Meditation

This study is a randomized controlled trial that aims to understand the impact of a daily meditation practice called Centering on well-being and health behaviors, and the impact of religious/spiritual meaning on the outcomes of the practice. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions (passive control, active placebo, and experimental) and will complete brief daily surveys over the course of four weeks. The primary outcome variable is the Flourishing Scale, and secondary outcomes include self-reported affect balance and behavioral measures of physical activity, sleep, and social interaction. The data will be analyzed using mixed ANOVAs, t-tests, and mediation analyses, with optional study activities including journal entries and smartphone sensor data analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), natural language processing (NLP), interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), and mixed ANOVAs. The study will exclude participants who fail to respond accurately to the accuracy check or fail to complete 10 or more daily surveys.