Research Method

Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing 2014, 5(8), 909-912 http://www.iahrw.com/index.php/home/journal_detail/19#list

© 2014 Indian Association of Health, Research and Welfare

Effects of dynamic meditation on anxiety Naved Iqbal, Archana Singh, Sheeema Aleem and Samina Bano

Department of Psychology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

Although traditional meditation has been found to be effective in improving physical and mental health of subjects, but there was a paucity of research of the effect of active or dynamic meditation on these variables. Therefore, the present study was aimed at studying the effect of dynamic meditation on anxiety of the subjects. Total sample of the present study comprised of 60 subjects, 30 each in experimental and control group. Subjects in the experimental group were given 21 days training in dynamic meditation. Anxiety of the experimental and control group subjects was measured in pre and post condition with the help of Sinha anxiety scale. Obtained data were analyzed with the help of analysis of covariance. In post condition, an experimental group scored better than the control group on total anxiety. An effect size of dynamic meditation on anxiety was moderate.

Keywords: control group, dynamic meditation, experimental group, mental health

Meditation is a holistic discipline by which the practitioner attempts to get beyond the reflexive, “thinking” mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. According to Smith (1975), the term meditation refers to “a family of mental exercises that generally involve calmly limiting thought and attention.” Shapiro (1982) defines meditation as “a family of techniques which has in common a conscious attempt to focus attention in a nonanalytical way and an attempt not to dwell on discursive, rumination thought.” Such exercises vary widely and can involve sitting still and counting breath, attending to a repeated thought, or focusing on virtually any simple external or internal stimulus.

The predominant meditation practices in much of Asia, from Tibet to Japan, derive from Indian knowledge and tradition. But as it reached China, Japan, Tibet, and Southeastern Asian countries, each region added their own interpretations and developed their own unique way of practicing meditation methods, as in China where Buddhism and Taoism together yielded Zen (Wilber, 1998). Meditation was spread to Western Society thousands of years after it was adopted in the East. It finally started to gain popularity in the West in the mid-20th century. In the 1960s and 1970s, many professors and researchers began testing the effects of meditation and learned about its multitude of benefits.

One common misconception is that all meditation procedures are more or less “the same.” But this is simply incorrect, for major meditation procedures often differ in an important way (Jonathan, 2006). Different meditation traditions also often have very different goals, ranging from physical health and mental well- being to harmony with nature, higher states of consciousness, and experience of God.

Broadly, all the meditation techniques can be classified into two basic approaches: Concentrative meditation and mindfulness meditation (Goleman, 1996).

Concentrative meditation In concentrative meditation, the attention is focused on the breath, an image, or sound (mantra), in order to still the mind and allow a greater awareness and clarity to emerge.

Mindfulness meditation Mindfulness meditation involves expansion of the attention or awareness to become aware of the ongoing sensation and feeling, images, thoughts sounds smells, and so forth without becoming involved in thinking about them (Kutz et al., 1985).

Apart from these broad categories, there are many other meditation techniques that do not fit in above categories but they exist with the same goal of attaining a state of mind achieved during meditation. These meditation techniques that do not assume a fixed posture comes under active meditation.

Active/dynamic meditation Active/dynamic meditation refers to any meditation technique which does not have one’s body assuming a static posture. Although they are many, dynamic meditation introduced by Osho is one of the most popular active mediation techniques. He said that if people are repressed, psychologically are carrying a lot of burdens, then they need catharsis. Hence, dynamic meditation is just to help them clean the place (Osho, 2003).

Osho said he employed Western psychotherapy as a means of preparing for meditation - A way to become aware of one’s mental and emotional hang-ups-and also introduced his own “active meditation” techniques, characterized by alternating stages of physical activity and silence.

Dynamic meditation lasts 1 h and is in five stages. It can be done alone, and will be even more powerful if it is done with others. It is an individual experience so you should remain oblivious of others around you and keep your eyes closed throughout, preferably using a blindfold. It is best to have an empty stomach and wear loose, comfortable clothing.

First stage: 10 min Breathe chaotically through the nose, concentrating always on exhalation. The body will take care of the inhalation. The breath should move deeply into the lungs. Be as fast as you can in your breathing, making sure the breathing stays deep. Do this as fast and as hard as you possibly can – And then a little harder, until you literally become the breathing. Use your natural body movements to help you to build up your energy. Feel it building up, but do not let go during the first stage.

Correspondence should be sent to Prof. Naved Iqbal Department of Psychology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi – 110 025, India. Email: [email protected]

910 NAVED ET AL/EFFECTS OF DyNAMIC MEDITATION ON ANxIETy

Second stage: 10 min Explode! Express everything that needs to be thrown out. Go totally mad. Scream, shout, cry, jump, shake, dance, sing, laugh; throw yourself around. Hold nothing back; keep your whole body moving. A little acting often helps to get you started. Never allow your mind to interfere with what is happening. Be a total, be whole hearted.

