NCT04072133

The Move Well Study

Effects of Meditative Movement on Body Composition in Midlife Women

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 52 (actual)
• Sponsor: Arizona State University · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 45 Years – 75 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study will explore the effects of meditative movement on body composition in a group of 60 midlife women. Women will participate in 30-minute meditative movement (MM) classes for an eight-week period. Participants will be encouraged to practice MM at home for at least 30 minutes most days per week. Participants will be asked to complete a log of their time spent doing meditative movement outside of classes.

Detailed description

A growing body of published evidence indicates that meditative movement (MM) practices may be helpful for body composition improvement. Less strenuous forms of exercise that include a focus on the breath and meditative state (i.e., "meditative movement" such as Yoga, Qigong, or Tai Chi) may be easier to adopt for unfit, sedentary, overweight or obese women, which characterizes a large percentage of the general population. Despite this preliminary evidence, no studies have proposed a model for how or why weight loss might occur in MM interventions where the goals are not designated as weight loss, nutritional counseling is not included, and energy expenditure is not at the level assumed to be required to achieve weight loss. The proposed intervention is designed to refine and gather preliminary evidence for a novel "mindful-body-wisdom" model of intervening on improving body composition and to examine the contribution of model factors (psychological and behavioral) of how such a non-diet/non-vigorous exercise intervention might work, in 60 midlife women. TCE is a simple TC/QG form that was developed by Dr. Roger Jahnke and developed into a standardized research intervention protocol by a team of researchers. It has been used in several prior projects and one recently completed NIH/NCCAM-funded randomized controlled trial (RCT) with breast cancer survivors showing reduction in fatigue and depression, and improved sleep and physical function.

Conditions

• Effects of Meditative Movement on Body Composition

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Meditative Movement	Intervention will be taught by a certified Tai Chi Easy (TCE) group practice leader. The TCE movements will be repeated in differing sequences and time-frames during the course of the study. The variety and combination of the exercises will begin easy and progress to more advanced movements and/or intensities as the study progresses and participants become more experienced and comfortable with the routine. Participants spend one hour in class each week for a total of eight weeks.

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-03-27
• Primary completion: 2017-12-14
• Completion: 2017-12-14
• First posted: 2019-08-28
• Last updated: 2021-06-08

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States