Boost & Balance: Boosting life quality and balancing stress with five minutes’ daily yoga, mindfulness and positive psychology

Abstract: The use of internet based psychology interventions as well as yoga and mindfulness interventions in order to improve psychological health has increased during the past decades. However, most interventions are time and resource demanding and there is a need for investigating short and easily accessible interventions. In this four-week randomized controlled pilot study I measured the effects of the “Boost & Balance online course”: an internet based intervention combining positive psychology, yoga and mindfulness practice for five minutes each weekday during four consecutive weeks. The intervention was meant to reduce aspects of psychological ill-being and increase aspects of psychological well-being as well as level of mindfulness in a group of office workers (n = 58), compared to a control group assigned to a waitlist condition (n = 62). The results showed that the intervention significantly increased life quality and marginally significantly decreased stress as well as increased mindfulness for all participants assigned to the intervention group (n = 58). When excluding participants who failed to perform any of the intervention’s exercises (n = 9) from the intervention group the results showed that the intervention significantly decreased stress and significantly increased life quality as well as mindfulness for all participants in the intervention group (n = 49). No effects were found for anxiety, depression or life satisfaction in any of the analyses. The findings suggest that the Boost & Balance online course shows clear tendencies for improving psychological health.