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New research reveals an advanced form of meditation impacts the brain and is linked to aspects of well-being

by Massachusetts General Hospital

Using advanced brain scanning technology, a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of Mass General Brigham (MGB), have revealed insights into what happens in the brain during an advanced form of meditation called jhana.

By uncovering distinct patterns of activity in different regions of the brain during jhana, the research suggests exciting possibilities for innovative therapies merging ancient meditation practices with modern neuroscience to improve well-being.

For the study published in Cerebral Cortex , scientists conducted a form of ultra-high field functional magnetic resonance imaging on a volunteer who was an adept meditator with more than 25 years of meditation experience. Imaging data were collected during 27 sessions of jhana over five consecutive days.

The advanced absorptive meditation practice known as jhana is linked to self-transcendence, which is sometimes called ego-dissolution or insight into "no self," and also attentional capacities and internally-generated joy and equanimity—qualities that are important for well-being and often disrupted in various psychiatric disorders.

"This study used an ultra-high field strength 7T magnetic resonance imaging system for enhanced brain mapping precision that has never been used in any study of meditation, let alone advanced meditation. This technology enabled us to evaluate the activity, with high precision, of the cortex, subcortex, brainstem, and cerebellum during a form of advanced concentration meditation known as jhana," says senior author Matthew D. Sacchet, Ph.D., the director of the Meditation Research Program and an assistant professor of Psychiatry at MGH and Harvard Medical School.

"This allowed us to gain insights into the overall functioning of the whole brain in the context of jhana meditation, including the rarely studied brainstem and cerebellum."

Sacchet and his colleagues also observed correlations between brain activity during jhana and attention, jhanic qualities (including joy, mental ease, equanimity and formlessness), and self-perception.

"This research is foundational for the development of cutting-edge interventions for supporting well-being and treating mental health conditions. These interventions could involve developing novel meditation-based therapies grounded in advanced meditation, such as jhana, which have received extremely limited attention from science," says Sacchet.

"Our neuroscientific insights may directly inform neurotechnology including neurofeedback and brain stimulation that may be applied to target specific brain systems implicated in advanced meditation. Our work holds significant and untapped promises in alleviating suffering and promoting human flourishing."

Sacchet and his team intend to develop an increasingly comprehensive science of advanced meditation through the development of a research center at MGH and HMS focused on this work. The group is currently collecting brain imaging data from additional meditators and is exploring additional methods to understand jhana and other forms of advanced meditation.

Additional authors include Winson F.Z. Yang, Avijit Chowdhury, Marta Bianciardi, Remko van Lutterveld, and Terje Sparby.

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November 1, 2014

15 min read

Neuroscience Reveals the Secrets of Meditation’s Benefits

Contemplative practices that extend back thousands of years show a multitude of benefits for both body and mind

By Matthieu Ricard , Antoine Lutz & Richard J. Davidson

Marcos Chin

When the Society for Neuroscience asked Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (the leader of Tibetan Buddhism), to address its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in 2005, a few hundred members among the nearly 35,000 or so attending the meeting petitioned to have the invitation rescinded. A religious leader, they felt, had no place at a scientific meeting. But this particular leader turned out to have a provocative and ultimately productive question to pose to the gathering. “What relation,” he asked, “could there be between Buddhism, an ancient Indian philosophical and spiritual tradition, and modern science?”

The Dalai Lama, putting action before rhetoric, had already started trying to find answers to his own question. Back in the 1980s, he had sparked a dialogue about science and Buddhism, which led to the creation of the Mind & Life Institute, dedicated to studying contemplative science. In 2000 he brought new focus to this endeavor: he launched the subdiscipline of “contemplative neuroscience” by inviting scientists to study the brain activity of expert Buddhist meditators—defined as having more than 10,000 hours of practice.

For nearly 15 years more than 100 monastics and lay practitioners of Buddhism and a large number of beginning meditators have participated in scientific experiments at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at least 19 other universities. The article you are reading, in fact, is the product of a collaboration between two neuroscientists and a Buddhist monk who originally trained as a cell biologist.

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A comparison of the brain scans of meditators with tens of thousands of hours of practice with those of neophytes and nonmeditators has started to explain why this set of techniques for training the mind holds great potential for supplying cognitive and emotional benefits. The goals of meditation, in fact, overlap with many of the objectives of clinical psychology, psychiatry, preventive medicine and education. As suggested by the growing compendium of research, meditation may be effective in treating depression and chronic pain and in cultivating a sense of overall well-being.

Credit: David C. Killpack

The discovery of meditation's benefits coincides with recent neuroscientific findings showing that the adult brain can still be deeply transformed through experience. These studies show that when we learn how to juggle or play a musical instrument, the brain undergoes changes through a process called neuroplasticity. A brain region that controls the movement of a violinist's fingers becomes progressively larger with mastery of the instrument. A similar process appears to happen when we meditate. Nothing changes in the surrounding environment, but the meditator regulates mental states to achieve a form of inner enrichment, an experience that affects brain functioning and its physical structure. The evidence amassed from this research has begun to show that meditation can rewire brain circuits to produce salutary effects not just on the mind and the brain but on the entire body.

What is Meditation?

Meditation has roots in the contemplative practices of nearly every major religion. The prevalence of meditation in the media has given the word various meanings. We will refer to meditation as the cultivation of basic human qualities, such as a more stable and clear mind, emotional balance, a sense of caring mindfulness, even love and compassion—qualities that remain latent as long as one does not make an effort to develop them. It is also a process of familiarization with a more serene and flexible way of being.

In principle, meditation is relatively simple and can be done anywhere. No equipment or workout attire is needed. The meditator begins by assuming a comfortable physical posture, neither too tense nor too lax, and by wishing for self-transformation and a desire for others' well-being and for the alleviation of their suffering. Later the practitioner must stabilize the mind, which is too often disorderly—and occupied by a stream of inner chatter. Mastering the mind requires freeing it from automatic mental conditioning and inner confusion.

