Self-Transcendent States During a Modified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program Predict Improvements in Mood

Self-transcendence is theorized to be a therapeutic mechanism of mindfulness-based interventions. However, whether self-transcendence states occur during individual sessions of one of the most common mindfulness-based interventions, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), has not been investigated. Furthermore, self-transcendent states occurring during individual MBSR sessions have not been examined in relation to in-session changes in more established therapeutic mechanisms of mindfulness (i.e., decentering) or affect. For these novel explorations, a single-arm, observational study of a brief, modified MBSR program was conducted. The MBSR training sequence was abbreviated to four, 2-hr sessions over 4 weeks to increase accessibility. Immediately before and after each session, participants completed measures of decentering, self-transcendence, negative affect, and positive affect. Fifty-six cases of session data were acquired from 19 unique participants. Generalized linear mixed models revealed that self-transcendent state, F(1, 104) = 33.27, p < .001, decentering, F(1, 104) = 55.90, p < .001, and positive affect, F(1, 104) = 28.11, p < .001, scores significantly increased during individual MBSR sessions; negative affect scores significantly decreased, F(1, 104) = 21.84, p < .001. Path modeling revealed that in-session increases in decentering were positively associated with increases in self-transcendent state (beta =.41, p =.006), but only in-session increases in self-transcendent state were significantly associated with greater positive affect (beta =.32, p = .02) and less negative affect (beta = -.34, p =.02) at the session's end. Results from this study offer the first tentative evidence that self-transcendent states occur during individual MBSR sessions and that in-session selftranscendent states may be associated with immediate positive affective changes.