Yoga-based meditation improves self-regulation and well-being in medical students: a pilot study

Self-regulation enables students to effectively apply their metacognitive abilities to reach academic objectives and enhance their well-being, which is essential in academic high-pressure situations such as medical education. However, many medical students have difficulty managing their cognitive and emotional responses to continued academic pressure and the clinical demands placed upon them. Thus, it is important to identify methods that may support the self-regulatory abilities of medical students.

This study assessed whether participation in a yoga-based meditation program was associated with pre-to-post changes in cognitive and psychological indicators of self-regulation among medical students. The sample consisted of forty subjects who completed a series of self-report questionnaires assessing anxiety, stress, depression (DASS-21 and STAI), mindfulness (FFMQ), and overall mental health or psychological well-being (WEMWBS). In addition to completing the self-report measures, each subject's cognitive performance was measured before and after completion of the intervention program using three separate tasks: AOSPAN for working memory, a free recall task to measure episodic memory, and SART for sustained attention.

Pre/post assessments revealed statistically significant decreases in reported levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. Conversely, there were statistically significant increases in reported levels of psychological well-being and global mindfulness meta-awareness. Following the intervention, cognitive task performance also changed. Specifically, we observed significant increases in working memory performance, immediate and delayed episodic memory, and response accuracy, together with response-time dynamics consistent with a more cautious response pattern.

These results suggest that yoga-based meditation was associated with pre-to-post changes in cognitive and psychological indicators of self-regulation, although causal interpretation is limited by the single-group pilot design. Taken together, these findings support further investigation of meditation-based programs as low-cost and scalable approaches to support cognitive performance and overall well-being in demanding educational settings such as medical education.