Post-hypnotic safety suggestion improves stress coping with long-lasting effects.

Effective coping with acute stress is important to promote mental health and to build stress resilience. Interventions improving stress coping usually require long training periods. In this study, we present a hypnosis-based intervention that produces long-term effects after a single hypnosis session. In that session, we established a post-hypnotic safety suggestion that participants can activate afterwards with a cue, the Jena Safety Anchor. We tested 60 participants in our study who all received the hypnosis session and a stress task. The safety group used the Jena Safety Anchor during acute stress (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST). The control group used a neutral anchor. We measured subjective stress responses via self-reports and physiological stress responses via saliva and blood samples as well as heart rate. One week later, all participants filled in an online survey to measure long-term effects of the post-hypnotic safety suggestion. We found that participants using the Jena Safety Anchor during the TSST reported significantly lower stress compared to the control group. The safety group also reported significantly fewer negative thoughts concerning their TSST performance than the control group during the stress recovery phase and 1 week later. All participants indicated that the Jena Safety Anchor still worked 1 week after its establishment. Suggestibility did not affect the efficacy of the Jena Safety Anchor. Our findings demonstrate that post-hypnotic safety suggestions improve stress coping with long-lasting effects, which makes it a promising intervention to promote mental health and establish stress resilience in just one hypnosis session.

Spreading positive change: Societal benefits of meditation.

Research over the past decades has revealed a variety of beneficial effects of meditation training. These beneficial effects span the levels of health and well-being, cognition, emotion, and social behavior. Around the same time, sociologists have shown that traits and outcomes on the individual level have the potential to spread in communities over three or more degrees. This means, for example, that changes can spread from one person to the next, and on to yet another person. Here, we propose that meditation-induced changes may likewise spread through the social networks of meditation practitioners. Such spreading may happen by positively influencing others through prosocial actions, improved cognitive functioning, and increased positive affect. Positive affective states and their underlying physiological correlates may also be shared in the literal sense. We argue that the spreading of positive meditation effects could provide the basis for collective responses to some of the urgent challenges we face in our current time and society and call for future meditation research to examine the phenomenon.

A multicenter feasibility study on implementing a brief mindful breathing exercise into regular university courses.

Practicing mindfulness is associated with stress reduction and with positive effects in the context of learning and teaching. Although effects on student populations have been studied extensively, there are few studies implementing mindfulness exercises in university courses directly. For this reason, we aimed to investigate whether the use of a brief mindfulness exercise in regular university courses, guided by the lecturers, is feasible and has immediate effects on the students' mental states. We conducted a preregistered multicenter study with one observational arm, following an ABAB design. In total, N = 325 students from 19 different university courses were included at baseline and n = 101 students at post measurement. Students were recruited by N = 14 lecturers located in six different universities in Germany. Lecturers started their courses either by guiding a brief mindfulness exercise (intervention condition) or as they regularly would, with no such exercise (control condition). In both conditions, the mental states of students and lecturers were assessed. Over the semester, n = 1193 weekly observations from students and n = 160 observations from lecturers were collected. Intervention effects were analyzed with linear mixed-effects models. The brief mindfulness exercise, compared to no such exercise, was associated with lower stress composite scores, higher presence composite scores, higher motivation for the courses, as well as better mood in students. Effects persisted throughout a respective course session. Lecturers also reported positive effects of instructing mindfulness. Implementing a brief mindfulness exercise in regular university teaching sessions is feasible and has positive effects on both students and lecturers.

Plasma oxytocin is modulated by mental training, but does not mediate its stress-buffering effect.

