Effects of Progressive Muscle Relaxation and Mindfulness Meditation on Dyspnea, Fatigue and Care Dependency in Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Randomized Controlled Study

The progressive muscle relaxation intervention, designed by Jacobson (1987), will be consist of sessions involving straining and relaxing all muscle groups from head to foot with deep breathing and last for 20 min. The patients will be asked to tense a very muscle group for 5 s and relax after counting up to 10 s while breathing out. In this way, facial, head, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen, legs, hips, feet and fingers muscles are stretched and relaxed on purpose for relaxing in patients with COPD.

The research team closely will be following the mindfulness meditation intervention, developed by Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, and Burney (1985), which is a part of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Mindfulness meditation is including interventions such as yoga, body scan, walking meditation, and sitting meditations. In the present study, the researchers will prefer sitting meditation. In this context, the second co-author will want patients to sit up in the chair in an upright and comfortable position. The patients will focus on deep breathing and felled the breath flowing throughout their body during the interventions that will last for 20 min in each session.

Patients will continue to receive standard nursing care and no further intervention will be made during the research.