Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Differential Effects Of Mindful Breathing, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, And Loving-Kindness Meditation On Decentering And Negative Reactions To Repetitive Thoughts., Greg Feldman, Jeffrey M. Greeson, Joanna Senville

Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics

Decentering has been proposed as a potential mechanism of mindfulness-based interventions but has received limited empirical examination to date in experimental studies comparing mindfulness meditation to active comparison conditions. In the present study, we compared the immediate effects of mindful breathing (MB) to two alternative stress-management techniques: progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM) to test whether decentering is unique to mindfulness meditation or common across approaches. Novice meditators (190 female undergraduates) were randomly assigned to complete one of three 15-min stress-management exercises (MB, PMR, or LKM) presented by audio recording. Immediately after the exercise, participants completed measures of …