Contemplative Coping during COVID, Inclusivity and Accessibility in Meditative Practices for Well-Being

Background:

Like most areas of life, contemplative instruction underwent a massive shift in 2020 due to the pandemic. The publicized killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery exacerbated the felt duress amongst Black people and their allies, many of whom were in meditation communities. Meditation teachings for lay practitioners went from being offered mostly in person to being delivered almost exclusively online. Live meditation instruction via online platforms became common practice during the initial phase of the pandemic, with many teachers addressing the threats to Black life as part of the contemplative sessions they were leading. This increase in online meditation groups catalyzed what has likely been a dramatic increase in the accessibility of group meditation classes and in-home “retreats”. With this shift came the opportunity to increase diversity amongst those who could join in on group meditations, including increased accessibility to people who do not live near retreat centers and/or cannot afford to go to them as well as accessibility for people with mobility impairments. Additionally, researchers were intentional about incorporating queries about social injustice variables such as racism so that participants could speak to these challenges as they were being negotiated throughout the pandemic. The pandemic prompted an unprecedented shift in the delivery and dissemination of meditation and mindfulness-based instruction from being predominantly in-person to almost exclusively online. We investigated the pros and cons of these online formats from both teacher and practitioner perspectives, with a focus on perceived efficacy, inclusion and accessibility.

Methods

We conducted two online surveys, one of teachers and one of practitioners. Teachers of standardized mindfulness- and compassion-based interventions (N = 275) rated perceived efficacy of these online training programs. We compared efficacy ratings for online versus in-person classes and assessed their relation to self-reported levels of teaching experience. In Study 2, we asked a national cohort of meditation practitioners (N = 389) to describe what they liked and disliked about the online meditation programs they had completed in the early stages of the pandemic. Qualitative responses were coded for content and themes using an inductive method. Analyses were performed in R (v4.1.2; R Core Team, 2021). Descriptive statistics were generated using the psych package (Revelle, 2022); tidyverse (Wickham et al., 2019) was used to create plots and check variable distributions; confidence intervals were calculated using desctools (Andri et al., 2022); and stats (R Core Team, 2021) was used to calculate correlations and control for multiple comparisons.

Results

Teachers perceived online programs as slightly less effective than traditional in-person sessions. In contrast, practitioners noted a slight improvement in their practice due to pandemic-related challenges and changes. Practitioners appreciated the accessibility and increased inclusivity of online classes, including the greater access to teachers and the ability to stay connected with a geographically distributed community.

Conclusions

Overall, our findings indicate that meditation practitioners and teachers find online formats valuable, despite their limitations, and provide insights as to how this form of meditation instruction can be leveraged to provide greater inclusivity and accessibility .