Effect of Mindfulness and Mindful Art on Beginners and Experienced Meditators

TL;DR

This pilot study compares the effects of traditional mindfulness meditation and mindful art on beginners and experienced meditators, showing differential impacts on relaxation and physiological measures over 21 days.

Contribution

It is the first systematic study to evaluate the efficacy of mindful art in conjunction with mindfulness meditation for different experience levels.

Findings

Experienced group showed higher immediate relaxation and breath rate improvements.

Beginners experienced greater overall improvement over time.

Both groups benefited from the interventions.

Abstract

Mindfulness meditation has been proven to be effective in treating a range of mental and physical conditions. Mindful Art is a type of mindfulness meditation that comprises sessions of drawing, painting and sculpturing with mindfulness for a given length of time. To date, the efficacy of mindful art has not been systematically studied. In this paper, we describe an experimental pilot study on two groups of participants, a beginner group of 21 participants and an experienced meditation group of 9 participants, who had previously practiced mindfulness meditation for more than one year. The beginner group was instructed in mindfulness sitting and moving meditation, while the experienced group was instructed in mindful art making in addition to mindfulness meditation. The instructions were delivered remotely over Tencent Conference and WeChat. The sessions were of 90 minutes duration each, twice per week, with 45 minutes of home practice daily and the length of the study was 21 days. The blood pressure, pulse rate and breathing rates, as well as the subjective degree of relaxation were recorded at every session. At the end of the study, the experienced group reported higher average difference in breath rate and relaxation within each session, while the beginner group reported a greater degree of improvement in breath rate and relaxation over the period of the study, although their scores were lower on average than the experienced group.