  Mindfulness meditation has been proven to be effective in treating a range of
mental and physical conditions. Mindful Art is a type of mindfulness meditation
that comprises sessions of drawing, painting and sculpturing with mindfulness
for a given length of time. To date, the efficacy of mindful art has not been
systematically studied. In this paper, we describe an experimental pilot study
on two groups of participants, a beginner group of 21 participants and an
experienced meditation group of 9 participants, who had previously practiced
mindfulness meditation for more than one year. The beginner group was
instructed in mindfulness sitting and moving meditation, while the experienced
group was instructed in mindful art making in addition to mindfulness
meditation. The instructions were delivered remotely over Tencent Conference
and WeChat. The sessions were of 90 minutes duration each, twice per week, with
45 minutes of home practice daily and the length of the study was 21 days. The
blood pressure, pulse rate and breathing rates, as well as the subjective
degree of relaxation were recorded at every session. At the end of the study,
the experienced group reported higher average difference in breath rate and
relaxation within each session, while the beginner group reported a greater
degree of improvement in breath rate and relaxation over the period of the
study, although their scores were lower on average than the experienced group.
