Research

In my research, I look at different ways that enhance mental health and foster flourishing. I focus specifically on mind-body practices, such as meditation and yoga, and examine their basic features and working mechanisms. As we are very different as human beings, I also examine what works best for whom. Below you find an overview of my research topics as well as projects I am currently undertaking.

Meditation

What is meditation and how does it work?

Yoga

How do yoga and its different components work?

Traditional context

How does the traditional and ethical context influence the effects of yoga and meditation?

Mental health

How do mind-body practices help in the prevention and treatment of mental health issues?

Individual differences

How do different people respond to different mind-body practices?
What works best for whom?

Body awareness

How does body awareness change when you learn meditating?
How can we measure these changes?

Flourishing

Which mind-body and nature-based practices foster flourishing?
How do we match our evolutionary roots with our current lifestyle?

Cultural Differences

How do meditators from different cultural and traditional contexts differ?

Current research projects

Daily Assessment of Body Awareness (DABA): Evaluation of a short questionnaire to measure state body awareness in repeated-measures designs – preregistration

Conceptual Replication of Gebauer et al. (2018): Does meditation really boost the ego? How are personality, meditation tradition, or previous meditation experience related to self-enhancement? – preregistration

• Collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ivan Nyklíček (Tilburg University, NL)

Who practices what and why? A global exploration of meditators (GEM study): How do meditators from different cultural and traditional contexts vary regarding their meditation practice, motivation and individual characteristics? How might this change over time? – preregistration

• Collaboration with Dr. Heena Kamble (NMIMS Deemed-to-be University, India), Dr. Liudmila Gamaiunova (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland), Dr. Jesús Montero-Marín (University of Oxford, UK), Dr. Ivan Nyklíček (Tilburg University, Netherlands), Daniel Atad (University of Haifa, Israel), Dr. Katherine Chen (University of Macao, China), Dr. Marcelo Demarzo (Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil), and Dr. Takeshi Hamamura (Curtin University Perth, Australia)