Third stage: 10 min With raised arms, jump up and down shouting the mantra, “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” as deeply as possible. Each time you land, on the flats of your feet, let the sound hammer deep. Give all you have; exhaust yourself totally.

Fourth stage: 15 min Stop! Freeze wherever you are, in whatever position you find yourself. Do not arrange the body in any way. A cough, a movement- anything will dissipate the energy flow, and the effort will be lost. Be a witness to everything that is happening to you.

Fifth stage: 15 min Celebrate through dance, expressing your gratitude toward the whole. Carry your happiness with you throughout the day.

Dynamic meditation provides the mediator an opportunity to catharsis and purify his mind and body which is according to Osho is essential to gain the meditative state of mind. Thus, this purification of mind and body helps the individual to wash out his mind from anxiety.

Anxiety Anxiety is a feeling of fear, worry, and uneasiness, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing (Bouras & Holt, 2007). It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue, and problems in concentration. Anxiety can be appropriate, but when it is too much and continues too long, the individual may suffer from an anxiety disorder (Bouras & Holt, 2007). Anxiety is not the same as fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat, whereas anxiety is the expectation of future threat (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Anxiety is normal human response to stress. A stressor is any external or internal factor or pressure, which is brought to bear upon the individual. There are many ways in which people describe anxious feelings, not always recognizing that these feelings are associated with anxiety.

Traditional meditation has been found to be effective in reducing stress and enhancing well-being (Carmody & Baer, 2008; Jain et al., 2007), controlling addiction (Marlatt & Chawla, 2007; Simpson et al., 2007), controlling aggression (Singh et al., 2007), controlling sucidality and depression (Williams et al., 2006), and other psychiatric problems (Dalton & Beach, 2006).

These studies were based on yoga and Buddhist meditation. But there is a paucity of research on various dynamic or active forms of meditation. Present researcher could find only one study conducted by Vyas (2007) on dynamic meditation. As noted by researchers, different procedures of meditation might well be expected to produce different results with regard to different variables and thus ought to be evaluated individually (Jonathan, 2006).

In view of the above, the present investigation was planned to study the effect of dynamic meditation on anxiety.

Method

Participant and design The sample of the study comprised of 60 subjects of both sexes, within age group of 18-55. There were 30 subjects in the experimental group and 30 in the control group. The experimental group was contacted from Osho Dhyandeep Kendra, Bareilly, UP region (India) and control group matched with important characteristics with the experimental group collected from different localities of Bareilly city. The mean age of experimental group subjects was 35.46, and the mean age of control group subjects was 31.26. There were 11 male and 19 female subjects in the experimental group and 12 male and 18 female subjects in the control group. In the experimental group, the number of undergraduate, graduate, post graduate subjects were 3, 20, and 7, respectively. In the control group, the number of undergraduate, graduate, post graduate subjects were 6, 11, and 13, respectively. Subjects who had serious physical or psychological problems were excluded from the study.

The present study was a pre-test - post-test control group design.

Instruments Anxiety Scale Anxiety was measured by anxiety scale by Sinha and Sinha (1995). This scale contains 90 items. It has two response categories, “yes” and “no.” “yes” response is indicative of anxiety and is given “1” marks whereas ‘no’ response is not given any marks. Reliability coefficient of the test was found to be 0.92.

Reliability (internal consistency) was calculated by applying Cronbach’s alpha test on the score of the present study. Overall alpha is 0.96 in pre experimental assessment and 0.95 in post experimental condition, which is very high and indicates strong internal consistency among the test items (Table 1). Procedure Subjects were contacted individually. Informed consent was taken from all the subjects after explaining the purpose of the study. They were told that their identity will not be disclosed in any kind of publication of the study without their consent. Experimental group subjects were contacted from Osho Dhyandeep Kendra, Bareilly, where they received a 21 days dynamic meditation training under the guidance of Swami Gyan Samarpan coordinator of Osho Dhyandeep Kendra. Control group matched in terms of important characteristics with the experimental group was contacted from different localities of Bareilly city. Anxiety scale was administered to experimental and control group before and after dynamic meditation training. Post assessment was done after 21 days of dynamic meditation training. Obtained data were analyzed with the help of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Table 1: Reliability for anxiety scale on the present sample

Reliability N Cronbach’s alpha

Pre-score Whole sample 60 0.96 Experimental group 30 0.96 Control group 30 0.96

Post score Whole sample 60 0.95 Experimental group 30 0.94 Control group 30 0.96

Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing 2014, 5(8), 1-912 911

Results Obtained results are being presented in the Tables 2-6.

