Mindfulness Meditation and Paying Attention to the Heart: Preliminary Findings Regarding Improvements in Interoception after 10-days Intensive Vipassana Meditation.
-
1
The University of Sydney, Psychology, Australia
-
2
Poznań University of Medical Sciences, Department of Cardiology and Intensive Therapy, Poland
Interoception - a self-perception of physiological activity often indexed by the ability to accurately determine one’s own heart rate without taking a pulse - is increasingly being regarded as important for understanding emotion. Individual differences in interoceptive awareness have been linked to increased emotional reactivity (Herbert et al., 2007) and ability to regulate emotions (Füstös et al., 2012), but also greater trait-anxiety (Pollatos et al., 2007) and pain sensitivity (Pollatos et al., 2012). Interoception and ways to modify interoceptive awareness remain poorly understood. This study investigated the ability of Vipassana meditation - concerned with awareness of bodily sensations and mental states – to improve interoceptive awareness. As part of a larger study into the physiological effects of Vipassana meditation, 57 participants without formal training in meditation who had signed up for an intensive 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat were tested twice approximately a fortnight apart; either before and after the retreat (Novice group: 42 participants); or twice before the retreat (Control group: 15 participants). At each testing session, participants attempted a standard heart beat detection task. Interoceptive awareness was significantly improved in the Novice group after the Vipassana retreat (F1,41=7.01, p = .011, η2p =.146). This is not likely to be a simple practice effect, since no such change was observed in the Control group (F1,41=0.54, p = .478, η2p =.043), nor was there a change in anxiety ratings for either group (p>.05). In conclusion, despite some recent findings to the contrary, meditative practices may have the ability not only to improve self-perceived interoceptive sensitivity, but also objectively measured interoceptive awareness.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the John Templeton Foundation for their support of this research and the Vipassana Meditation Centre for assisting with the recruitment of participants.
References
Füstös, J., Gramann, K., Herbert, B. M., & Pollatos, O. (2013). On the embodiment of emotion regulation: interoceptive awareness facilitates reappraisal. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8(8), 911-917.
Herbert, B. M., Pollatos, O., & Schandry, R. (2007). Interoceptive sensitivity and emotion processing: an EEG study. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 65(3), 214-227.
Pollatos, O., Herbert, B. M., Kaufmann, C., Auer, D. P., & Schandry, R. (2007). Interoceptive awareness, anxiety and cardiovascular reactivity to isometric exercise. International journal of psychophysiology, 65(2), 167-173.
Pollatos, O., Füstös, J., & Critchley, H. D. (2012). On the generalised embodiment of pain: how interoceptive sensitivity modulates cutaneous pain perception. PAIN®, 153(8), 1680-1686.
Keywords:
Vipassana,
Meditation,
interoception,
Interoceptive Awareness,
Emotion Regulation,
Body awareness,
contemplative practice,
mindfulness
Conference:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Krygier
JR,
Heathers
JA,
Kemp
AH and
Abbott
MJ
(2015). Mindfulness Meditation and Paying Attention to the Heart: Preliminary Findings Regarding Improvements in Interoception after 10-days Intensive Vipassana Meditation..
Conference Abstract:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00026
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
25 Oct 2015;
Published Online:
30 Nov 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Jonathan R Krygier, The University of Sydney, Psychology, Sydney, Australia, jonathan.krygier@sydney.edu.au