THE RELATIONSHIP OF MINDFULNESS AND EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

Adopting various mindfulness techniques has been shown to affect both psychological and physiological conditions within the body (Hill & Updegraff, 2012; Nyklícek et al., 2013). This experiment was conducted to explore the relationship between mindfulness meditation techniques and existential anxiety reported by participants. Existential anxiety has been defined within past research as “a deep concern over whether or not one is living a meaningful and fulfilling life” (Morse, 1998). Due to the nature of the concept of mindfulness, adopting mindfulness techniques was thought to lead to generally more meaningful experiences for an individual, which would decrease the individual’s report of existential anxiety. Within the present study, mindfulness training was administered by means of videos viewed upon a computer screen. Participants were instructed to complete a number of self-report questionnaires both before and after viewing the videos, and the analysis of the data collected after administering the training indicated that not only did levels of mindfulness increase post-treatment, but also that mindfulness and existential anxiety do seem to share a strong negative correlation.