Table 2 is used to check the assumption of homogeneity of the regression slope. It can be observed that there was non-significant F-ratio (F=0.73, P=0.39) between the variance of experimental and control group on anxiety. It means that data have not violated the assumption of homogeneity of the regression slope. Therefore, we can perform the ANCOVA test.

To check the assumption of equality of variance “Levene’s test of equality of error variances” was applied. As shown in table, the significance level was 0.39 which is >0.05 which shows that the data do not violate the assumption of equality of variance (Table 3).

Table 4 shows that in the post-assessment condition, the mean of the experimental group (21.20) was lesser than the control group (23.20).

The effect of the covariate (pre-tests assessment) had been statistically removed by calculating adjusted mean given in the table. Table 5 shows that the mean of the experimental group (20.95) was lesser than the control group (23.44).

Table 6 reveals that there was a significant difference between the two groups on post assessment scores on the scale of anxiety (F=4.94, P=0.03) as per the Table 4, the anxiety score of the experimental group was lesser than the control group which shows that meditation significantly help in reducing the anxiety of the experimental group. The effect size of the meditation was moderate (as per the guidelines of Cohen, 1988; 0.01 small 0.06 moderate 0.14 large) as depicted by partial Eta squared (0.08).

Discussion Analysis of ANCOVA in Table 6 showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups on post assessment scores on the scale of anxiety (F=4.94, P=0.03) as per the Table 4, the anxiety score of the experimental group was lesser than the control group which shows that meditation significantly help in reducing the anxiety of the experimental group. The effect size of the meditation was found to be moderate (as per the guidelines of Cohen, 1988; 0.01 small 0.06 moderate 0.14 large) as depicted by partial Eta squared (0.080).

Findings of the present study have been supported by the work conducted by Arana (2006) and Koszycki et al., (2007). These studies showed that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) proved effective in improving the clinical symptom profile of social anxiety, depression, rumination, state anxiety, and self-esteem in adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD). These findings replicate and extend preliminary reports of symptom reduction in patients with SAD related to mindfulness training.

Jha et al., (2007) found in their study that changes in cognitive forms of emotional regulation like attentional deployment have been proposed as core mechanisms by which MBSR improves clinical symptoms in patients with anxiety and depression disorders.

Dynamic meditation technique used in the present study was also found to control anxiety of the subjects. Probably, this form of meditation was also using the same mechanism as suggested by Jha et al., (2007) for a traditional form of meditation.

References American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

Mental Disorders. 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. Arana, D. (2006). The practice of mindfulness meditation to alleviate the symptoms of

chronic shyness and social anxiety. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B. The Sciences and Engineering, 67, 2822.

Bouras, N., & Holt, G. (2007). Psychiatric and Behavioral Disorders in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Carmody, J., & Baer, R.A. (2008). Relationships between mindfulness practice and levels of mindfulness, medical and psychological symptoms and well-being in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(1), 23-33.

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Dalton, A., & Beach, S. (2006). Evidence that the transcendental meditation program prevents or decreases diseases of the nervous system and is specifically beneficial for epilepsy. Medical Hypotheses, 67(2), 240-246.

Table 2: Comparison between the control group and experimental group on anxiety (covariate in pre‑condition)

Source Type III sum of squares

df Mean square

F Significant

Corrected model 16128.35 3 5376.11 326.80 0.000 Intercept 65.79 1 65.79 4.00 0.05 Group 13.66 1 13.66 0.83 0.36 Anxiety 1 15958.22 1 15958.22 970.05 0.000 Group*anxiety 1 260.01 1 260.01 0.73 0.39 Error 921.24 56 16.45 Total 46620.00 60 Corrected total 17049.60 59

Table 3: Leven’s test of equality of error variances

F df1 df2 Significant

0.73 1 58 0.39

Table 4: Means and standard deviation of experimental and control group for total anxiety

Group Mean Standard deviation N

Experimental group 21.20 15.79 30 Control group 23.20 18.34 30 Total 22.20 16.99 60

Table 5: Estimated marginal mean

Group Mean Standard error

95% CI

Lower bound Upper bound

Experimental group 20.95 0.79 19.36 22.54 Control group 23.44 0.79 21.85 25.03

CI: Confidence interval

Table 6: Comparison between the control and experimental group on anxiety (post)

Source Type III sum of squares

df Mean square

F Significant Partial Eta squared

Corrected model 15974.97 2 7987.48 423.66 0.000 0.93 Intercept 66.26 1 66.26 3.51 0.06 0.05 Anxiety 1 15914.97 1 15914.97 844.15 0.000 0.93 Group 93.13 1 93.13 4.94 0.03 0.08 Error 1074.63 57 18.85 Total 46620.00 60 Corrected total 17049.60 59

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