14 DAY TRIAL // Is meditation really beneficial? The integrative body-mind training (IBMT), a type of meditation, has been tested by a team from Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China, and University of Oregon on college undergraduate Chinese subjects, assigned to 40-person experimental or control groups.
The control group received five days of relaxation training, while the tested group five days of IBMT training, the team focusing on how the subjects' attention and responses to stress are influenced.
Both groups were tested before and after these experiments for attention and reactivity to mental stress (provoked by mental arithmetic). The IBMT group displayed higher improvement than the control group in an attention test assessing the subjects' capacities to deal among stress stimuli.
Initially, both categories displayed high release of the stress hormone cortisol induced by the math task, but after receiving IBMT training, the subjects had less cortisol release, pointing to a significant improvement in stress control, connected also to decreased levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue than in the control category. "This study improves the prospect for examining brain mechanisms involved in the changes in attention and self-regulation that occur following meditation training. The study took only five days, so it was possible to randomly assign the subjects and do a thorough before-and-after analysis of the training effects.", said co-author Michael I. Posner, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon.
The IBMT technique does not attempt to remove thoughts, being based on a state of restful alertness, that induces a high level of body-mind awareness while being trained by a coach, who offers breath-adjustment instructions and mental imagery in a proper musical background.
"IBMT has been found to improve emotional and cognitive performance, as well as social behavior, in people," said lead author Yi-Yuan Tang, a professor in the Institute of Neuroinformatics and Laboratory for Body and Mind at Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China.
This approach did not assess brain changes, although previous investigations point to shifts in the neural networks. "Planned studies in the United States will include functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine any brain network changes induced by training." Posner further added. "IBMT is an easy, effective way for improvement in self-regulation in cognition, emotion and social behavior. Our study is consistent with the idea that attention, affective processes and the quality of moment-to-moment awareness are flexible skills that can be trained.", wrote the authors.
"At this point, the findings suggest a measurable benefit that people could achieve through body-mind meditation, especially involving an effective training regimen, but larger studies are needed to fully test the findings of this small, short-term study", Posner said.