In recent years, mindfulness-based meditation programs have been applied to educational settings such as elementary and junior high schools in European and other countries. Some of these programs have started to be introduced to Japan. However, to date, few quantitative studies have investigated the effects of meditation in large university classes. In this study, the authors introduced a 5-minute focused attention and open monitoring meditation session into a university undergraduate course to examine whether and how meditation at the beginning of each lecture impacts mood and motivational states at the end of the lecture. The participants reported significantly higher scores regarding their degree of relaxation after lectures compared without meditation. In addition, when compared with students reporting lower scores for their own meditation performance, students reporting higher scores showed significantly higher scores for the degrees of relaxation, concentration during lectures, lecture comprehension, and interest in the lecture. These findings suggest that meditation at the beginning of a lecture can produce desirable psychological effects throughout the lecture period, and that self-evaluation regarding the meditation performance and type of meditation are associated with these effects.
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