We will examine here which regions of the brain light up during three common types of meditation developed through Buddhism and now practiced in secular programs in hospitals and schools throughout the world. The first one, focused-attention meditation, aims to tame and center the mind in the present moment while developing the capacity to remain vigilant to distractions. The second one, mindfulness, or open-monitoring meditation, tries to cultivate a less emotionally reactive awareness to emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment to prevent them from spiraling out of control and creating mental distress. In mindfulness, the meditator remains attentive, moment by moment, to any experience without focusing on anything specific. Finally, another type of practice is known in Buddhist tradition as compassion and loving kindness and fosters an altruistic perspective toward others. A word of caution: Neuroimaging results discussed below should not be considered a one-to-one mapping between a given meditative state and specific brains networks. That is, functions in the brain are multidimensional, and any given meditative state engages a multitude of cognitive, affective and motivational features of the brain. Neuroimaging can visualize only one of these elements at a time.

Under the Scanner

Neuroscientists have now begun to probe what happens inside the brain during the various types of meditation. Wendy Hasenkamp, then at Emory University, and her colleagues used brain imaging to identify correlated neural activity associated with focused-attention meditation. In the scanner, the participants trained their attention on the sensation produced by breathing. Typically during this form of meditation, the mind wanders from an object, and the meditator must recognize this and then restore attention to the gradual rhythm of the inhaling and exhaling. In this study, the meditator had to signal mind wandering by pressing a button. Researchers identified four phases of a cognitive cycle: an episode of mind wandering, a moment of becoming aware of the distraction, a phase of reorienting attention and a resumption of focused attention.

Each of the four phases involves particular brain networks. The first part of the cycle, when a distraction occurs, increases activity in the wide-ranging default-mode network (DMN). This network includes areas of the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, the precuneus, the inferior parietal lobe and the lateral temporal cortex. The DMN is known to become activated during mind wandering and to play a general role in building and updating internal models of the world based on long-term memories about the self or others.

The second phase, becoming aware of a distraction, correlates with the activity of other brain areas such as the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, regions of what is called the salience network. This network is thought to play a key role in selecting which stimuli deserve attention. Here its activity may facilitate the shift of the mind away from distractors, for instance.

The third phase engages additional areas—among them the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the lateral inferior parietal lobe—which are involved in orienting attention. Finally, in the fourth and last phase, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in monitoring attention, continues to retain a high level of activity, as the meditator's attention remains directed toward an object such as the breath.

In our laboratory at Wisconsin, we further observed different patterns of activity depending on a practitioner's level of experience. Veteran meditators with more than 10,000 hours of practice showed more activity in these attention-related brain regions compared with novices. Paradoxically, the most experienced meditators demonstrated less activation than the ones without as much experience. Advanced meditators appear to acquire a level of skill that enables them to achieve a focused state of mind with less effort. These effects resemble the skill of expert musicians and athletes capable of immersing themselves in the “flow” of their performances with a minimal sense of effortful control.

To study the impact of focused-attention meditation, we also studied its volunteers before and after a three-month retreat with intensive meditation exercises for at least eight hours a day. They received headphones that broadcast sounds at a given frequency, occasionally mixed with slightly higher-pitched sounds. They had to focus on the sounds played in one ear for 10 minutes and react to periodically interspersed high-pitched tones. After the retreat, we found that meditators, compared with a nonmeditating control group, showed less trial-to-trial variation in their reaction times on this highly repetitive task, which lent itself easily to distractions. The result suggested that the meditators had an enhanced capacity to remain vigilant. The brain's electrical responses to high-pitched tones remained more stable at the second session only for the meditators.

Stream of Consciousness

The second type of well-studied meditation also involves another form of attention. Mindfulness, or open-monitoring meditation, requires the meditator to take note of every sight or sound and track internal bodily sensations and inner self-talk. The person stays aware of what is happening without becoming overly preoccupied with any single perception or thought, returning to this detached focus each time the mind strays. As awareness of what is happening in one's surroundings grows, normal daily irritants—an angry colleague at work, a worried child at home—become less disruptive, and a sense of psychological well-being develops.

With Heleen Slagter, then in our group at Wisconsin, we sought to learn about the influence of this form of training on mental functioning by measuring the participants' capacity to detect rapidly presented visual stimuli—a means to measure mindfulness meditation, which is also sometimes called nonreactive awareness. To perform this experiment, we used a task in which the participants had to detect two numbers presented on a screen rapidly, amid a succession of letters. If the second number appears about 300 milliseconds after the first one, subjects often do not see the second, a phenomenon known as attentional blink.

If the second number appears after a delay of 600 milliseconds, it can be detected without difficulty. The attentional blink reflects the limits of the brain's ability to process two stimuli presented to the observer at close intervals. When too much of the brain's attention is devoted to processing the first number, the second number cannot always be detected, although the observer usually can see it on some of the trials. We hypothesized that mindfulness training could reduce the propensity to “get stuck,” or absorbed, by seeing the first number. Mindfulness practice cultivates a nonreactive form of sensory awareness, which should result in a reduced attentional blink. As we predicted, after three months of an intensive retreat, the meditators perceived both numbers more frequently than the controls did. This improved perception was also reflected in lessened activity of a particular brain wave in response to the first number. Monitoring the P3b brain wave, used to assess how attention is allocated, indicated that meditators were capable of optimizing attention so as to minimize the attentional blink.

Staying aware of an unpleasant sensation can reduce maladaptive emotional responses and help one to move beyond the disagreeable feeling and may be particularly useful in dealing with pain. In our Wisconsin lab, we have studied experienced practitioners while they performed an advanced form of mindfulness meditation called open presence. In open presence, sometimes called pure awareness, the mind is calm and relaxed, not focused on anything in particular yet vividly clear, free from excitation or dullness. The meditator observes and is open to experience without making any attempt to interpret, change, reject or ignore painful sensation. We found that the intensity of the pain was not reduced in meditators, but it bothered them less than it did members of a control group.

