Complex Correlation Method Identifies Efficacy of One-week Mindfulness Training in College Students Fatimah M Alani, Shiza Saleem, Bayan S. Obeid, Yasser O Kassar, Nadia Rabeh, Carl H Kassab, Rajan R K Prasad, Herbert F Jelinek, Zakia Dimassi Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Abstract College students face a variety of stressors, including academic pressure, social challenges, and financial concerns. Mindfulness training by applying breathing and self-reflecting mantras has been shown to be a useful tool for reducing stress as part of compassion mindfulness training (CMT). Physiological measures of these methods are lacking. Heart rate variability (HRV) captures stress and anxiety by changes in the sympathovagal balance and hence may provide insight into the effectiveness of mindfulness on psychopathology. Thirty-nine students were recruited and answered the depression, anxiety, and stress questionnaire (DASS-21) prior to and following 90 days after CMT. Heart rate was recorded for 5 minutes before CMT and following the 1-week intervention. HRV features included time-frequency domain, nonlinear features, and complex correlation measures. Long-term improvements in DASS-21 were not reflected by all HRV features. However, changes in HRV patterns indicate an increase in complexity reflecting the higher adaptability and flexibility of the autonomic nervous system. The research outcomes indicate the beneficial effect of short, self-compassion mindfulness training. Yet, further research is required to explain its effect on heart rate variability. 1. Introduction College students face a variety of stressors, including academic pressure, social challenges, and financial concerns. And while stress itself is a short-term response, college students have also shown high rates of depression and anxiety [1]. A variety of interventions have been considered including mindfulness practices [2]. The ability of mindfulness practices such as emotion labelling, diaphragmatic breathing, and self-compassion mantras, to modify emotions has been demonstrated in mindfulness practitioners [3]. Mindful emotion labelling has been shown to reduce subjective stress and is a technique of cognitively responding to emotional states by applying a linguistic descriptor to the state [2]. Such practices also teach self-compassion involving the mindful repetition of mantras or self-affirmations, but whether these correlate with improved vagal tone and HRV is still controversial [4, 5]. The current research investigated whether combining emotional labelling, diaphragmatic breathing, and self- compassion practices would reduce stress and lead to improved changes in HRV following a one-week intervention. 2. Methods. 2.1. Subjects Thirty-nine engineering students, comprising 29 females (22.3±3.5 years) participated in this study. Subjects were screened for psychiatric or neurological diseases, cognitive deficits, and ongoing psychoactive drug therapies. All subjects provided written informed consent. The experimental protocol was approved by Khalifa University Institutional Review Board. 2.2. Experimental Protocol The participants underwent a home-based compassion mindfulness training (CMT) program over the course of one week. The subjects were instructed to undertake the training any time they felt stressed. This consisted of identifying how they felt and naming their emotions by consulting the emotion wheel. Then they were instructed to do deep breathing whilst reciting the self-affirmation text. To evaluate the impact of the training, the heart rate signal was measured twice: once for a five-minute period before the commencement of the CMT program and about 90 days following the one-week training. The emWave system (HeartMath) was utilized to record heart rate data (sampling rate of 370 sps). Subjects filled out the DASS questionnaire pre- and 90 days post-training. The DASS- 21 is a self-reporting survey with 21 questions that are used Computing in Cardiology 2023; Vol 50 Page 1 ISSN: 2325-887X DOI: 10.22489/CinC.2023.317