From the Heart: Comparing the Effects of Spiritual and Secular Meditation on Psychophysiology, Cognition, Mental Health, and Social Functioning in Healthy Adults

Background

Secular forms of meditation have been widely accepted as an effective tool to promote well-being and as therapeutic strategies. The popularity of such practices, most notably mindfulness meditation, can be attributed to the substantial body of research on their beneficial effects in the past few decades. While these practices are loosely based on Eastern traditions, and actively reduce emotional reactivity, some Western spiritual meditations have retained their God-centred focus and aim to elicit strong emotions. The current study aims to examine the effects of heart-centred contemplation based on Christian and Islamic traditions on mental, physical, cognitive, and social well-being, compare the outcomes of these exercises to mindfulness meditation, and investigate the external correlates of the outcomes.

Aims

The present study aims to recruit healthy adults to investigate and compare the effects of Christian and Islamic heart-centred spiritual meditation to mindfulness meditation (Mindfulness-based stress reduction; MBSR) and waitlist control, respectively. The potential effects will be examined using measures from multiple domains, with a focus on psychophysiology, cognition, mental health, and social functioning. Additionally, the study aims to examine the possible external correlates of the outcomes by testing perspective-taking, affect, religiosity, spiritual experiences, closeness to God, closeness to the offender, and credibility/expectancies about the spiritual meditation program. The study seeks to understand the impact of different types of meditation practices on the well-being of individuals.

Participants

This study will apply a mixed method repeated measures design to examine a three-arm stratified randomised control trial with healthy samples of Christians and Muslims in multiple testing centres in India. Assessments will be conducted at three time points: pre-intervention (T1), after intervention (T2), and at a 3-month follow-up (T3). Eligible participants will be first stratified into Christian and Islamic samples and then randomly allocated to one of the three conditions: religious contemplation (either Christian or Islamic spiritual meditation based on their religions), mindfulness meditation, or waitlist control.

Administration of intervention

The intervention will consist of an 8-week app-based program, including approximately 20-minute daily audio-guided instructions of either one of the spiritual meditations or mindfulness meditation. Participants from the waitlist control will not receive any intervention, but they will be given access to Christian or Islamic meditation app after the experiment is completed.

Outcome measures

Outcome measures consist of domains related to interpersonal functioning, physiology, attention, mental health, spirituality.

Primary outcomes will be the interpersonal functioning domain including measures of prosociality, forgiveness, empathy, and perspective taking.

Secondary outcomes include domains concerning physiology, attention, and mental health. Physiology domain encompasses pain tolerance, pain intensity, stress reactivity (heart rate and heart rate variability), psychophysiological reactivity associated with forgiveness (heart rate and heart rate variability). Attention domain includes measures of alerting attention, orienting attention, and executive attention networks. Mental health domain involves self-reported stress, depression, anxiety, subjective well-being, and positive and negative affect.

• Physiology: Change in Pain Tolerance [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Physiology: Change in Pain Intensity [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Physiology: Change in Stress Reactivity (1) [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Physiology: Change in Stress Reactivity (2) [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Physiology: Change in psychophysiological reactivity associated with forgiveness (1) [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Physiology: Change in psychophysiological reactivity associated with forgiveness (2) [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Attention: Change in Alerting Attention network [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Attention: Change in Orienting Attention network [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Attention: Change in Executive Attention network [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 3 hours before the intervention), and post-intervention (collected up to two weeks after the 8-week intervention)]
• Mental health: Change in self-reported Stress [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 1 week before the intervention), post-intervention (collected up to 2 weeks after the 8-week intervention), and at 3-month follow-up (collected up to 2 weeks following 3 months after the end of the intervention)]
• Mental health: Change in self-reported Depression [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 1 week before the intervention), post-intervention (collected up to 2 weeks after the 8-week intervention), and at 3-month follow-up (collected up to 2 weeks following 3 months after the end of the intervention)]
• Mental health: Change in self-reported Anxiety [Срок оценки: Pre-intervention (collected up to 1 week before the intervention), post-intervention (collected up to 2 weeks after the 8-week intervention), and at 3-month follow-up (collected up to 2 weeks following 3 months after the end of the intervention)]