Inner pathways of brain activity register on an electroencephalogram as co-author Matthieu Ricard meditates. Credit: Jeff Miller University of Wisconsin–Madison

Compared with novices, expert meditators' brain activity diminished in anxiety-related regions—the insular cortex and the amygdala—in the period preceding the painful stimulus. The meditators' brain response in pain-related regions became accustomed to the stimulus more quickly than that of novices after repeated exposures to it. Other tests in our lab have shown that meditation training increases one's ability to better control and buffer basic physiological responses—inflammation or levels of a stress hormone—to a socially stressful task such as giving a public speech or doing mental arithmetic in front of a harsh jury.

Several studies have documented the benefits of mindfulness on symptoms of anxiety and depression and its ability to improve sleep patterns. By deliberately monitoring and observing their thoughts and emotions when they feel sad or worried, depressed patients can use meditation to manage negative thoughts and feelings as they arise spontaneously and so lessen rumination. In 2000 clinical psychologists John Teasdale, then at the University of Cambridge, and Zindel Segal of the University of Toronto showed that for patients who had previously suffered at least three episodes of depression, six months of mindfulness practice, along with cognitive therapy, reduced the risk of relapse by nearly 40 percent in the year following the onset of a severe depression. More recently, Segal demonstrated that the intervention is superior to a placebo and has a protective effect against relapse comparable to standard maintenance antidepressant therapy.

Compassion and Loving Kindness

The third form of meditation under study cultivates attitudes and feelings of loving kindness and compassion toward other people, whether they are close relatives, strangers or enemies. This practice entails being aware of someone else's needs and then experiencing a sincere, compassionate desire to help that person or to alleviate the suffering of other people by shielding them from their own destructive behavior.

To generate a compassionate state may sometimes entail the meditator feeling what another person is feeling. But having one's emotions resonate empathetically with the feelings of another person does not by itself suffice to yield a compassionate mindset. The meditation must also be driven by an unselfish desire to help someone who is suffering. This form of meditation on love and compassion has proved to be more than just a spiritual exercise. It has shown potential to benefit health care workers, teachers and others who run the risk of emotional burnout linked to the distress experienced from a deeply empathetic reaction to another person's plight.

The meditator begins by focusing on an unconditional feeling of benevolence and love for others, accompanied by silent repetition of a phrase conveying intent, such as “May all beings find happiness and the causes of happiness and be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.” In 2008 we studied experienced volunteers who had practiced this form of training for thousands of hours and found an increase in activity in several brain regions while they listened to voices conveying distress. The secondary somatosensory and insular cortices, known to participate in empathetic and other emotional responses, were more activated for experts than controls in response to the distressed voice, suggesting an enhanced ability to share the feelings of others without reporting any sign of becoming emotionally overwhelmed. The practice of compassion meditation also produced more activity in areas such as the temporoparietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus, all typically activated when we put ourselves in the place of another.

More recently, Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki, both at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, in collaboration with one of us (Ricard), sought to distinguish differences between the effects of empathy and compassion on meditators. They noted that compassion and altruistic love were associated with positive emotions, and they suggested that emotional exhaustion or burnout was, in fact, a kind of empathy “fatigue.”

According to the Buddhist contemplative tradition from which this practice is derived, compassion, far from leading to distress and discouragement, reinforces an inner balance, strength of mind and a courageous determination to help those who suffer. If a child is hospitalized, the presence of a loving mother at his side holding his hand and comforting him with tender words will no doubt do that child more good than the anxiety of a mother overwhelmed with empathetic distress who, unable to bear the sight of her sick child, paces back and forth in the hallway. In the latter case, the mother may then end up with the common experience of burnout, which, in one U.S. study, beset about 60 percent of the 600 caregivers surveyed.

To further explore the mechanisms of empathy and compassion, Klimecki and Singer divided about 60 volunteers into two groups. One meditated on love and compassion, and the other experimental regimen trained participants to cultivate feelings of empathy for others. Preliminary results showed that after a week of meditation-based loving kindness and compassion, novice subjects watched video clips showing suffering people with more positive and benevolent feelings. The other subjects, who devoted a week to an experimental regimen that just cultivated empathy, experienced emotions that resonated deeply with others' sufferings. But these emotions also brought about negative feelings and thoughts, and this group experienced more distress, sometimes to the point of not being able to control their emotions.

Credit: David C. Killpack ( brain ); Source: “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Increased Cortical Thickness,” by Sara W. Lazar et al., in Neuroreport , Vol. 16, No. 17; November 28, 2005

Aware of these destabilizing effects, Singer and Klimecki added training for the empathy group in compassion and loving kindness meditation. They then observed that this additional exercise counterbalanced the detrimental effects of training in empathy alone: negative emotions diminished, and positive emotions increased. These results were accompanied by corresponding changes in the areas of several brain networks associated with compassion, positive emotions and maternal love, including the orbitofrontal cortex, the ventral striatum and the anterior cingulate cortex. The researchers, moreover, were able to demonstrate that a week of training in compassion increased prosocial behavior in a virtual game specially developed to measure the capacity to help others.

A Door to Consciousness

Meditation explores the nature of the mind, providing a way to study consciousness and subjective mental states from the first-person perspective of the meditator. In a collaboration with expert Buddhist meditators at Wisconsin, we have studied the brain's electrical activity using electroencephalography (EEG) during compassion meditation in which the meditators described the well-defined sense of self as becoming less fixed and permanent.

We found that these long-term Buddhist practitioners were able, at will, to sustain a particular EEG pattern. Specifically, it is called high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and phase synchrony at between 25 and 42 hertz. The coordination of brain oscillations may play a potentially crucial role in the brain's building of temporary networks that can integrate cognitive and affective functions during learning and conscious perception, a process that can bring about lasting changes in brain circuitry.

High-amplitude oscillations persisted throughout the meditation for several dozens of seconds and gradually increased as practice progressed. These EEG traces differed from those of control subjects, in particular, in the lateral frontoparietal cortex. Changes in electrical activity may reflect an increased awareness in expert meditators of their surroundings and their internal mental processes, although additional research is needed to better understand the functioning of gamma oscillations.

