The Effectiveness of Breathing and Relaxation Techniques on Somatic Tension and Trait Anger
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a structured breathing and relaxation intervention in reducing somatic tension and trait anger among Canadian adults. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 30 participants (15 intervention, 15 control) recruited from community and educational centers in Isfahan, Iran. The intervention group underwent ten 60-minute sessions over five weeks, incorporating diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and guided imagery techniques. Assessments were conducted at pre-test, post-test, and five-month follow-up using the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (Muscle Tension Subscale) and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2). Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA with Bonferroni post-hoc tests via SPSS-27. Significant main effects of time and group, as well as time × group interactions, were found for both somatic tension (F(2,56) = 36.71, p < .001, η² = .58) and trait anger (F(2,56) = 27.43, p < .001, η² = .49). Post-hoc comparisons revealed a significant reduction in somatic tension from pre-test to post-test (MD = 9.62, p < .001) and from pre-test to follow-up (MD = 11.79, p < .001). Trait anger also decreased significantly between pre-test and post-test (MD = 6.12, p < .001), and between pre-test and follow-up (MD = 6.95, p < .001), with sustained effects over time. Breathing and relaxation techniques are effective in reducing both somatic and emotional symptoms, with benefits persisting up to five months post-intervention. These findings support the integration of psychophysiological self-regulation practices into mental health and stress management programs as non-invasive and cost-effective strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".