Evoked Aesthetic Chills During Loving Kindness Meditation : Effects on Self-Transcendence, Emotional Breakthrough, and Psychological Insight

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Understanding and facilitating access to non-ordinary experiences that can promote mental health and wellbeing is a growing focus of clinical and basic research. . Previous work has revealed the mood-augmenting, belief-altering, and self-transcendent effects of aesthetic-chills-inducing audiovisual stimulation, as a putative “technodelic.” The current study investigated how a guided loving kindness meditation (LKM) combined with chills-inducing music (henceforth: chills-augmented) affected participants' mood, self-transcendence (ST), psychological insight, and emotional breakthrough.. We conducted an online study (n=398) using a 2 x 2 design that compared two versions of a validated custom loving kindness meditation (LKM): one with chills-augmented music (+) and one without (-), alongside a mindfulness-based control (MC). As hypothesized, LKM when compared to MC increased connectedness to others, while chills-augmentation to either stimulus (LKM+/MC+) enhanced ST, mood, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight. A mediation analysis confirmed that regardless of condition, the occurrence of aesthetic chills during meditation predicted the reporting of these aforementioned downstream effects. Furthermore, trait measures corresponded to distinct experiential outcomes: trait absorption predicted feelings of ego-dissolution, connectedness to the world, and moral elevation; interoceptive awareness predicted connectedness to self; and vividness of internal imagery predicted connectedness to others. This work contributes to ongoing research efforts to enhance understanding of and access to non-ordinary experiences that can beget salutogenic, pro-social outcomes.

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