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.