Differential effects of ethics education, physical hatha yoga, and mantra meditation on well-being and stress in healthy participants: an experimental single case study.
Matko K, Sedlmeier P, Bringmann HC (2021) Differential effects of ethics education, physical hatha yoga, and mantra meditation on well-being and stress in healthy participants-an experimental single case study. Front. Psychol. 12: 672301. doi: 10.3389 / fpsyg.2021.672301
Commentary
Traditional yoga is a multi-component combination of posture, breathing, meditation, mantra, and ethics.
This study used a single-case, multiple baseline design to investigate the progressive effects of ethics education and physical hatha yoga on mantra meditation. 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 are: mantra meditation only (MA), meditation and physical yoga (MY), meditation and ethics education (ME), and meditation, yoga, and ethics education (MYE).
All interventions lasted for 8 weeks and were run consecutively for the length of the baseline.
During the baseline and treatment phases, participants were asked to complete daily questionnaires that measured their well-being (WHO-5 Happiness Index), stress (Perceived Stress Scale), and subjective experience. Forty-two participants completed the experiment and the data were analyzed using visual inspection and effect size estimation (Tau- U)
The results showed that most participants showed a long-term increase in well-being. Differences between groups showed that participants who received ethics education showed the greatest increase in happiness, followed by participants in the MY state. Conversely, participants in the MA condition showed no change. The combination therapy also tended to reduce stress. This trend was strongest in the MY condition (Tau- U = -0.40) and was reversed in the MA condition (Tau- U)
This result emphasizes the gradual and different effects of practicing meditation in combination with other practices from the 8-fold yoga path.
