Development of the online mindfulness meditation training course and evaluation of its effectiveness

Abstract

Mindfulness is a state of recognizing oneself as one is, without value judgments, by deliberately paying attention to one’s own body and mind in the present moment. As the spread of the new coronavirus infection restricts the freedom of daily life and demands a better way to deal with stress, the practice of mindfulness meditation can be one of the ways to lead a healthy life. In this study, we developed a four-week online meditation training course for practicing mindfulness meditation. The training consisted of weekly online meetings and daily meditation practice. The meetings consisted of a review of the previous week and a lecture on the next week’s content. Participants were able to conduct their own daily meditation using the audio instructions of the online application on their smartphones. To test the effectiveness of this training course, 61 participants were divided into two groups: a meditation group and a control group. The meditation group participated in the online meditation training course, while the control group participated in an online training course where they listened to classical music instead of meditating. Participants completed a self-assessment questionnaire throughout the experiment. The results showed that the meditation group had a significant increase in the score of mindfulness skill (FFMQ) and a significant decrease in the score of depressive tendency (BDI-II). Therefore, it was suggested that the online meditation training course developed in this study was effective in increasing the degree of mindfulness and reducing depressive mood.