ABSTRACT
The upheaval caused by this pandemic and the uncertainty about life has triggered problems related to the psychological health of the community including healthcare professionals and simultaneously worsened the mental condition of those already suffering from psychiatric issues (Du et al., General Hospital Psychiatry 67:144–145, 2020;Fusar-Poli et al., Journal of Affective Disorders 275:78–79, 2020). A global effort is required to manage the mental health issues triggered by COVID-19. It is important to explore the resources that are conducive to mental health. One such tool is the ancient meditation technique, Vipassana Meditation (VM) taught by the Buddha to overcome universal ills. In this study, an attempt has been made to show case the impact of VM practice in coping with the current unprecedented situation by managing the stress effectively. For this purpose, the Stress Coping Behaviour Scale (SCBS) (Janghel, G. & Srivastava, The International Journal of Indian Psychology 4(3), No. 100, DIP 18.01.077/2017040) was administered online to 462 Vipassana meditators (Male 67%, Female 33%;Ages 20–65 years) who practised Vipassana regularly at least for one year. The responses were analysed by using ANOVA (SPSS v22.0) to highlight the variation in coping with stress due to regularity of practice and number of years of practice. The maladaptive and adaptive coping styles measured by SCBS indicated better coping results for meditators who meditated regularly. It indicated that they don’t get swayed by the external catastrophic situation and are able to remain equanimous. This empirical study showcases that VM can be practised as a measure to promote well-being by managing and preventing mental and psychological issues arising in a pandemic situation. In future, VM practice can be adopted to manage uncertainties created by COVID-19 or any other unprecedented stressful situation to help bring about a “New Normal”. One of the limitations of this study is that the conclusions could not be corroborated by conducting personal interviews with some of the meditator respondents. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.