A study on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) among secondary teachers…

Contemporary process-based models of mindfulness training (for example, Holzel et al.'s neurocognitive framework) describe MBSR's effects through several distinguishable component mechanisms: attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and a change in perspective on the self. Each mechanism is cultivated by a different practice and produces a different kind of outcome.

In this framework, emotion regulation is the mechanism that directly governs how an emotional reaction to a stressor is generated, modulated, or changed, through processes such as reappraisal and the extinction of a learned reaction. This is exactly what is required to shift how a person emotionally responds to ongoing stress, so it is the component most responsible for the transformation the study describes. Sitting meditation and body-scan exercises are the training activities that build attention and body awareness respectively, but the transformation in emotional response itself is attributed to strengthened emotion-regulation capacity, a link consistent with mindfulness-based teacher-training trials (for example, Roeser et al., 2013), which found reduced stress following training, an outcome the broader mindfulness-mechanism literature attributes to strengthened emotion-regulation capacity.

• Meditation practice names the trained activity performed during MBSR sessions, not the underlying mechanism that changes an emotional response.

• Physical awareness (body awareness) is a separate mechanism tied to interoception, noticing bodily sensations, rather than to transforming an emotional reaction.

• Cognitive self-perception corresponds to the change-in-perspective-on-self mechanism, which concerns self-view and identity, not the moment-to-moment emotional response.

Because the question specifically asks which component transforms emotional responses, the mechanism aligned with that outcome, emotion regulation, is the correct component.