Meditation brings about changes not just in well-defined cognitive and emotional processes but also in the volume of certain brain areas, possibly reflecting alterations in the number of connections among brain cells. A preliminary study by Sara W. Lazar of Harvard University and her colleagues showed that among longtime meditators, as compared with a control group, the volume of the brain's darker tissue, its gray matter, differed in the insula and prefrontal cortices—specifically, regions called Brodmann areas 9 and 10, which are frequently activated during various forms of meditation. These distinctions were most pronounced in older participants in the study, suggesting that meditation might influence the thinning of brain tissue that comes with aging.

In a follow-up study, Lazar and her colleagues also showed that mindfulness training decreased the volume of the amygdala, a region involved in fear processing, for those participants who showed the most noticeable reductions in stress over the course of training. Eileen Luders of the University of California, Los Angeles, and her colleagues further observed differences in meditators in the fibers called axons that connect different brain regions, suggesting an enhanced number of brain connections. This observation may support the hypothesis that meditation actually induces structural alterations in the brain. An important limitation of this research relates to the lack of long-term longitudinal studies that follow a group over the course of many years and to the absence of comparisons between meditators and people of similar backgrounds and ages who do not meditate.

Some evidence even exists that meditation—and its ability to enhance overall well-being—may diminish inflammation and other biological stresses that occur at the molecular level. A collaborative study between our group and one led by Perla Kaliman of the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona showed that one day of intensive mindfulness practice in experienced meditators turned down the activity of inflammation-related genes and altered the functioning of enzymes involved with turning genes on and off. A study by Cliff Saron of the University of California, Davis, looked at the effect of meditation on a molecule involved with regulating the longevity of a cell. The molecule in question was an enzyme called telomerase that lengthens DNA segments at the ends of chromosomes. The segments, called telomeres, ensure stability of the genetic material during cell division. They shorten every time a cell divides, and when their length decreases below a critical threshold, the cell stops dividing and gradually enters a state of senescence. Compared with a control group, the meditators who showed the most pronounced reductions in psychological stress also had higher telomerase activity by the end of the retreat. This finding suggests that mindfulness training might slow processes of cellular aging among some practitioners.

A Path to Well-Being

About 15 years of research have done more than show that meditation produces significant changes in both the function and structure of the brains of experienced practitioners. These studies are now starting to demonstrate that contemplative practices may have a substantive impact on biological processes critical for physical health.

More studies using well-defined, randomized controlled trials are needed to isolate meditation-related effects from other psychological factors that can influence the outcome of a study. Other variables that may affect study results are the level of motivation of a practitioner and the roles played by both teachers and students in a meditation group. Further work is needed to understand the possible negative side effects of meditation, the desirable length of a given practice session and the way to tailor it to a person's specific needs.

Even with the requisite cautions, research on meditation provides new insights into methods of mental training that have the potential to enhance human health and well-being. Equally important, the ability to cultivate compassion and other positive human qualities lays the foundation for an ethical framework unattached to any philosophy or religion, which could have a profoundly beneficial effect on all aspects of human societies.

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk who trained as a cellular biologist before he left France to become a student of Buddhism in the Himalayas about 40 years ago.

Antoine Lutz is a research scientist at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research and also works at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has been a leader in studying the neurobiology of meditation.

Richard J. Davidson has pioneered the science of meditation as director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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Research Article

Future directions in meditation research: Recommendations for expanding the field of contemplative science

Contributed equally to this work with: Cassandra Vieten, Helané Wahbeh, B. Rael Cahn, Arnaud Delorme

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Research Department, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California, United States of America

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Research Department, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California, United States of America, Department of Neurology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Department of Psychiatry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Resources, Validation, Writing – review & editing

¶ ‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Center for Optimal Living, New York, New York, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Institute for Health and Aging, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, United States of America

Affiliation Center for Theory and Research, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Counseling Psychology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Psychology, New York University and Nonduality Institute, New York, New York, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America

Roles Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Roles Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Randall Children’s Hospital, Portland, Oregon, United States of America

Affiliation Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America

Affiliation Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, United States of America

Roles Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, California, United States of America

•  [ ... ],

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Research Department, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California, United States of America, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, United States of America

• [ view all ]
• [ view less ]
• Cassandra Vieten, 
• Helané Wahbeh, 
• B. Rael Cahn, 
• Katherine MacLean, 
• Mica Estrada, 
• Paul Mills, 
• Michael Murphy, 
• Shauna Shapiro, 
• Dean Radin, 

• Published: November 7, 2018
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740
• Reader Comments

The science of meditation has grown tremendously in the last two decades. Most studies have focused on evaluating the clinical effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, neural and other physiological correlates of meditation, and individual cognitive and emotional aspects of meditation. Far less research has been conducted on more challenging domains to measure, such as group and relational, transpersonal and mystical, and difficult aspects of meditation; anomalous or extraordinary phenomena related to meditation; and post-conventional stages of development associated with meditation. However, these components of meditation may be crucial to people’s psychological and spiritual development, could represent important mediators and/or mechanisms by which meditation confers benefits, and could themselves be important outcomes of meditation practices. In addition, since large numbers of novices are being introduced to meditation, it is helpful to investigate experiences they may encounter that are not well understood. Over the last four years, a task force of meditation researchers and teachers met regularly to develop recommendations for expanding the current meditation research field to include these important yet often neglected topics. These meetings led to a cross-sectional online survey to investigate the prevalence of a wide range of experiences in 1120 meditators. Results show that the majority of respondents report having had many of these anomalous and extraordinary experiences. While some of the topics are potentially controversial, they can be subjected to rigorous scientific investigation. These arenas represent largely uncharted scientific terrain and provide excellent opportunities for both new and experienced researchers. We provide suggestions for future directions, with accompanying online materials to encourage such research.

Citation: Vieten C, Wahbeh H, Cahn BR, MacLean K, Estrada M, Mills P, et al. (2018) Future directions in meditation research: Recommendations for expanding the field of contemplative science. PLoS ONE 13(11): e0205740. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740

Editor: Cosimo Urgesi, Universita degli Studi di Udine, ITALY

Received: January 9, 2018; Accepted: October 1, 2018; Published: November 7, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 Vieten et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Anonymized raw data and codebook files are publicly available at the Open Science Framework platform ( https://osf.io/wubza/ ).

