designed as a lifelong journey for spiritual seekers on their way to enlightenment (Feuerstein, 2012 ). Participants in scientific studies (and meditators in general) are usually motivated to meditate for much more mundane reasons (Sedlmeier and Theumer, 2020 ). Thus, providing participants with a less extensive set of practices might give them more time to adjust and assimilate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Effects of Ethical Education, Physical Hatha Yoga, and Mantra Meditation on Well-Being and Stress in Healthy Participants—An Experimental Single-Case Study

Matko

Bringmann

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Traditionally, yoga is a multicomponent practice consisting of postures, breathing techniques, meditation, mantras, and ethics. To date, only a few studies have tried to dismantle the effects of each of these components and their combinations. To fill this gap, we examined the incremental effects of ethical education and physical Hatha yoga on mantra meditation using a single-case multiple-baseline design. This study was part of a project evaluating the new mind–body program Meditation-Based Lifestyle Modification. Fifty-seven healthy participants with no regular yoga or meditation practice were randomly assigned to three baselines (7, 14, and 21 days) and four conditions using a random number generator. The conditions were mantra meditation alone (MA), meditation plus physical yoga (MY), meditation plus ethical education (ME), and meditation plus yoga and ethical education (MYE). All the interventions lasted for 8 weeks and were run consecutively according to baseline length. During the baseline and treatment phases, participants received daily questionnaires measuring their well-being (WHO-5 Well-Being Index), stress (Perceived Stress Scale), and subjective experiences. Forty-two participants completed the treatment and were entered in the analyses. We analyzed our data using visual inspection, effect size estimation (Tau-U), and multilevel modeling. Almost all participants showed a longitudinal increase in well-being. Regarding between-group differences, participants who received ethical education exhibited the largest increases in well-being (Tau-U = 0.30/0.23 for ME/MYE), followed by participants in the MY condition (Tau-U = 0.12). Conversely, participants in the MA condition showed no change (Tau-U = 0.07). There was a tendency for the combined treatments to decrease stress. This tendency was strongest in the MY condition (Tau-U = –0.40) and reversed in the MA condition (Tau-U = 0.17). These results emphasize the incremental and differential effects of practicing meditation in combination with other practices from the eight-fold yoga path. This approach is valuable for better understanding the multifaceted practice of yoga.Clinical Trial Registration:www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT04252976.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Effects of Ethical Education, Physical Hatha Yoga, and Mantra Meditation on Well-Being and Stress in Healthy Participants—An Experimental Single-Case Study

Matko

Bringmann

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Other interesting research questions are if meditators might have developed a different understanding of well-being, if they pursue it in their every-day life actively and how mindfulness and meditation impacts this (non-)strivings. In general it should be considered that motives for starting and maintaining contemplative practices, such as meditation, are very diverse (Sedlmeier and Theumer 2020) and the experience of meditation practice and the self-reported dispositional mindfulness is only partly comparable and not always correlating (Manuel et al 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Mindful Hedonist? Relationships between Well-Being Orientations, Mindfulness and Well-Being Experiences

Richter

Hunecke

2021

J Happiness Stud

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Orientations to well-being, including personal values, motives and goals regarding one’s well-being are often related to the experience of well-being. At the same time, studies show positive effects of mindfulness on well-being. It is conceivable, that the strength of the connection between well-being orientations and experiences depend on the degree of dispositional mindfulness. To explore relationships between orientations and experiences of well-being as well as the potential moderation effect of mindfulness, two cross-sectional online studies with German-speaking participants were conducted. In Study 1 (N = 414) mindfulness moderated the relationship between life of pleasure (measured by the Orientations to Happiness Scale) and life satisfaction (β = −0.10, p = 0.017) as well as the relationship between life of meaning (β = −0.10, p = 0.028). As hypothesized, mindfulness moderated the connection between life of engagement and life satisfaction (β = −0.14, p = 0.001) as well as the negative relationship between search for meaning and life satisfaction (β = 0.15, p < 0.001). In Study 2 (N = 731) none of those effects were statistically replicated. Yet, mindfulness moderated the relationship between hedonia (measured by the Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Action Questionnaire) and life satisfaction (β = −0.07, p = 0.048) as well as the relationship between search for meaning and psychological well-being (β = 0.07, p = 0.015). Overall, the results show that mindfulness has no substantial moderating effect on the well-being orientations and experiences relationship. Yet, in both studies, mindfulness and well-being orientations were consistently related to well-being experiences. This points out, that both are related to the experience of well-being, but beyond that not as interacting factors.

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“…Furthermore, the eightfold yoga path was designed as a lifelong journey for spiritual seekers on their way to enlightenment (Feuerstein, 2012). Participants in scientific studies (and meditators in general) are usually motivated to meditate for much more mundane reasons (Sedlmeier & Theumer, 2020). Thus, providing participants with a less extensive set of practices might give them more time to adjust and assimilate.…”

Section: Framing Mantra Meditation Enhances Its Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes yoga effective? Differential effects of ethical education, physical yoga, and mantra meditation on well-being and stress

Matko¹,

Bringmann²

2021

Preprint

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Traditionally, yoga is a multicomponent practice consisting of postures, breathing techniques, meditation, and ethics. To date, only a few studies have tried to dismantle the effects of each of these components and their combinations. To fill this gap, we examined the incremental effects of ethical education and physical yoga on mantra meditation using a single-case multiple-baseline design. This study was part of a project evaluating the new mind–body program Meditation-Based Lifestyle Modification. Forty-two healthy participants were randomly assigned to four conditions—meditation alone, meditation plus physical yoga, meditation plus ethical education, and meditation plus yoga and ethics. All the interventions lasted for 8 weeks and were run consecutively according to baseline length. During the baseline and treatment phases, participants received daily questionnaires measuring their well-being, perceived stress, and subjective experiences. We analyzed our data using visual inspection, effect size estimation (Tau-U), and multilevel modeling. Almost all participants showed an increase in well-being, except participants in the meditation-only condition. This increase was most prominent in participants who received ethical education. There was a tendency for all treatments to decrease stress. However, there was a marked reduction in stress for participants in the yoga-plus-meditation condition. These results emphasize the incremental and differential effects of practicing meditation in combination with other practices from the eightfold yoga path. This approach is valuable for better understanding the multifaceted practice of yoga.

show abstract

Why Do People Begin to Meditate and Why Do They Continue?

Cited by 24 publications

References 27 publications

Differential Effects of Ethical Education, Physical Hatha Yoga, and Mantra Meditation on Well-Being and Stress in Healthy Participants—An Experimental Single-Case Study

Differential Effects of Ethical Education, Physical Hatha Yoga, and Mantra Meditation on Well-Being and Stress in Healthy Participants—An Experimental Single-Case Study

The Mindful Hedonist? Relationships between Well-Being Orientations, Mindfulness and Well-Being Experiences

What makes yoga effective? Differential effects of ethical education, physical yoga, and mantra meditation on well-being and stress

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