Feasibility and Effectiveness of Consciousness, Relaxation, Attention, Fulfillment, and Transcendence (CRAFT) in Enhancing Tertiary Student Musicians’ Well-Being and Academic Experience

Abstract

Tertiary student musicians experience complex well-being concerns and challenges (music performance anxiety, psychological distress, musculoskeletal disorders) as they navigate through higher education and attempt to meet their highly physical, emotional, and cognitive music-making demands. Yoga, mindfulness, positive psychology, and emotional intelligence offer various practices and principles that may help tertiary student musicians prevent and self-regulate these stressors while satisfying elite performance levels. Grounded in these four disciplines and/or fields of knowledge, Consciousness, Relaxation, Attention, Fulfillment, and Transcendence (CRAFT) is a newly developed program for self-actualization, happiness, and well-being, that could comprehensively address this population’s demands. Building on previous limitations and gaps of prior yoga and mindfulness-based research conducted in music contexts, the purpose of the current PhD investigation was to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of CRAFT to enhance tertiary student musicians’ well-being and academic experience.

This investigation involved two phases including studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic (Phase 1; Studies 1-3) and studies undertaken before and after the pandemic (Phase 2; Studies 4-6). In both phases, participants were tertiary student musicians at two higher conservatories in Spain who followed either CRAFT, Alexander Technique, or music curricular instruction, once a week for 60-90 min during 2017-2023. In a quasi-experimental controlled trial (Study 1) and qualitative investigation (Study 2), the applicability and perceived benefits of CRAFT to improve tertiary student musicians’ well-being during the lockdown were explored. Subsequently, the potential occurrence of a CRAFT-induced response shift phenomenon and the extent to which it could bias participants’ self-reported changes in mindfulness was examined through the then-test (Study 3). Through a single-arm pre-post trial (Study 4) and mixed-methods investigation (Study 5), a comprehensive assessment of the feasibility of CRAFT in terms of its applicability, perceived benefits, and preliminary effectiveness to improve tertiary student musicians’ well-being and academic experience was conducted. Lastly, a three-arm non-randomized controlled trial comparing CRAFT participants with active and inactive controls (Study 6), was implemented to examine the effectiveness of CRAFT in improving tertiary student musicians’ dispositional mindfulness, music performance anxiety, emotional regulation, psychological distress, well-being, as well as lower body flexibility and balance.

Phase 1 results indicated that CRAFT was perceived by participants as an applicable, beneficial, and transformative program, while Phase 2 findings substantiated those from Phase 1 and supported CRAFT as a feasible and effective program to holistically improve tertiary student musicians’ well-being and academic experience. This was evidenced by CRAFT participants’ higher levels of proactivity and perceived benefits than controls in terms of implementing practices to improve their well-being during the lockdown (Studies 1 & 2); positive evaluations of the program's practicality, implementation, integration, and viability (Studies 4 & 5); significant improvements in dispositional mindfulness, music performance anxiety, emotional regulation, psychological distress, well-being, as well as lower body flexibility and balance (Studies 4 & 6); larger enhancements in mindfulness after adjusting for response shift (Study 3); and multidimensional well-being-, humanistic-, and music- related benefits mirroring CRAFT’s theoretical framework that confirmed, clarified, and expanded the aforementioned results (Studies 2 & 5). Notwithstanding some limitations, this PhD investigation afforded relevant contributions to the field of yoga- and mindfulness-based research conducted with the target population by bolstering CRAFT as a feasible and effective intervention to comprehensively enhance tertiary student musicians’ well-being and academic experience. Large multi-arm mixed methods investigations with a higher frequency of delivery are recommended to substantiate these findings and extend them to other settings and populations.