The role of self body brushing vs mindfulness meditation on interoceptive awareness: A non-randomized pilot study on healthy participants with possible implications for body image disturbances

Introduction: Adaptive interoceptive awareness has been revealed to be an important factor for mental health. Touch is one of the modalities through which we perceive bodily feelings. In this pilot study, self touch's role in enhancing interoceptive awareness was investigated. It was tested by means of a Self Body Brushing (SBB) procedure, which entails self-administered brushing of the entire body. Methods: A pre vs. post three-arm design was used, with 49 healthy adult participants. The SBB training was delivered to a first group (N = 13) and a Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training to a second group (N = 15), considered as a reference intervention for promoting interoceptive awareness; a third group of inactive control participants (N = 14) was also included. Assessment included two self-report questionnaires: the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Results: In several MAIA scales significant changes were observed: for Noticing, Attention regulation and Body listening, an overall improvement was observed, which was particularly due to changes in the active groups (SBB and MOM); Emotional awareness and Self-regulation scores increased more in the SBB group than in the other two groups. In the PSS measure, the changes in the active groups did not produce a statistically significant effect relative to the control group. Conclusions: SBB led to improvements in several aspects of self-reported interoceptive awareness at least as well as mindfulness meditation training. Further studies could investigate the potential effectiveness of SBB for promoting individual psychophysical health and well-being, in particular in the case of body image disturbances.