A two-week meditation intervention of low or high body-focus does not grant the ability to sense the heart rate at rest

Meditation techniques have been identified as relating differently to mental health outcomes, challenging experiences (e.g. anxiety, somatic effects, and psychotic-like experiences) and cognitive and emotional processes. Our aim was to better understand the differential relationship between ‘low body focused’ and ‘high body focused’ meditation techniques with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), mystical experiences and interoception. To achieve this, we employed the Heart Rate Discrimination task (two-alternative forced choice task requiring comparing of perceived heartrate to a subsequent series of auditory beeps), and psychometric survey of PLEs, mystical experiences and interoception in a counterbalanced within-subject intervention study. 26 participants were assigned to practice a meditation with high or low body focus for two weeks at home using audio guidance. We did not find any significant differences between the low vs high body focused technique intervention for task-based or questionnaire measures for interoception, PLEs or mystical experiences. Further analysis suggested that on the group level, participants’ trial-wise responses were only influenced by the auditory external cue and not their heart rate. This suggests that heart rate perception at rest is very difficult for participants, even after undergoing a body-focused meditation training. In conclusion, a short-term high vs low body-focused meditation did not differentially affect markers of interoception, psychotic-like or mystical experiences.