Effects of Heartfulness Cleaning as a Visualization Technique Intended to Purify the Mental State

Description

Shirley Telles¹, Sachin Kumar Sharma², Ankur Kumar³, Hester O’Connor⁴, Krishnmurthy Jayanna⁵, and Acharya Balkrishna⁶ (Patanjali Research Foundation, Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India^1,2,3, Patanjali Research Foundation, Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India, University of Patanjali, Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India⁶, Research Department, Kanha Shanti Vanam Ashram, India⁴, Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, India5, Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, India⁵)

Heartfulness Cleaning (HC) is intended to improve the quality of Heartfulness Meditation (HM) practiced after HC. Previously, five minutes of HC did not influence HM effects. Here, 30 minutes of HC were compared with 30 minutes of Quiet Seated Rest (QSR; as control) on HM and baseline state the next morning in 40 participants (group average age±SD; 46.90±11.44 years). Participants were randomly assigned to two sets of interventions: (i) Set A was 30 minutes of HC in the evening, with 30 minutes of HM the next morning and (ii) Set B was 30 minutes of QSR in the evening, with 30 minutes of HM the next morning. Assessments of mood states scores showed: (1) Morning scores of global affect (i.e., feeling happier & calmer) were higher after the HC the evening before compared to the QSR the evening before (p<0.05; paired t-test). (2) Following HM sessions pleasant and positive mood states increased with decreases in negative mood states irrespective of the practice the preceding evening (p<0.05; linear mixed model analysis). (3) The immediate effects of HC and QSR recoded on separate days in the evening differed. Pleasant and positive mood states, vigor and mental clarity increased after HC whereas feeling of arousal decreased after QSR (p<0.05). HC is a volitional visualization technique which increases positive mood states the following morning and pleasant mood states as a short-term effect. However, the effects of HM are not influenced by prior HC.