European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Research on mindfulness meditation has been growing exponentially over the past three decades. The purpose of this present study is to investigate the effect of mindfulness meditation on attention, working memory, and emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress among athletes. Twenty male athletes from Sultan Idris Education University had participated in this study. Ten participants were randomly assigned into mindfulness group that received a mindfulness meditation audio and ten participants were assigned into control group that did not received mindfulness meditation audio. Neurosky Brainwave, N-back test, and DASS21 questionnaire were used to measure the attention, working memory respectively, and emotional state, respectively. Result from independence sample t-test showed that athletes in mindfulness meditation group significantly improved their attention (p=0.001), working memory (p<0.001), depression score in week 4 (p=0.006), anxiety score in week 4 (p=0.001), and stress score in week 3 (p=0.01) and week 4 (p<0.001), compared to control group. It was indicated from the findings that 4 weeks of daily mindfulness meditation is beneficial for the athletes to have better attention, good working memory, as well as a better control of emotions.