Julia true

Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Harley, Heidi

Keywords

Stress, Treatment, Meditation, Psychology

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Stress is an inevitable and ubiquitous aspect of life. Chronic stress is associated with psychological and physiological complaints and afflictions. This study examined the attributes and efficacy of two stress-reduction modalities, Meditation and Flotation Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique (REST), by targeting four specific goals. The first was to investigate whether a single session of REST was effective in improving aspects of self-reported psychological and subjective well-being, specifically, Flourishing, Positive and Negative Affect, Affect Balance, and Life Satisfaction. A second goal was to investigate whether prior experience with meditation predicted the effectiveness of REST. Thirdly, it investigated whether mindfulness and the effects of REST are related, using a five-facet model of mindfulness (Observe, Describe, Actaware, Nonjudge, and Nonreact) as well as a composite measure of the five subscales. Finally, it investigated whether prior experience with Flotation REST predicted the effects of a single session of REST. The current study included two experiments. The first was a small pilot study with 12 participants who had never tried Flotation REST. The participants completed self-report measures of psychological and subjective wellbeing before and after completing an hour-long session of randomly assigned Flotation REST, Meditation instruction, or engagement in non-directed activities. The pilot study lacked statistical power to detect differences between the groups, but there were notable individual differences within the groups, and interviews revealed specific positive aspects of REST. The second experiment included a larger, self-selected sample of 81 participants with a range of prior flotation and meditation experience. After a session of Flotation REST, these participants improved on measures of self-reported psychological and subjective well-being, i.e., on Flourishing, Positive Affect, Affect Balance, and Life Satisfaction, with decreases in Negative Affect. Participants with higher total mindfulness scores (but not individual facets of the measure) also experienced greater increases on the Flourishing measure. The length of the current flotation session, whether the participants floated weekly, how many times weekly they floated, and how many times participants had floated did not significantly affect responses to REST. Similarly, whether participants had tried meditation, how many times they had meditated, how many times a week they meditated, for how long they typically meditated, and how many years they had been meditating did not significantly affect responses to REST. Overall, these findings suggest that Flotation REST is efficacious in improving cognitive appraisals of affect, socio-psychological prosperity, and life satisfaction, and may be a suitable complementary therapy to meditation practice and mindfulness training. These findings have positive implications for clinical practices aiming to improve subjective and psychological well-being.

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