Implications of a Sufi Meditation on reducing stress, increasing positive emotions and increasing spirituality for university students

Background: Perceived stress among university and college students is a prevalent health issue directly correlated with poor academic performance, attrition, poor sleep quality, somatic pain, hopelessness, compromised mental and physical health, high risk of substance abuse, and suicide ideation. Meditation can reduce the experience of academic pressures and help prevent illness among students. Furthermore, improved health outcomes are more strongly associated with spiritual meditation than secular meditation. Students may enduringly integrate stress-management into their lifestyle, if supportive of their spiritual growth. In a national study, 80% of college students indicated interest in spirituality, yet there has been neglect of students’ inner development including spirituality, emotional maturity and self-understanding in many higher education institutions.

            Tamarkoz® is a heart-focused Sufi meditation that incorporates physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects and is currently taught at U.C. Berkeley. The course fills to capacity every semester with a wait-list for enrollment. In its current form, Tamarkoz® includes Movazaneh® which is movement balancing developed by the Sufi Master, Professor Nader Angha. Movazaneh® movements direct concentration of the mind to a state of collectiveness and activates electromagnetic centers in the body. The practitioner directs attention and focus on a single point and through concentrated movements, his or her awareness expands to the entire body to experience the present moment. Movement meditation can be more effective than sitting meditation in creating mindfulness as participants have mindful attention to their body during movement. Additionally, movement meditation improves balance, coordination, strength, flexibility and stability. It also improves blood circulation which increases oxygen to tissues and enhances movement of lymph in lymphatic vessels which improves immune function.

            Other aspects of Tamarkoz® include deep breathing and guided visualization. Deep breathing has many healthful benefits. Some examples are that it calms the mind, increases oxygen intake, reduces the heart rate, enhances parasympathetic activity and reduces sympathetic hyperactivity and blood pressure. Meditation and visualization with an intense focus on spiritual values and goals can decrease activity in the emotional areas of the brain, change negative mental images to constructive positive images or help counteract the effects of negative images.

            A successful meditation course on a university campus needs to be studied to determine its potential for health promotion and disease-prevention and assessed for real-world outcomes; especially since it always fills to capacity and students continually re-enroll in it. I hypothesize that Sufi meditation improves positive emotion, increases spirituality, and reduces perceived stress in university students.

Methods:  This proposed study will have a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and follow-up assessments in three groups. The intervention group will learn Sufi meditation practices and will be recruited from the class. A second group will only utilize the campus student health center’s stress management resources. The third group will be a control group recruited from the waitlist group for the class. The Perceived Stress Scale, the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale and the Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale, as well as salivary cortisol, blood pressure and heart rate will be assessed at baseline, end of course (12 weeks) and 18 weeks.