2.1. Participants and Experimental Design

This study comprised two experiments: one where a face-to-face class was conducted and the other where a video class was conducted. All participants were briefed on the experimental procedure before they agreed to participate, where they gave their written informed consent by signing an experimental consent form. The experiment was approved by the Medical Research Ethics Committee of Asia University (number 10506007). Participants’ information and the experimental procedures are listed in Table 2.

Experiment design information.

Experiment 1 was conducted as follows. The Chan master taught meditation in face-to-face classes, and the learners had no experience with meditation. This experiment was divided into two subexperiments. In subexperiment 1A, the participants’ physiological parameters before and after the first face-to-face meditation session were measured to determine the change in parameters. In total, the data of 22 participants were recorded, but only 18 participants were successfully enrolled after the exclusion criteria was applied. Their ages ranged from 24 to 71 years, with the mean being 47.9 years (standard deviation; SD = 17.2 years), and there were 12 men and 6 women. Subexperiment 1B involved participants in subexperiment 1A and additional recruited participants. Physiological parameters were observed over 1 month. In total, the data of 50 participants were recorded, among whom 45 participants were enrolled after the exclusion criteria were applied. Their ages ranged from 25 to 68 years, with a mean of 46.7 years (SD = 12.7 years), and there were 17 men and 28 women.

Experiment 2 involved video classes. The participants were regular practitioners of Heart Chan meditation who practiced at the venue of the experiment. They were asked to attend the experiment’s class every week at a designated time point, and their data were collected. The changes in their physiological parameters during the video-based meditation learning were recorded. Their physiological parameters were measured before and after each weekly video class over 4 weeks. Four measurements for each participant were taken to ensure consistency, and the data of 51 participants were recorded. However, participants who did not complete the experiment and who exhibited more than 10 instances of irregular heartbeat were excluded. In total, 27 participants were successfully enrolled (age range, 20 to 68 years; mean age = 49.2 years, SD = 14.7 years; men, n = 5, women, n = 22). Participants had practiced Heart Chan meditation for an average of 9 years (range = 1 to 27 years).

Both face-to-face and video classes were taught with the same teaching method. The duration of each session was 90 min. The Chan master detailed the principles of and precautions to be taken when practicing meditation and guided the participants when practicing meditation together. All participants sat on the floor in a cross-legged position and practiced breathing and concentrating on the chakra points within their bodies. Synchronization between the minds of the Chan master and practitioners is a crucial factor for entering a deeper meditative state.

For the experiments, the participants were asked to rest for 20 min before measurement. They were asked to sign an informed consent form after the researcher briefed them on the conduct of the experiment. Their physiological parameters were measured using ANSWatch® wrist monitors (Taiwan Scientific Corp., New Taipei City, Taiwan) and the duration of the measurement was 7 min. Values for the participants’ physiological parameters were shown on the device, and the data were output to Excel after the experiments, for statistical analysis.