Background/Objectives: The present exploratory study evaluates the feasibility and psychological effects of a structured Qigong intervention implemented in an Italian university setting. Qigong is a traditional Chinese mind–body practice combining gentle movements, breathwork, and mindful attention, aimed at enhancing mind–body integration and interoceptive awareness. Methods: A total of 332 undergraduate students voluntarily enrolled in a 12-week Qigong program. The intervention was based on Neidan Qigong and integrated both static and dynamic exercises. Psychological functioning was assessed through several self-report measures evaluating a range of constructs, including mindfulness (FFMQ), interoceptive ability (MAIA), perceived stress (PSS), depression, anxiety, and stress (BDI; DASS-21; STAI Y), emotion regulation (DERS), alexithymia (TAS), and sleep quality (PSQI). Results: A total of 114 students completed the intervention. The protocol was well received by participants and demonstrated high feasibility in the academic context, with good attendance rates and overall engagement. Preliminary findings indicate consistent improvements across several psychological domains. Conclusions: The results suggest that Qigong may be associated with improvements in mental health and well-being in young adults and may represent a promising, low-cost intervention. The findings should be interpreted as preliminary. Further research using controlled and methodologically rigorous designs is needed to assess the stability of these effects over time, incorporate physiological measures, and clarify the specific therapeutic contribution of spontaneous movement within Qigong practice.

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) is a structured intervention that blends meditation, formal and informal practices and yoga to enhance attention and emotional regulation and overall well-being. Its potential benefits are particularly significant for couples dealing with infertility and awaiting assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment, a condition often accompanied by high perceived levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. This pilot study on six participants, consisting of three infertile couples, aims to introduce an objective measure of trainer-trainee connection by applying Cross Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) to systolic-to-systolic time interval data of each dyad trainee-trainer. The trainer-trainee relationship is fundamental in MBSR, creating a supportive, trust-based environment that enables participants to fully engage in the practices, overcome challenges, and experience transformative benefits. Three CRQA features (determinism, recurrence rate, and longest diagonal length) were extracted from two phases (resting state and meditation task) of both the first and final MBSR sessions. Results revealed a significant increase in cardiovascular synchrony during the final session, particularly between meditation and resting states across all the three CRQA features (p-value < 0.05). No significant differences were observed in the first session between rest and meditation. While these findings are preliminary, this approach shows promise as an objective tool for assessing the strength of the trainer-trainee relationship and the effectiveness of group interventions.

Background: Inadequate management of emotional responses, limited access to emotion regulation strategies, and difficulties in emotion regulation may co-occur with alexithymic traits and interoceptive inaccuracy or confusion. These dimensions may influence lifetime eating disorder spectrum manifestations. Objective: To assess, in a general population sample without Axis I psychiatric disorders, alexithymic traits, interoceptive confusion/inaccuracy, and difficulties in emotion regulation, and to explore their associations with eating disorder spectrum manifestations. Method: In this cross-sectional observational study, fifty-two participants aged 18–30 years, recruited via a university bulletin board, were assessed online using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Interoceptive Accuracy Scale (IAS), Interoceptive Confusion Questionnaire (ICQ), Eating Attitude Test (EAT-26), and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) (protocol #01/2025). Results: Interoceptive confusion (ICQ) showed significant positive correlations with TAS-20, DERS, and EAT-26 total scores. ICQ scores were associated with TAS-20 subscales ‘difficulty identifying feelings’ (DIF) and ‘difficulty describing feelings’ (DDF). Participants with TAS-20 scores > 51 (n = 35; 67.3%) had significantly higher EAT-26 scores on ‘dieting’ (p = 0.043) and ‘bulimia’ (p = 0.017), as well as higher ICQ (p = 0.001) and DERS (p = 0.001) total scores, with smaller differences in the DERS ‘impulse’ subscale (p = 0.037). Conclusions: Preliminary findings suggest a pattern of co-occurring traits characterized by alexithymia, interoceptive confusion, emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and eating disorder spectrum features, supporting the study hypothesis.

Recent advances in physiological sensing technologies enable continuous acquisition of multichannel biosignals for digital health applications. Because physiological interactions arise from nonlinear mechanisms, their characterization requires analytical approaches capable of capturing both individual signal dynamics and cross-signal dependencies, often from short recordings. This study proposes a multilayer visibility graph (VG) framework free of phase-space embedding parameters for analyzing physiological interactions from multichannel biosignals. The approach was evaluated in a simulation study based on unidirectionally coupled Rössler oscillators and in two physiological datasets comprising synchronized cardiovascular recordings from healthy adults and wearable electrodermal activity (EDA) recordings acquired during a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) intervention. Average Degree (DA) was used to characterize the topological organization of individual and multiplex visibility graphs, while inter-layer mutual information (I) between degree sequences was introduced to quantify cross-layer dependence. In the simulation study, coupling-related changes in the response dynamics were already detectable from single-layer VGs at short window lengths, whereas inter-layer mutual information captured coupling-dependent changes in cross-layer organization. Feature estimates began to stabilize at approximately 480 samples and approached a plateau at longer window lengths. In the cardiovascular dataset, sex-related differences were primarily observed in configurations involving systolic blood pressure: DA differed in single-layer and multichannel representations, while inter-layer mutual information showed significant sex differences, specifically in the interbeat interval-systolic blood pressure duplex. In the EDA dataset, the proposed descriptors identified changes in trainer–trainee physiological organization across the MBSR intervention. These findings indicate that VG-based descriptors provide complementary information on within-signal topology and inter-layer dependence and can be applied to short multichannel physiological recordings without phase-space reconstruction.