Relationship between Meditative Practice and Self-Reported Mindfulness: The MINDSENS Composite Index

et al. (2014) Relationship between Meditative Practice and Self-Reported Mindfulness: The MINDSENS Composite Index. PLoS ONE 9(1): e86622. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0086622 Relationship between Meditative Practice and Self- Reported Mindfulness: The MINDSENS Composite Index Joaquim Soler 0 Ausia` s Cebolla 0 Albert Feliu-Soler 0 Marcelo M. P. Demarzo 0 Juan C. Pascual 0 Rosa Ban os 0 Javier Garca-Campayo 0 Nanyin Zhang, Penn State University, United States of America 0 1 Department of Psychiatry, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau , Barcelona , Spain , 2 Universitat Auto` noma de Barcelona (UAB), Centro de Investigacio n Biome dica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Institut d'Investigaci o Biome`dica- Sant Pau (IIB-SANT PAU) , Barcelona, Spain, 3 Ciber Fisiopatologia de la obesidad y la nutricio n (CIBEROBN) Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 4 Departament de psicologia ba`sica, cl nica i psicobiologia , Universitat Jaume I , Castello , Spain , 5 ''Mente Aberta'' - Brazilian Center for Mindfulness and Health Promotion. Department of Preventive Medicine, Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP) , Sao Paulo, Brazil, 6 Departament de Personalitat , Avaluaci o i Tractaments Psicolo` gics, University of Valencia , Valencia , Spain , 7 Department of Psychiatry, Miguel Servet Hospital & University of Zaragoza, Instituto Aragone s de Ciencias de la Salud, Red de Actividades Preventivas y de Promocio n de la Salud (REDIAPP) , Zaragoza , Spain Mindfulness has been described as an inherent human capability that can be learned and trained, and its improvement has been associated with better health outcomes in both medicine and psychology. Although the role of practice is central to most mindfulness programs, practice-related improvements in mindfulness skills is not consistently reported and little is known about how the characteristics of meditative practice affect different components of mindfulness. The present study explores the role of practice parameters on self-reported mindfulness skills. A total of 670 voluntary participants with and without previous meditation experience (n = 384 and n = 286, respectively) responded to an internet-based survey on various aspects of their meditative practice (type of meditation, length of session, frequency, and lifetime practice). Participants also completed the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and the Experiences Questionnaire (EQ). The group with meditation experience obtained significantly higher scores on all facets of FFMQ and EQ questionnaires compared to the group without experience. However different effect sizes were observed, with stronger effects for the Observing and Non-Reactivity facets of the FFMQ, moderate effects for Decentering in EQ, and a weak effect for Non-judging, Describing, and Acting with awareness on the FFMQ. Our results indicate that not all practice variables are equally relevant in terms of developing mindfulness skills. Frequency and lifetime practice - but not session length or meditation type - were associated with higher mindfulness skills. Given that these 6 mindfulness aspects show variable sensitivity to practice, we created a composite index (MINDSENS) consisting of those items from FFMQ and EQ that showed the strongest response to practice. The MINDSENS index was able to correctly discriminate daily meditators from non-meditators in 82.3% of cases. These findings may contribute to the understanding of the development of mindfulness skills and support trainers and researchers in improving mindfulness-oriented practices and programs. - A decade after the first meta-analysis showing the beneficial effects of mindfulness on health was published [1], the body of evidence on the benefits of mindfulness practice to treat stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms continues to grow. Mindfulness has been proven effective not only for the general population, but also to treat several specific clinical populations [2], [3], [4], [5]. According to the traditional roots of mindfulness, it is assumed that long-term meditation practice cultivates mindfulness skills and that development of such skills, in turn, promote psychological well-being [6]. From this perspective, several authors have described mindfulness as an inherent capability that can be learned and practiced by everyone [7], [8], [9]. Studies that have evaluated the inherent ability to achieve mindfulness in meditation-naive subjects have found an association between mindfulness trait scores and broad indexes of physical and mental health and overall well-being [1], [10]. Furthermore, the role of regular meditative practice seems to be highly relevant to outcomes. For this reason, most mindfulness programs teach a wide range of practices and require home-practice to improve mindfulness skills. In Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), 45 minutes of daily practice is the standard [8], [11]. Regular practice of mindfulness meditation seems to be essential to attain the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness-based programs. However, the optimum balance between the dose of meditative practice and clinically-relevant health outcomes is still not clear. One important area of current mindfulness research is to determine this optimal practice time in order to design more effective and cost-effective mindfulness programs and training. In one of the most remarkable studies on the effects of mindfulness practice [12], 174 subjects participated in an 8-week MBSR program. The aim of the study was to evaluate changes in participants pre- and post-mindfulness training stress levels, medical symptoms, anxiety, pain, and mindfulness skills. Results from that study showed that the amount of time spent on mindfulness practice at home was significantly associated with changes in specific components of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) [13], thus demonstrating that the amount of formal practice (i.e., sitting meditation, body scan, yoga) were associated with an increase in the subjects ability to not react immediately to an inner experience and, to a lesser extent, with the capacity to observe mindfully both internal and external experiences, and to act with awareness during daily activities, rather than behaving in an autopilot mode. In another study, 83 chronically-ill patients who participated in a MBSR program [14] were evaluated to determine the relationship between varying doses of mindfulness exercises, mindfulness skills development (assessed with the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale or MAAS; [10]), and certain health indices. Surprisingly, neither the type nor the dose of formal mindfulness practice was associated with clinical outcomes or increases in self-reported mindfulness scores. In fact, only one type of informal practice (breath awareness) was found to increase mindfulness skills and to reduce clinical symptoms. Notwithstanding these findings, it is import (...truncated)