Short Term Physiological Effects of Meditation on Induced Task-Related Stress

Abstract

Stressful stimuli can lead to serious health consequences when not managed correctly; however, meditative practices have shown to be an effective management technique in reducing the body’s physiological response to stress. Although the focus of many past studies have involved long-term meditation, this study investigated the impact of short-term meditation prior to involvement in a stress inducing task. We hypothesize that meditation prior to task-induced stress will reduce physiological measurements of stress. Physiological measurements of blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate were taken for a meditative group and non-meditative group, and percent changes were calculated for mean blood pressure and respiratory rate to measure the quantitative effects of meditation. In this case, stress was defined as a change from homeostatic or baseline levels. The effect of meditation on blood pressure and heart rate were not significant and did not strongly support the experimental hypothesis. The effect of meditation on respiratory rate, however, was significant, and did support the experimental hypothesis. This displayed that a short meditation session prior to participating in a mental, stress-inducing task aided in minimizing some physiological responses to stress.