Funding: We appreciate the support of the Mental Insight Foundation ( https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943256579 ) and the Social Relations of Knowledge Institute ( http://www.nonprofitfacts.com/CA/Social-Relations-Of-Knowledge-Institute.html ) for their financial support of this project. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The field of meditation research has grown exponentially in the past two decades. A total of about 500 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the science of meditation existed in 1990. Today, there are over 4,000 (US National Library of Medicine, pubmed.com). About 25 papers were published per year in the 1990’s, whereas over 400 were published in 2016. This rapid expansion of the field is commendable and has led to a large increase in the knowledge of cognitive, psychological, and neurophysiological changes associated with meditative practices, as well as making important contributions to the current psychotherapeutic armamentarium.

Careful efforts by clinicians, theorists, and researchers to understand meditation have led to a slow but steady shift towards translating meditative practices into clinically relevant interventions, and examining their effects on biological outcomes [ 1 – 7 ]. For example, secularized mindfulness interventions such as MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) and MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) have shown therapeutic benefit for managing pain [ 8 – 10 ] improving mental and emotional health [ 11 , 12 ], and addressing health behaviors such as overeating [ 13 ] and substance dependence [ 14 – 17 ]. Large systematic reviews show that contemplative practices infused into 8-week interventions can reduce stress and increase well-being in comparison to active psychotherapeutic control interventions [ 11 , 18 , 19 ]. Mindfulness has also been linked to increased creativity [ 20 ], offsetting age-related cognitive decline [ 21 ], and improved behavior and attention in youth educational settings [ 22 , 23 ].

This burgeoning body of research has shed significant light on the effects of meditation practices on basic mechanisms of attention, perception, emotion and cognition [ 24 – 26 ]. A robust new field of contemplative neuroscience has emerged from studies of changes in brain function and structure associated with long-term meditation practice [ 3 , 24 ] and short-term mindfulness interventions [ 27 – 30 ]. A growing body of literature has been exploring the biological and physiological mechanisms of meditation, including modulation of inflammation, cell-mediated immunity, self-related processing, inhibitory control and protective factors in biological markers of aging [ 31 – 33 ].

While these efforts in meditation science are deeply insightful, there are many outcomes, as well as phenomenological states of conscious and non-conscious processing, that have rarely been examined in the scientific literature to date.

Numerous non-ordinary experiences during or as a result of meditation are described in the texts and teachings of contemplative traditions [ 34 – 41 ]. Some examples of these include: “awakening” or “enlightenment” experiences marked by profound alterations of self-identity, self-narrative and clarity of perception; transcendence of the physical body or out of body experiences; experiences of oneness and interconnectedness; spiritual transmission from teacher to student; dyadic, group, and relational experiences; experiences of non-physical energies (e.g. chi, qi, shakti); mind to mind communication, precognition, veridical perceptions at a distance or extra-sensory perception; past-life recall and reincarnation experiences; synchronicities; experiences of God, deities, and other non-physical entities; and difficult stages of meditation, and periods of disorientation and depersonalization.

With some notable exceptions, most empirical research on meditation does not address these kinds of experiences as components, outcomes, or mechanisms of meditation, in part because these non-ordinary states can be difficult to capture and investigate in laboratory settings. However, anecdotal, survey, and interview data indicate that these aspects of meditation may be more prevalent than is commonly recognized, could represent important mediators or mechanisms by which meditation leads to beneficial cognitive, behavioral, and physiological outcomes [ 42 – 44 ], and could themselves be salient outcomes of meditation practice.

It is generally accepted that meditative practices engender a “witnessing awareness” [ 35 ] or meta-awareness of internal and external stimuli that is distinct from ordinary consciousness. Researchers have investigated this and similar constructs as important mediators of the benefits of mindfulness training, including decentering (the ability to observe one’s thoughts and feelings as temporary, objective events in the mind, as opposed to reflections of the self that are necessarily true) [ 45 , 46 ], metacognitive awareness (in which negative thoughts/feelings are experienced as mental events, rather than as the self) [ 47 ], and re-perceiving (being able to disidentify from the contents of consciousness such as thoughts and view moment-by-moment experience with greater clarity and objectivity) [ 48 ]. But there are subjectively reported states of awareness that occur during or as a result of meditation that go beyond metacognition.

A small body of research has been conducted into mystical, transcendent, nonlocal or nondual aspects of meditation practice. Tart [ 49 ] pioneered scholarly examination of altered states of consciousness produced by meditation practices and their effect on psychological well-being. Goleman [ 50 ] surveyed several types of meditation philosophy and practice, which at the time had received scarce attention in psychology or empirical research, noting that most of them focused on changing consciousness and fostering an awakened state or a hypothesized “fifth state of consciousness” [ 51 ] characterized by an experience of “pure awareness” in waking life. Transpersonal psychology has explored mystical experiences in depth, relying primarily on theory and qualitative rather than experimental research [ 52 – 54 ]. William James [ 40 ], Carl Jung [ 55 , 56 ], and Abraham Maslow [ 57 ] explored these areas as well, although the spiritual or transcendent aspects of their contributions do not often surface in the modern psychotherapeutic or scientific milieu.

More recently, both theoretical descriptions [ 58 ] and empirical investigations [ 59 , 60 ] of subjective experiences of non-duality (a sense of oneness, or a perceived dissolution of the distinction between the observer and the contents of observation) have emerged. These states are thought to occur when the silent background awareness encountered in meditation becomes sufficiently stabilized and integrated with the daily waking experience, so that the habitual reified dualities between subject and object, self and other, in-group and out-group dissipate. These states are hypothesized to lead to a more spacious, compassionate and authentic way of being [ 61 ], and appear to have a distinct neurophysiology [ 60 , 62 ].

