Vol XIV: Ch 7 Practice Makes Perfect: Enhancing a Novel, Low-Cost, Gratitude Heartfulness-Meditation Intervention by Encouraging at-Home Practice

From the Book: The Refractive Thinker® Vol XIV: Health Care: The Impact on Leadership, Business, and Education.

Summary

There is a continued trend of mental health problems reported amongst youth and adolescents in the United States. The most detrimental include suicidal ideations and self-harm. Interventions conducted in school are appropriate because of the amount of time adolescents spend in schools.

Increasingly, the secular practice of meditation is studied among youth as a way to increase well-being, or happiness. This is in contrast to the larger body of research examining meditation interventions that addressed more commonly specific physiological and psychological diagnoses. The intervention described in this chapter included the practice of heartfulness-meditation and visualizations on construct of gratitude within the positive psychology paradigm. The author took a refractive thinking approach by combining the two paradigms, and measuring practice outside of the intervention session.

In this chapter, the author examined the frequency of at-home practice of the intervention, conducted among middle-school students. Participants’ life satisfaction, school satisfaction, and gratitude, were measured before and after the intervention. The intervention was conducted in school. Weekly logs captured how often students practiced the exercises on their own. The findings of suggest that students who practiced four or more times weekly benefited the most. The adolescent period is difficult time for most youth, this chapter demonstrates that simply practicing gratitude and meditation together may be the key to increasing happiness and well-being—not only during youth but throughout one’s lifetime.