Large-scale study evaluates short-term impact of self-administered mindfulness exercises on stress

Mindfulness practices, derived from ancient meditative traditions, have become increasingly popular in modern society. Previous studies have shown that these practices, which encourage people to intentionally direct their attention to the present moment, can have many benefits, such as reducing stress, aiding emotional regulation, and improving focus.

Researchers from Université Grenoble Alpes, Swansea University and other institutes around the world have conducted a large-scale study aimed at further exploring the effects of mindfulness practices on stress levels. Their results, published in Human behaviorsuggest that self-administered mindfulness practices may be beneficial in reducing self-reported stress in the short term.

“At the start of my PhD, we decided that a logical first step in gathering evidence was to assess the quality of existing studies through meta-analysis,” said Alessandro Sparacio, first author of the paper, at Medical Xpress. “Our goal was to determine whether the current evidence on self-administered mindfulness was sufficient. We found that existing studies were of insufficient quality and their sample sizes were simply too small.”

When reviewing previous literature focused on self-administered mindfulness practices, Sparacio and colleagues found that most studies had significant limitations. While this did not necessarily mean that mindfulness interventions were ineffective, it reduced the certainty with which they could be considered beneficial.

The researchers therefore decided to conduct a new study responding to the identified limitations. The study they conducted is the first of its kind, as it involved a much larger number of participants recruited from different institutes around the world.

“Fortunately, my first two years of PhD were spent at CORE Lab in Grenoble, where my colleagues had extensive experience with ‘large science team’ projects,” Sparacio said.

“Patrick Forscher, then a postdoc on our team, had recently written an important theoretical paper describing the pros and cons of large team science and was instrumental in setting up this project. Additionally, another Ph.D. , Olivier Dujols, had just established his research infrastructure for his STRAEQ-2 study.”

To overcome the limitations of previous studies, Sparacio relied on the support of the CORE laboratory team at Université Grenoble Alpes, where he obtained his doctorate. Before conducting the actual experiment, he also interviewed numerous mindfulness practitioners to identify the most appropriate practices for the study.

The large-scale study spanned 37 sites, involving 61 researchers from different institutes in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. A total of 2,239 people participated in the study, an unprecedented number for mindfulness research.

As the study was conducted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, participants completed the mindfulness exercises online. The researchers evaluated four of the most well-known mindfulness exercises: mindful breathing, body scanning, mindful walking, and loving-kindness meditation.

“For the body scan exercise, participants mentally scanned different parts of their body, refocusing on each part whenever their mind wandered,” Sparacio explained.

“In mindful breathing, participants focused on their breathing without trying to change it, gently bringing their attention back to their breathing whenever they became distracted. Loving-kindness meditation involved participants directing feelings of loving-kindness toward themselves themselves, then extend these feelings to others. During mindful walking, participants walked in a quiet, distraction-free environment, focusing on the physical sensations of walking and the contact of their feet with the ground.

Study participants were asked to complete a questionnaire about their stress levels via a link provided to them, before and after the mindfulness exercise. Their responses were compared to those of a control group, who instead listened to randomly selected stories of the same length as the exercises.

“Each participant participated in a 15-minute mindfulness meditation session at home, previously recorded by Christoph Spiessens, a certified instructor,” Sparacio said. “This approach allowed participants to practice mindfulness in a familiar and comfortable environment, which was particularly important during the pandemic, when minimizing stress was crucial.”

The large-scale study by Sparacio and colleagues specifically assessed the short-term effects of mindfulness exercises on stress levels, with participants sharing feedback immediately after the exercise. The team found that the exercises significantly reduced subjective stress levels, with most participants reporting feeling less stressed after completing them.

“This was an intense but rewarding project, and I am truly grateful to everyone who contributed, directly or indirectly,” Sparacio said. “As a mindfulness practitioner, I was initially disappointed by the results of our meta-analysis, hoping for high-quality evidence supporting self-administered mindfulness. However, our multi-site study has at less partially confirmed my belief that self-administered mindfulness can be effective.”

Overall, the results of this multinational collaborative research effort suggest that self-administered mindfulness exercises can help reduce stress levels in the short term. Given the large sample size and the team’s efforts to overcome previous limitations, this could increase confidence in some of the short-term benefits of these practices.

“Although I was a proponent of mindfulness, one of my supervisors, Dr. Rocha IJzerman, was skeptical and therefore kept me on my toes to provide high-quality evidence,” Sparacio said. “Yet he now also admits that the evidence we have gathered has shifted his perspective toward the belief that mindfulness works.”

Although the team’s results highlight the benefits of mindfulness, Sparacio says caution should be exercised when using it to make practical recommendations. Indeed, these results do not address some limitations of mindfulness research.

“Although this study provides the best evidence we have so far, there are still limitations to overcome,” he said.

“For example, does the effect hold for low-income people? Are the observed effects not simply due to an “expectation effect”? How do different personality types influence effectiveness? And what happens with a long-term commitment to mindfulness? In summary, while we can assume that self-administered mindfulness is generally effective, people seeking to apply mindfulness in their own lives should do so thoughtfully, keeping these issues in mind. »

Sparacio and colleagues in Singapore are now designing a follow-up multisite project focusing on self-administered mindfulness exercises. This project, which could include 17 of the sites where the previous study was conducted, could overcome other experimental limitations while also assessing physiological and long-term effects.

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