A large body of research exists on Transcendental Meditation (TM), a popular mantra-based contemplative practice that is being utilized in secular settings such as schools, hospitals, and business settings. TM is explicitly designed to access and maintain transcendent states (as opposed to other forms of secularized meditation that are designed to reduce stress through meta-cognition, for example) [ 63 ]. TM proponents posit that a reduction in mental and physical activity through mantra repetition engenders an experience of “transcendental consciousness,” described as “self-awareness isolated from the processes and objects of experience…characterized by the absence of the very framework (time, space, and body sense) and content (qualities of inner and outer perception) that define waking experiences” (p. 77) [ 64 ]. The practice is theorized to normalize various systems in the body, particularly those that engage the sympathetic nervous system and associated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in adapting to environmental stressors [ 65 ]. Empirical evidence indicates that the transcendent state is neurologically distinct from usual waking, dreaming, or sleep states [ 66 , 67 ], and it is hypothesized to be responsible for the demonstrated benefits of TM.

There have also been empirical studies of what have been termed “nonlocal” aspects of human consciousness associated with meditation practice. During or as a result of meditation, people report experiences of perceiving information that does not appear limited to the typical five senses or seems to extend across space and time, such as precognition, clairvoyance, and mind-matter interactions (described as “siddhis” in the Hindu yogic traditions) [ 68 ]. While controversial, these studies suggest that a history of meditation practice increases the likelihood that laboratory measures of these extended forms of perception will be observed [ 69 – 71 ], indicating that there may be veridical elements of the subjective reports by meditators of timelessness, boundarilessness, and inexplicable perceptual phenomena.

It is possible that these experiences of self-transcendence (defined as the extent to which individuals conceive themselves as integral parts of the universe as a whole [ 72 ]), are active ingredients in contemplative practices. Philosophers have proposed that meditation might engender a transformation from a body/ego-based self-identity to a world/universe-centered experience of self not tied to the local body or limited to the self-narrative of the individual practitioner [ 73 ]. Some empirical evidence is beginning to emerge supporting this idea. For example, Bormann et al. [ 59 ] specifically investigated the spiritual component of a mantram-repetition meditation intervention in veterans, showing that existential spiritual well-being mediated improvement in PTSD symptoms. Another study showed that transcendental meditation decreased anxiety, improved mood, and doubled acute pain tolerance in comparison with secular forms of meditation [ 74 ].

Vago and Silbersweig [ 75 ] propose a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of meditation called S-ART—referring to self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence. Their definition of self-transcendence, “a positive relationship between self and other that transcends self-focused needs and increases prosocial characteristics” (p. 1) is a more psychological definition, but comes close to the forms of transcendence we are proposing might bear further investigation. While there has been an understandable and careful emphasis on secularizing meditation practices for clinical use, it is possible that the mystical, transpersonal, or transcendent aspects of contemplative practices are not only epiphenomena, but could be important outcomes of meditation practice, or mechanisms of action that are in part responsible for positive outcomes such as reduced stress and improved mood.

Between 2013 and 2016, a task force of meditation researchers and teachers met in a series of four three-day working meetings to identify the state of the current literature on this topic and discuss how to broaden the types of constructs being investigated in meditation research. The group ultimately identified several candidate domains that future research can fruitfully pursue. Before moving forward to recommend these domains, a cross-sectional survey was conducted to investigate prevalence and perceived significance of these under-studied experiences among meditation practitioners. The results of this survey were used to guide recommendations for domains of experience most frequently encountered by real-world practitioners.

Materials and methods

Participants.

Participants were recruited through social media and email distribution, academic list-servs, and online directories of meditation teachers and practitioners. Recruitment was not random, but a wide net was cast to achieve as broad and diverse a sample as possible. In recruitment materials no mention was made of extraordinary, transcendent, or unusual aspects of meditation, to reduce the likelihood of interest in the topic biasing respondents. Instead, participants were told that the survey was designed to assess the prevalence of “personal experiences” during or related to meditation. The only inclusion criterion was having a current or past meditation practice. If participants responded “no” to the survey question “Have you ever practiced meditation?” or if they were below 18 years of age, they were excluded.

Online survey

Development of the online survey occurred during the third of four 2–3 day working group meetings. We conducted a comprehensive literature review prior to the meetings, to explore whether the domains of meditation research we suspected were understudied had received any substantive research attention. At the first two meetings, we engaged in a collaborative process of mapping the field to determine what domains of meditation research were experiencing growth in funding, interest, and publications as compared to aspects of meditation experiences and outcomes that had received less interest. We engaged in a process of consensus building regarding which categories remained to be pursued with academic rigor. Several categories of under-studied but potentially important domains of meditation experience were identified, and our next step was to determine whether experiences and outcomes associated with those domains were actually experienced by people practicing meditation. Terms were defined, existing measures identified, and items created for constructs without adequate measures to assess the prevalence of such experiences during, after, or related to meditation.

Mystical and transcendent experiences were measured with an adapted version of the Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30). The MEQ30 is a thirty-item questionnaire originally used to measure mystical aspects of psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds’ effects in laboratory studies [ 76 , 77 ]. The scale has excellent internal consistency for the total score (alpha = .93), and good internal consistency for the four subscales: (1) Mystical, alpha = .93; (2) Positive Mood, alpha = .83; (3) Transcendence of Time and Space, alpha = .81; and (4) Ineffability, alpha = .80. The revised measure asked, “Have you had any of these experiences while meditating?” with respect to 30 experiences such as “Loss of your usual sense of time,” “Sense of awe or awesomeness,” “Experience of amazement and ecstasy,” or “Sense that the experience cannot be described adequately in words.” Response options were 1 = This has never happened to me; 2 = This has happened once; 3 = This has happened 2–5 times; 4 = This has happened many times; or 5 = This almost always happens to me. The maximum mean score for each subscale is 5, and the minimum is 1. Mean scale scores with standard deviations and percentage of total possible were calculated as recommended, and. percentages of respondents endorsing each item are also presented.

Extraordinary experiences.

