A Group-based Wellness Intervention in the Laboratory

The enormous cost of health care in the United States has sparked increasing interest in innovative and alternative approaches to both physical and emotional wellness. We demonstrate the value of an easy-to-implement, stress-reducing and wellness-enhancing methodology. In our study, undergraduate students who participated in a weekly meeting over the course of two months had, relative to a control group, a significant decrease in the resting-pulse rate over time, as well as significant improvement in several measures of wellness. Our results suggest that simple lifestyle-oriented wellness-promotion interventions may have significant benefits in terms of increasing health and productivity, as well as diminished medical costs.