Browsing by Subject "Meditatiivinen liike"

Objectives. Meditative Movement practices, such as yoga and qigong, combine movement with meditation. These kinds of practices have not been investigated much so far. The purpose of this study was to study the effects of qigong practice to affects and flow experience. In flow experience an individual is completely immersed in an activity without reflective self-consciousness but with a sense of control, and the activity itself is deeply rewarding. Previous studies have found out that qigong practice has a positive effect on affect but there are no previous studies of the effect of qigong practice on flow experience. Methods. 19 qigong practitioners (7 women and 12 men, aged between 26 and 78) took part of this experimental longitudinal study. The subjects had been practicing qigong for a few months to twenty years. The study consisted four one-hour qigong practise sessions with one week between each session. Each session had three different 20-minute qigong practice sections. PANAS (Positive And Negative Affect Schedule) was used to assess the effect of qigong practice on affect, and FSS (Flow Short Scale) to assess the effect of qigong practice on flow experience. In addition, open-ended questions were used to obtain further information about changes in affective state and flow experience. PANAS and FSS data was analysed using parametric and non-parametric tests, and qualitative content analysis was performed on the answers to open ended questions. Results and conclusions. Regarding affects: PANAS results showed a clear change in affective state when comparing affects before qigong practice and after practice. According to PANAS results, negative affect was lowered- and positive affect was increased during qigong practice. Overall affect was positively increased more than 10 % of the whole PANAS scale, which can be viewed as a significant change. In addition, content analysis showed that qigong practice produced an affective state that can be summarized as calm, happy, energized and relaxed. These findings are aligned with previous studies that have found that qigong practice has uplifting effect on positive affect, and that it lowers negative affect such as stress and anxiety. Regarding Flow experience: FSS scores were high in the whole group (mean 5.66 on a scale from 1.0 to 7.0). In addition to FSS scores there were other indications that many of the subjects experienced flow. One indication was the answers to the open-ended questions, where some of test subjects described an experience that fits very well in general description of flow experience. When weighing all above it seems that qigong practice is a flow inducing activity. This is in accordance of the founder of flow research Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi according to whom, eastern meditative movement methods are designed to induce flow state.