Effects of Meditative Movement on Body Composition in Midlife Women

A growing body of published evidence indicates that meditative movement (MM) practices may be helpful for body composition improvement. Less strenuous forms of exercise that include a focus on the breath and meditative state (i.e., "meditative movement" such as Yoga, Qigong, or Tai Chi) may be easier to adopt for unfit, sedentary, overweight or obese women, which characterizes a large percentage of the general population. Despite this preliminary evidence, no studies have proposed a model for how or why weight loss might occur in MM interventions where the goals are not designated as weight loss, nutritional counseling is not included, and energy expenditure is not at the level assumed to be required to achieve weight loss. The proposed intervention is designed to refine and gather preliminary evidence for a novel "mindful-body-wisdom" model of intervening on improving body composition and to examine the contribution of model factors (psychological and behavioral) of how such a non-diet/non-vigorous exercise intervention might work, in 60 midlife women.

TCE is a simple TC/QG form that was developed by Dr. Roger Jahnke and developed into a standardized research intervention protocol by a team of researchers. It has been used in several prior projects and one recently completed NIH/NCCAM-funded randomized controlled trial (RCT) with breast cancer survivors showing reduction in fatigue and depression, and improved sleep and physical function.