Effects of a Mindfulness Task on Women’s Sexual Response

Abstract

Mindfulness-based interventions are effective at improving symptoms of sexual dysfunction in women. The mechanisms by which mindfulness improves sexual function are less clear. The main objective of our study was to investigate the impact of a mindfulness task on sexual response in women. Forty-one women (mean age = 27.2, SD = 5.6) participated in two laboratory sessions that each included two erotic films and one attention task that were presented in counterbalanced order. Both attention tasks consisted of a six-minute audio recording of either a modified body scan, focusing on genital arousal sensations (mindfulness condition), or a visualization exercise. Subjective and genital sexual arousal were measured continuously during stimulus presentation. The mindfulness task led to greater subjective and lower genital arousal. The agreement of subjective and genital sexual arousal (i.e., concordance) was greater in the mindfulness condition. Trait mindfulness was related to lower sexual arousal but also greater sexual concordance in women. Mindfulness-based interventions that encourage women to focus on physical arousal sensations in the here and now may be associated with women’s improved sexual function by enhancing feelings of sexual arousal during sexual activity and by increasing concordance between subjective and genital sexual arousal.

Notes

¹ Analyses including both pre- and postmanipulation stimuli were comparable to those reported here. Therefore, to increase interpretability of the models and analyses, we elected to report analyses using the postmanipulation data only.

² Two sets of analyses were conducted, one using the complete sample and another using only a subset of participants that indicated low distress by sexual concerns. As both analyses yielded similar results, only the results from the complete sample are reported.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by the Gateway Fellowship Grant of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum Research School PLUS, funded by Germany’s Excellence Initiative (DFG GSC 98/3) awarded to Julia Velten.