To assess the prevalence of and response to other extraordinary experiences, the survey asked about other domains of interest that emerged during the working meetings. Social/Relational items included items such as feeling a strong connection to a meditation teacher, experiencing a sense of collective energy in group meditation, and whether the meditation practice happened in a group, during a retreat, or in a sacred place. Anomalous Physical and Perceptual items included sensations in the body not apparently caused by the physical environment (e.g. heat, cold, tingling), altered sense of vision, hearing, body sensations, smell or taste and breathing, an altered sense of time or space, an altered sense of awareness or identity, increased synchronicities (unlikely coincidences perceived as meaningful), and perception of nonphysical entities (such as a God presence, higher powers, divine beings or angels, demons or negative figures, guides, or other visitors). Experiences related to subjective experiences of extended perception included external physical phenomena (objects moving without apparent physical force), and clairvoyance/telepathy (perceiving information that could not have been known to you by any known physical means, but later turned out to be true)). Difficult States included items such as disturbing feelings of fear, and dread or terror during or after meditation.

Participants were also asked if they communicated any of those experiences to a meditation teacher, and if so 1) whether the teacher was interested or willing to discuss the experiences, 2) how important the teacher thought the experience was, and 3) whether the teacher gave any advice or insight into the experience, and the setting in which the experience happened. To assess perceived importance and valence of the extended perception experiences, because these experiences have been more frequently considered distractions or non-meaningful side-effects of meditation, participants were also asked if those experiences were meaningful to them, how pleasant/unpleasant they found those experiences.

Data were also collected on demographics, current and past religious/spiritual beliefs and practices, meditation experience, and self-reported history of psychological disorders. The survey was administered with the SurveyMonkey platform ( http://www.surveymonkey.com ) and took approximately 45 minutes to complete. Surveys were administered between November 10, 2014 and February 3, 2015. All research activities were approved by the Institute of Noetic Sciences Institutional Review Board (IRB) and were conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki . Written informed consent was obtained from all research participants. The survey instrument and codebook can be found in the S1 and S2 Files supporting information.

Statistical analysis

Data were retrieved from SurveyMonkey and each entry checked for appropriate values. Since we were primarily interested in prevalence, descriptive statistics were calculated, including means, standard deviations, frequencies, and percentages depending on data type. Data were analyzed in Microsoft Excel 10.0 (Microsoft, Redmond, WA) and STATA/IC 12.1 (Stata Corp, College Station, TX).

Demographics

1,856 participants began the survey. 1,793 responded “yes” to having ever practiced meditation and were over 18 years old (those who responded “no” were not asked to continue). Of those, 1,130 participants completed the entire survey. Only data from completers are reported here. Participants were 59% female, and 41% male with an average age of 47 ± 16 (range 18–91). Most participants had some college education (8% high school or equivalent; 20% college/technical school; 33% bachelor’s degree; 24% master’s degree; 15% doctoral degree/professional degree). Meditators from 66 countries around the world participated in the survey. The most represented countries included the United States (57%), Canada (8%), United Kingdom (8%), Australia (4%), India (2%), Portugal (2%), Germany (2%), and New Zealand, Norway, and Mexico (1%), with the remainder (14%) from countries with less than 1% of participants. Twenty-five percent of participants said “Yes” to having ever been formally diagnosed with a psychological disorder, with depression and anxiety being the most prevalent disorders endorsed (Depression- 19%, Anxiety- 14%, Obsessive compulsive- 6%, Eating- 2%, Psychosis- 1%, Impulse control- 1%, Personality- 1%).

Religion/Spirituality

Participants were asked to indicate their childhood spiritual or religious affiliation. Christianity was the most endorsed affiliation for all participants (73%) with the next highest being None (11%) (see Table 1 ). Most had a single religious influence growing up, with 7% of participants endorsing multiple religions in childhood. Participants were asked how much this childhood religion or spirituality influenced their upbringing or how much it was part of their family life growing up, with a Likert scale ranging from 0—Not at All to 5- Deeply. The responses were generally evenly distributed. (Not at all- 14%; 1–18%; 2–14%; 3–21%; 5–16%; Deeply- 17%). “ Spiritual but not religious ” was the most endorsed current spiritual or religious affiliation for all participants ( Table 1 ). Religious and spiritual practice was quite important in participants’ current lives, in comparison to in childhood. In response to the question, “How important is your religious or spiritual practice to you now?” 69% of participants rated their practice Very Important, with 17% responding Somewhat Important, 6% A Little Bit Important, and 9% Not Important.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740.t001

Meditation practice

The average number of years participants engaged in regular (at least once per week) meditation practice was 14.7 ± 13.5 (range 0–75). In the last six months, 71% of participants engaged in “daily” or “more than weekly” meditation practice (Not at all—2%, Less than monthly—4%, Less than weekly, more than monthly—12%, Weekly- 11%, Less than daily, more than weekly—30%, Daily—41%). The most common type of meditation practice was breath-focused followed by open awareness/mindfulness/vipassana (participants could select more than one: Transcendental Meditation—28%, breath-focused—67%, body scan—34%, contemplative prayer—20%, mantra repetition—31%, open awareness/mindfulness—50%, visualization—38%). The most common physical posture was sitting (Sitting- 74%, Laying down- 20%, Walking- 2%, Other- 4%). Most people practiced meditation at least daily or weekly, and more than half of the participants (56%) had completed a multiple-day meditation retreat.

Mystical experiences

The Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30) subscale scores are detailed in Table 2 . The mean frequencies for all 4 subdomains (Mystical (MYS), Positive Mood (PM), Transcendence of Time and Space (TTS), and Ineffability (IN)) were in the 3.26–3.71 range, indicating frequencies between “2–5 times” (3) and “many times” (4). The Positive Mood domain was most frequently experienced, followed by Ineffability, Transcendence, and Mystical experiences.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740.t002

Frequencies for each item in the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire are shown in Fig 1 . Over 40% of respondents reported experiencing all items except one (experience of ecstasy) “many times” or “almost always.”

MEQ Subscales: PM = Positive Mood, TTS = Transcendence of Time and Space, INF = Ineffability, MYS = Mystical (Facets of Mystical: MYS-NQ = Noetic Quality, MYS-SA = Sacredness, MYS-IU = Internal Unity, MYS-EU = External Unity). Some items have been truncated due to space. MEQ full items and MEQ subscale scores are available in the supplemental materials.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740.g001

Extraordinary experiences

Extraordinary experiences were measured by items newly developed for this study by the working group, arranged into categories including 1) extraordinary physical experiences, 2) spatial-temporal, 3) cognitive-psychological, 4) relational, and 5) extended phenomena. Categories were not combined into subscales, but were used for assessing prevalence of each individual item, and therefore no factor analysis or internal consistency analysis was performed.

