The eight-week mindfulness meditation training to reduce stress in university students: A pilot study

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-380-1_35How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Mindfulness; meditation; stress; self-compassion; Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)

Abstract

For the past thirty years, mindfulness meditation has been studied and researched extensively to show possible effects in stress and anxiety reduction in meditators. After mere eight weeks of regular meditation practice, various studies have shown improved attitudes in participants in dealing with life stressors and increased ability to regulate negative emotions and thoughts. The overall relationship with one´s self and others improved as well. To shift one´s attention to the present moment, again and again, has proved to develop the kind of awareness that helps meditators alleviate or lessen the negative impact of daily life stressors. The present pilot study offered the eight-week mindfulness meditation training to future teachers university students in a closed group. The main goal of this pilot study was to measure possible changes on perceived stress levels before and after the eight weeks of mindfulness training. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was used to self-evaluate the current levels of perceived stress. The partial goals were to observe possible changes in the levels of mindfulness using the 15item Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-15) and the levels of self-compassion using the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS-CZ). The research group consisted of 20 university students out of which 16 were women and 4 were men.The results showed significant differences in all three aspects of perceived stress, mindfulness levels and self-compassion levels. The perceived stress levels were reduced (t = - 7.24; p < 0.001) after eight weeks of mindfulness training. The levels of mindfulness and self-compassion were significantly increased after the training.The promising results promote further study on bigger samples.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Barbora Kvapilová
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/02/29
TI  - The eight-week mindfulness meditation training to reduce stress in university students: A pilot study
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Lifelong Education and Leadership for All (ICLEL 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 333
EP  - 338
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-380-1_35
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-380-1_35
ID  - Kvapilová2024
ER  -