Based on its role in social processing and stress, oxytocin has been suggested to mediate stress reduction of socio-affective, compassion-based mental training. We tested this hypothesis in the ReSource Project, a 9-month longitudinal mental training study. Participants practiced three different types of mental training, targeting either attentional abilities (Presence Module), socio-affective or socio-cognitive abilities (Affect and Perspective Modules). We investigated plasma oxytocin levels, and their link to cortisol and subjective reactivity to acute psychosocial stress as a function of previous mental training (n = 313). In a subsample (n = 113), to better understand oxytocin's involvement in the effects of socio-affective training, we explored oxytocin, cortisol and subjective experiential responses to a single Loving-kindness Meditation (LKM) conducted after three months of Affect training (versus rest without prior training). We found that, independent of mental training, stress triggered acute oxytocin release. Following a single LKM, however, acute oxytocin release was unaffected. Training effects were only found in overall oxytocin release during both, stress and LKM. Compared to no training, 3-month compassion-based Affect training decreased overall oxytocin levels in the context of psychosocial stress, but increased overall oxytocin levels during LKM. Training-induced changes in overall oxytocin were unrelated to cortisol and subjective stress reactivity. Based on Quintana and Guastella's (2020) theory of oxytocin as an allostatic hormone with anticipatory properties, we interpret training-induced changes in overall oxytocin levels as alterations in the anticipated emotional relevance of specific events. After training socio-affective skills for three months, the stressful situation may have lost its emotional saliency, whereas the meditation technique itself gained emotional relevance. We conclude that changes in peripheral oxytocin release do not mediate stress reduction after mental training, and encourage the investigation of an allostatic concept of oxytocin in future research.

Contemplative Mental Training Reduces Hair Glucocorticoid Levels in a Randomized Clinical Trial.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the effect of regular contemplative mental training on endocrine and psychological indices of long-term stress. METHODS: An open-label efficacy trial that comprised three distinct 3-month long modules targeting attention and interoception, socioaffective, or sociocognitive abilities through dyadic exercises and secularized meditation practices was conducted with healthy adults. Participants underwent the training for 3 or 9 months, or were assigned to a retest control cohort. Chronic stress indices were assayed at four time points: pretraining and after 3, 6, and 9 months. The main outcome measures were cortisol (HC) and cortisone (HE) concentration in hair and self-reported long-term stress. RESULTS: Of 362 initially randomized individuals, 30 dropped out before study initiation (n = 332; mean [SD] age = 40.7 [9.2] years; 197 women). Hair-based glucocorticoid assays were available from n = 227, and questionnaire data from n = 326. Results from three separate training cohorts (TC1-3) revealed consistent decreases in HC and HE levels over the first three (TC3) to 6 months (TC1 and TC2) of training, with no further reduction at the final 9-month mark (baseline to end of training differences, HC, TC1: t(355) = 2.59, p = .010, contrast estimate (est.) [SE] = 0.35 [0.14]; HC, TC2: t(363) = 4.06, p < .001, est. = 0.48 [0.12]; HC, TC3: t(368) = 3.18, p = .002, est. = 0.41 [0.13]; HE, TC1: t(435) = 3.23, p = .001, est. = 0.45 [0.14]; HE, TC2: t(442) = 2.60, p = .010, est. = 0.33 [0.13]; HE, TC3: t(446) = 4.18, p < .001, est. = 0.57 [0.14]). Training effects on HC increased with individual compliance (practice frequency), and effects on both HC and HE were independent of training content and unrelated to change in self-reported chronic stress. Self-reported stress, and cortisol-to-dehydroepiandrosterone ratios as an exploratory endpoint, were also reduced, albeit less consistently. CONCLUSIONS: Our results point to the reduction of long-term cortisol exposure as a mechanism through which meditation-based mental training may exert positive effects on practitioners' health.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01833104.

It matters what you practice: differential training effects on subjective experience, behavior, brain and body in the ReSource Project.

Mindfulness interventions have gained much attraction, also due to their promise to improve health and wellbeing. However, not enough attention is devoted to the differentiation between various mental practice types. Here, we summarize findings from the ReSource Project, a 9-month longitudinal mental training study comparing practices focusing on (a) present-moment attention and interoception, (b) socio-emotional processes such as compassion and loving kindness and (c) meta-cognitive processes and perspective-taking on self and others. We find evidence for differential training effects of these practice types on all levels of observation, ranging from distinct phenomenological fingerprints and structural brain plasticity to selective improvements in social cognition, altruism and peripheral physiology, including the cortisol response to psychosocial stress. We argue for a more differentiated view on the concept of mindfulness and meditation.