Altering Emotional Reactivity Through Exercise and Mindfulness

Although the beneficial effects of acute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (AE) and mindfulness (MF) on post-intervention affective responses and emotional processing are well-documented, the potential combined effect of AE with mindfulness on these outcomes remains unknown, which could provide a helpful insight for developing more effective interventions for emotion regulation. In this context, the aim of this thesis is to investigate the combined effect of MF and AE (MF-AE) on affective responses and emotional processing. We used a within-subject crossover trial study design. 29 participants (Mage = 22.07 [2.21], 15 males) were recruited through flyers and advertisement displayed on the website. They completed a 30-min session of AE with mindful audio (MF-AE), AE with a health-related podcast (non-mindful AE: NM-AE), and non-mindful rest on three separate days in counterbalanced order. Following each intervention session, participants completed a passive viewing task including 126 pictures (pleasant: erotic, affiliative; unpleasant: mutilation, threatening; and neutral: objects, neutral facial expressions) equally distributed across three 42-picture blocks while their continuous EEG were recorded. Analysis revealed that NM-AE (2.6 ± 0.6) and MF-AE (3.3 ± 0.6) increased SMS-PA2 body-domain mindfulness scores compared to Rest (2.2 ± 0.8), with MF-AE scoring higher than NM-AE (ts > 3.1, ps < 0.013, ds > 0.57). Only MF-AE significantly increased SMS-PA2 mind-domain mindfulness (t = 2.2, p = 0.002, d = 0.72) and posttest FS scores (t = 4.5, p < 0.001, d = 0.83). While analysis of emotional reactivity showed no significant between-condition differences (F(2,27) = 3.42, p = 0.045, ηp2 = 0.109), negative LPP (unpleasant – neutral) was significantly greater than positive LPP (pleasant – neutral) following NM-AE and Rest (ts > 2.82, ps < 0.009, ds > 0.52) but not following MF-AE (t = 0.32, p = 0.746, d = 0.06). Collectively, while NM-AE and MF-AE both induced state-related body-domain mindfulness and similar levels of exercise-related enjoyment, integrating mindfulness into exercise via guided attentional instructions induced greater increases in mind and body mindfulness, positive feelings, and more stable emotional reactivity.