Mindful Coping Power: Comparative Effects on Children’s Reactive Aggression and Self-Regulation

Coping Power (CP) is an evidence-based preventive intervention for youth with disruptive behavior problems. This study examined whether Mindful Coping Power (MCP), a novel adaptation which integrates mindfulness into CP, enhances program effects on children’s reactive aggression and self-regulation. A pilot randomized design was utilized to estimate the effect sizes for MCP versus CP in a sample of 102 child participants (fifth grade students, predominantly low-middle income, 87% Black). MCP produced significantly greater improvement in children’s self-reported dysregulation (emotional, behavioral, cognitive) than CP, including children’s perceived anger modulation. Small to moderate effects favoring MCP were also observed for improvements in child-reported inhibitory control and breath awareness and parent-reported child attentional capacity and social skills. MCP did not yield a differential effect on teacher-rated reactive aggression. CP produced a stronger effect than MCP on parent-reported externalizing behavior problems. Although MCP did not enhance program effects on children’s reactive aggression as expected, it did have enhancing effects on children’s internal, embodied experiences (self-regulation, anger modulation, breath awareness). Future studies are needed to compare MCP and CP in a large scale, controlled efficacy trial and to examine whether MCP-produced improvements in children’s internal experiences lead to improvements in their observable behavior over time.

Visualising the Ephemeral

This essay investigates breath as a fundamental unit of exchange between people and their environment as shown in two collections of Jayne Wilton’s work. The first is a series of technologically empowered portrayals of the breath using innovative scientific techniques to translate universal breathing gestures (the sigh, the laugh, the gasp) into images and objects which allow viewers to re-experience the often-overlooked breath in visual forms. The second, created through participatory workshops with patients and staff in a London hospital, explores the visualisation of breath to highlight ways in which meeting the breath visually can enhance breath awareness and help to articulate the experience of breathlessness. As context and background for this work the essay also discusses a range of depictions of breath in art from the images of the Cueva de las manos (ca. 7300 BCE) to Philippe Rahm’s ‘Pulmonary Space’ (2009).

Self-regulation and the subjective Self: Practice to cultivate awareness

In this article, I offer a somatic process to non-movers at home during the COVID-19 lockdown. These participants also offer reflections on their individual experience post-moving. As a facilitator, I invite you to take part in this process, whether you are a dancer or non-mover (whatever your age or ability). The process focuses on self-regulation and interoceptive awareness, allowing the time and space to connect with Self. Self-regulation and interoceptive awareness are two of the most important aspects of somatic movement in supporting free-flowing movement and balancing the nervous system. Self-regulation in turn can produce a sense of agency – meaning a sense of autonomy and release within the body can occur. In line with cultural pressures experienced within society, somatic processes can ease the anxieties of everyday life. Inviting Self into a practical, felt process is sometimes what we need in order to re-evaluate our positioning and perceptions within the world. As human beings we often find ourselves in stressful and challenging situations that ultimately affect the body’s nervous state and our relationship with Self. We currently find ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic, and opportunities to connect with Self in creative, communal ways are hindered. I am offering this article as a way of communicating my appreciation and passion for somatic work during this pandemic. As a Ph.D. student studying somatic movement dance education and therapy, I deeply recognize it is important to be connected with community and others, as well as my own inner sphere. Connection produces a sense of optimism during this time. This article offers a simplistically detailed, yet effective process that locates and contacts Self within our feeling, sensing organism. As we begin to re-connect with our energy and interoceptive awareness, a physiological shift can be experienced. When we drop our awareness within the vitality of the moving body, a change in consciousness can occur. Using breath awareness as an inroad to sensing internal processes, I offer this practical process to you, inviting you to cultivate an inner essence of gravity, breath, ground and body.

A mobile VR-based respiratory biofeedback game to foster diaphragmatic breathing

Virtual reality (VR) has become popular in mental health research. Several studies have explored the use of VR in the context of biofeedback protocols. In the present paper, we report on the development and evaluation of a VR-based respiratory biofeedback game to foster diaphragmatic breathing. The game integrates respiratory biofeedback, restorative VR and gamification. The game is designed to run on a mobile, all-in-one VR headset. Notably, an integrated VR hand controller is utilized as a sensor to detect respiration-induced movements of the diaphragm. In a longitudinal within-subjects study, we explored the feasibility of the game and tested the effectiveness of six training sessions. Participants reported a pleasant user experience. Moreover, the results show that the brief VR-based breathing training increased perceived breath awareness, improved diaphragmatic breathing, increased relaxation, decreased perceived stress, reduced symptoms of burnout and boosted relaxation-related self-efficacy. Future studies need to address the generalizability and long-term stability of the results, compare the approach with existing treatments and fine-tune the training components.

Everyone Can Meditate: Characterizing a Personalized Connectomic State Space among Meditation Groups and Non-meditators

Alterations in brain connectivity has been shown for many disease states and groups of people from different levels of cognitive training. To study dynamic functional connectivity, we propose a method for a personalized connectomic state space called Thought Chart. Experienced meditators are an interesting group of healthy subjects for brain connectivity analyses due to their demonstrated differences in resting state dynamics, and altered brain connectivity has been implicated as a potential factor in several psychiatric disorders. Three distinct techniques of meditation are explored: Isha Yoga, Himalayan Yoga, and Vipassana, as well as a meditation-naïve group of individuals. All individuals participated in a breath awareness task, an autobiographical thinking task, and one of three different meditation practices according to their expertise, while being recorded by a 64-electrode electroencephalogram (EEG). The functional brain connectivity was estimated using weighted phase lag index (WPLI) and the connectivity dynamics were investigated using a within-individual formulation of Thought Chart, a previously proposed dimensionality reduction method which utilizes manifold learning to map out a state space of functional connectivity. Results showed that the two meditation tasks (breath awareness task and own form of meditation) in all groups were found to have consistently different functional connectivity patterns relative to those of the instructed mind-wandering (IMW) tasks in each individual, as measured using the Hausdorff distance in the state space. The specific meditation state was found to be most similar to the breath awareness state in all groups, as expected in these meditation traditions which all incorporate breath awareness training in their practice trajectory. The difference in connectivity was found to not be solely driven by specific frequency bands. These results demonstrate that the within-individual form of Thought Chart consistently and reliably separates similar tasks among healthy meditators and non-meditators during resting state-like EEG recordings. Unexpectedly, we found the dissimilarity between breath awareness/meditation and IMW, measured via Hausdorff distance, regardless of meditation experience or tradition, with no significant group differences.

Development and Pilot Test of a Virtual Reality Respiratory Biofeedback Approach

Breathing exercises with biofeedback have benefits over breathing exercises without biofeedback. However, the traditional measurement of respiratory signals that is required as part of feeding back the breath incurs high cost and effort. We propose a novel virtual reality (VR) based approach to respiratory biofeedback that utilizes the positionally tracked hand controllers integrated into modern VR systems to capture and feedback the respiration-induced abdominal movements. In a randomized controlled laboratory study, we investigated the feasibility and efficacy of the developed biofeedback algorithm. In total, 72 participants performed a short breathing exercise in VR with or without respiratory biofeedback. The feedback integration resulted in a satisfactory user experience, a heightened breath awareness, a greater focus on slow diaphragmatic breathing and an increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia. This evidences that the novel biofeedback approach is low-cost, unobtrusive, usable and effective in increasing breath awareness and promoting slow diaphragmatic breathing in the context of VR-based breathing exercises. Future studies need to investigate the broader applicability and long-term effects.