The use of meditation on emotions can help to increase the levels of relaxation and calmness in the body. When used regularly, it can also help to reduce stress and anxiety. Whether you’re trying to achieve emotional control, or you’re just looking for a new form of exercise, there are many ways to meditate on emotions that you can try.
Research on meditation
In the realm of meditation and emotions, there are several studies pointing to the benefits of mindfulness. Some researchers have reported that meditation can decrease stress reactivity and alleviate the feelings of guilt associated with anxiety. These findings are based on evidence from cognitive neuroscience. However, the effects of long-term meditation practice remain unclear.
Studies also show that meditation can improve emotional regulation capacities. Researchers have argued that dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies drive the recurrence of disorders. Ultimately, re-establishing emotion regulation capacities leads to symptomatic recovery. Meditation training may help retrain the brain to better handle negative emotional stimuli.
Long-term meditation may help regulate dopamine and serotonin. It can also reduce the autonomic nervous system reaction to negative stimuli. While these effects have been shown in clinical trials, further research is needed to identify the best strategies for implementing and sustaining these improvements.
LKM
LKM is a type of meditation designed to increase positive emotions. It generally begins with the self and then moves to loved ones. A growing body of research has found that LKM improves mental health.
A number of studies have shown that it has a surprisingly large effect on depression, anxiety, and stress. However, the mechanisms behind its effects are still unclear. Despite the fact that there is growing evidence that LKM may be helpful for treating mental illnesses, more studies are needed to determine its overall effectiveness.
A systematic review on the literature on LKM conducted by Galante et al. (2014) was able to identify several components of the LKM intervention that might be responsible for its effects. These include didactic, experiential, and meditative components.
Sufism
Sufism and meditation on emotions is an important part of Islamic spirituality and a belief system that is growing in popularity outside of the Muslim world. It has a large following and contributes to the spiritual well-being of a substantial number of people.
Sufism is a tradition in Islam that aims to connect Muslims to God through spiritual realization. It is also rooted in a deep understanding of self.
The Sufi teachings explain that the true self is not a psychological system but is an embodied experience. A person’s soul is an agency for spiritual communion.
In Sufism, the nafs, or emotional distress, are not considered to be a part of the true self. Nafs include envy, lust, greed, back biting, and stinginess. To overcome nafs, the person needs to learn to live in the moment. This can be done through the practice of meditation on the heart.
Likert scales
Likert scales are used in many types of questionnaires to measure opinions. These are usually questions that ask how satisfied an individual is with a product, company, or event. They also measure attitudes toward ideas and issues.
During the 1930s, American psychologist Rensis Likert developed a new survey technique for measuring attitudes. His team came up with a method for open-ended questions. Using this technique, they developed the Likert scale. The Likert scale is a five-point scale that measures positive to negative strength of feelings and attitudes.
The Likert scale is usually measured in qualitative data, but this can be changed by applying parametric tools. Using these tools, the Likert metric can be rescaled to yield perceptually equidistant intervals. This allows for more accurate and precise parametric measurements.
BMM vs ERE groups
Meditation on emotions has been shown to reduce depression symptoms, as well as promoting emotional balance. However, there is limited information on the specific mechanisms involved. In this study, the effect of BMM was examined.
A randomized controlled trial compared the efficacy of BMM and emotional regulation education (ERE) on emotion processing. The results show that BMM was superior to ERE.
Participants of the BMM group showed a statistically significant reduction in the intensity of both positive and negative emotions. Similarly, participants of the ERE group showed a statistically significant increase in the intensity of both positive and negative emotions.
The BMM group also had a better reaction time to a target/distractor picture, and a faster response time to an emotional memory task. These measures have a combined power of 0.87.
