Peer Reviewed Research: Qigong, Body-Awareness, and Mental Health
In a 2026 study published in the journal Healthcare, Ciacchini and colleagues examined whether a structured Qigong program could improve psychological well-being in university students. The researchers were not just looking at stress or mood in isolation, but instead focused on a more specific question: whether Qigong could change how people perceive and regulate internal bodily signals, a process known as interoception.
Over the course of twelve weeks, students participated in a guided Qigong program combining movement, breathing, and attention. What emerged from the data was not a single isolated effect, but a pattern of changes across multiple systems involved in emotional and physiological regulation.
The Role of Interoception
Interoception is not a term most people use, but the experience itself is familiar. It refers to the ability to feel what is happening inside the body, including the rhythm of breathing, the presence of tension, and the subtle shifts that occur before emotional states rise or settle.
This ability plays a central role in emotional regulation because emotions are not purely cognitive events. They are constructed from bodily signals that are interpreted and given meaning. When those signals are unclear or difficult to access, emotional responses tend to become less stable and harder to manage.
The study begins from this premise. If a practice like Qigong can improve interoceptive awareness, it may also improve how people regulate stress, anxiety, and mood.
Why University Students Were Studied
The researchers chose a university population for a specific reason. Students consistently show elevated levels of stress, anxiety, and sleep disturbance due to academic pressure, social transitions, and uncertainty about the future.
In this context, interventions that improve regulation, rather than simply reducing symptoms, become particularly relevant.
What the Program Looked Like
Participants were enrolled in a twelve-week Qigong program that included weekly sessions and daily home practice. Each session followed a structured format that began with awareness, moved into repetition, and ended in stillness.
The opening phase directed attention toward the body and the breath. The central phase involved gentle, coordinated movements performed repeatedly over time. The closing phase emphasized stillness through standing and seated meditation.
The structure is simple, but it is deliberate. It combines controlled attention with physical movement while also allowing for spontaneous responses to emerge. The authors describe this as an integration of top-down and bottom-up processes, meaning that both cognitive control and sensory feedback are being trained simultaneously.
What Changed Over Twelve Weeks
At the end of the program, several changes were observed. Participants reported improvements in how they experienced their bodies, becoming more aware of internal signals, more capable of interpreting them, and more able to use them to regulate emotional states.
This included increases in body listening, emotional awareness, and self-regulation, alongside reductions in perceived stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.
These changes did not occur independently. Improvements in interoceptive awareness were closely linked with improvements in emotional regulation, and those changes were associated with reductions in stress and anxiety. The data showed a consistent pattern in which these variables moved together, suggesting that the intervention was affecting a shared underlying system rather than isolated outcomes.
The Experience of Learning to Feel
The qualitative responses from participants add another layer to the findings. Many described the sessions as relaxing and therapeutic, and some referred to them as the only time in their day when breathing felt natural and tension could be released.
At the same time, the process was not always comfortable. Some participants, particularly those with higher baseline anxiety, initially found it difficult to focus on their breath or remain present with internal sensations. In some cases, directing attention inward increased discomfort before it led to regulation.
This detail is important because it suggests that interoception is not simply something that improves passively. It is a capacity that can be underdeveloped, and engaging with it may initially expose instability before a more regulated state is established.
Who Benefited the Most
One of the more consistent findings in the study was that the greatest improvements occurred in participants who began with lower baseline levels of regulation. Students with higher trait anxiety showed greater gains in emotional awareness, while those with lower initial body awareness demonstrated the largest improvements in their ability to sense and interpret internal signals.
This pattern suggests that individuals who are more dysregulated at the outset may have greater capacity for change when the underlying regulatory system is directly engaged.
What Is Happening Physiologically
To understand these changes, it helps to examine the structure of the practice itself. The movements in Qigong are slow and coordinated, which reduces unnecessary muscular tension and improves mechanical efficiency. Breathing becomes more regular and often slower, influencing autonomic function and shifting the body toward a more regulated state. Attention is continuously directed toward internal experience, which stabilizes perception and reduces fragmentation.
These elements operate together rather than independently. When breathing stabilizes, heart rate patterns shift. When posture improves, mechanical strain decreases. When attention becomes steady, neural activity becomes more organized. Over time, these combined effects contribute to a change in baseline physiological and psychological functioning.
The study frames this in terms of regulatory pathways, where top-down processes such as attention and intentional control interact with bottom-up processes such as sensory feedback and spontaneous movement. The integration of these pathways appears to be central to the observed effects.
Interoception as a Foundation
The authors make a key point in their discussion by emphasizing that interoceptive awareness is not simply another psychological variable, but a foundational component of emotional functioning.
When individuals become better at sensing internal signals, they are also better able to interpret emotional states and respond to them in a more adaptive way. This reduces reactivity and increases flexibility in how the system responds to stress.
From this perspective, the improvements in stress, anxiety, and mood are not separate outcomes, but downstream effects of a more fundamental shift in how internal information is processed and used.
A System-Level Change
This framework helps explain why the results extend across multiple domains. Participants did not only report feeling less stressed, but also demonstrated improvements in emotional regulation, reductions in depressive symptoms, and changes in how they related to their own bodily experience.
These outcomes are interconnected. Sleep, stress, mood, and cognitive clarity are all influenced by underlying regulatory processes. When those processes become more stable, multiple aspects of functioning tend to improve together.
Limitations and Context
The study is exploratory in nature, and the authors are clear about its limitations. There was no control group, which means the results cannot be interpreted as definitive evidence of causation. The dropout rate was relatively high, and all measures were based on self-report rather than physiological data.
These factors place important boundaries on interpretation. At the same time, the consistency of the findings across multiple domains, combined with qualitative reports from participants, suggests that the observed effects are meaningful and warrant further investigation.
A Different Way to Think About Regulation
What this study offers is not only evidence that Qigong may be beneficial, but also a framework for understanding how those benefits arise. Rather than targeting symptoms directly, the practice appears to influence the conditions under which those symptoms emerge.
By improving awareness of internal signals, stabilizing physiological rhythms, and integrating attention with movement, Qigong shifts the system toward a more regulated state. When this underlying organization improves, emotional and psychological outcomes tend to change as a consequence.
Final Perspective
For a population such as university students, where stress is high and regulation is often strained, this type of intervention is particularly relevant. It is simple, adaptable, and does not depend on specialized equipment or complex protocols.
More importantly, it provides individuals with a way to actively engage with their internal state. The study does not present Qigong as a replacement for medical or psychological care, but it does demonstrate that a structured and repeatable practice can produce measurable changes in how people experience their bodies and their mental states.
In many cases, that shift—from being carried by internal states to being able to regulate them—may represent a meaningful step in improving overall well-being.
Reference
Ciacchini, R., Lazzarelli, A., Papini, G., Viti, A., Scafuto, F., Orrù, G., Gemignani, A., & Conversano, C. (2026). Mind the motion: Feasibility and effects of a Qigong intervention on interoception and well-being in young adults. Healthcare, 14(2), 202.
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