Skill and competency in emotion regulation are crucial to well-being and mental health. Research has shown that contemplative practices like meditation may help people decrease stress and increase well-being. However, few studies have examined the impact of such practices on the ability to regulate emotion. Moreover, certain practices may be more suited for some people than others. This study therefore proposes to 1) directly compare the effects of different short-term contemplative practices on arousal levels, implicit emotional bias, cognitive functioning and emotion regulation in healthy, normal participants and 2) to examine the moderating impact of individual differences. The contemplative practices to be examined are mindfulness and yogic breathing which will be compared to Cognitive Reappraisal (CR) intervention. The results of this study will show how individual differences predict the effectiveness of each intervention, providing information clinicians can use to better address their patient’s needs.