The frequencies of these experiences are displayed in Table 3 . Altered breathing and sensations in the body that were not apparently caused by the physical environment (such as heat, cold, pressure, tingling or other body sensations) were the most common physical experiences, with 88% and 85% of participants respectively reporting experiencing these at least once, and of those 75% and 73% of people reporting that they had experienced this many times or almost always. Altered sense of time and increased synchronicities were the most common spatio-temporal experiences, with 86% and 82% respectively reporting these and of those, 62% and 65% experiencing them many times or almost always. Altered awareness and aha! moments were the most common cognitive/psychological experiences, with 91% and 89% respectively reporting these experiences, and of those 67% and 62% many times or almost always. Sensing the collective energy of the group was the most common relational experience, reported at least once by 76% of respondents, and many times or always by 47%. Clairvoyance and/or telepathy was the most common extended perception experience, with 56% reporting experiencing this at least once and 30% many times or always The least common, but still quite prevalent, experiences overall were external physical phenomena (objects moving or changing without apparent physical cause) (31%), and disturbing emotions (32%).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740.t003

Salience and valence of experiences

To control the length of the survey, and because these experiences have been often pointed to as distractions or non-meaningful side effects, we asked follow-up questions regarding valence and salience of only the two extended perception items (data not shown in table). Participants who had clairvoyant or telepathic experiences (56%) rated the experience as “quite meaningful or important” (mean = 4.01, SD = 1.11; Response Scale: 1 = Not at all, 2 = A little bit, 3 = Somewhat, 4 = Quite a bit, 5 = Very much) and “somewhat pleasant” (mean = 4.10, SD = 1.10; Response scale: 1 = Very Unpleasant, 2 = Somewhat Unpleasant, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Somewhat Pleasant, 5 = Very Pleasant). Participants who had experienced external physical phenomena (31%) rated the experience as “quite meaningful or important” (mean = 4.01, SD = 1.11) and “somewhat pleasant” (mean = 4.07, SD = 1.07).

Sharing experiences with teachers

Participants were asked “Of the meditation experiences you reported on this survey, which did you mention to a mediation and/or spiritual teacher?” Participants could endorse sharing more than one experience. Six-hundred and one, or just over half of participants reported sharing the following experiences with teachers Mystical/Transcendent n = 414; Unusual Body n = 331; Spatial/Temporal n = 352; Cognitive/psychological n = 426; Relational n = 358; Extended Perception n = 272. The other 519 participants did not report any experiences to a teacher. Teachers were mostly willing to discuss the experiences with the student (11% Not at all, 8% A little bit, 20% Somewhat, 22% Quite a bit, 40% Very much). Many teachers gave the impression that such experiences were important to address and reflect upon (15% Not at all, 10% A little bit, 22% Somewhat, 20% Quite a bit, 33% Very much). Also, many teachers provided insight and/or advice to help integrate and understand the practitioners’ experience(s) (14% Not at all, 12% A little bit, 22% Somewhat, 24% Quite a bit, 28% Very much).

Context of extraordinary experiences

For each extraordinary experience, participants were asked in what setting the experience occurred. Most extraordinary experiences happened when the meditators were alone ( Table 4 ).

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Relationship of experiences to length of meditation practice

To explore whether length of meditation experience was related to the frequency with which respondents endorsed items, we conducted Pearson correlations between the self-reported number of months of lifetime meditation practice and reported frequency of mystical and extraordinary experiences. There were small but significant correlations ( p <.01— p < .05, two-tailed, max r = .30, max R 2 = .09) for all but 7 of the 50 items, excluding “feeling of peace and tranquility,” “feelings of joy,” “an altered sense of your body,” “altered breathing,: “disturbing feelings of fear, dread or terror,” and the importance or valence (pleasantness) of the extended perception items. None of the items were significantly negatively correlated with length of meditation practice. The highest correlations ( p < .01) between self-reported length of meditation practice and mystical or extraordinary experience items was “clairvoyance or telepathy” ( r = .30), “feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity” ( r = .30), and “connection with a teacher or guru who was not physically present, or did not interact with you in any physical way at the time” ( r = .29).

The results of this survey indicate that mystical and extraordinary experiences are prevalent enough among meditators, and salient enough to those who have them, to warrant further scientific inquiry.

Limitations of this study were that the sample was not randomly selected, and this could limit generalizability to a general sample of meditators. To address this concern, in addition to the masking of the topic of the survey in recruitment materials and recruiting from generalized lists of meditators rather than those known to have a special interest in these domains, we explored whether our sample was different from the general population of modern meditators in their demographics, history of psychiatric disorders, and religious/spiritual background and beliefs. Participants were generally middle-aged, gender-balanced (with slightly more females), and well-educated. Though we are aware of no global population-based surveys of meditation practitioners, these demographics are similar to general survey populations who report meditating [ 78 ] and who utilize complementary and alternative medicine in the U.S. [ 79 ]. Seventy-five percent of our respondents were from the United States, the UK, and Canada, although participants came from 66 countries around the world. Our participants also represented a broad range of amount of meditation experience and types of practice, which may increase the global generalizability of our findings.

Participants reported slightly higher lifetime prevalence of depression than the general population in the United States (16.6% [ 80 ] vs. 19% in this sample) and higher rates of lifetime anxiety disorders (11.8% [ 81 ] vs. 14% for anxiety in this sample). There have been few formal studies of anxiety and depression prevalence in a general population of meditators. One large cross-sectional study examined depression and anxiety levels in meditators from Germany and Spain. They found similar levels of depression (19.9%) and anxiety (13.6%) to ours in the German sample, but levels lower than ours in the Spanish sample (depression (6.5%) and anxiety (7.1%)) [ 82 ].

There were differences between our respondents and the general population in terms of religious affiliation. Respondents endorsed “spiritual but not religious” (36%) as their current affiliation than any other organized religion, whereas global rates are 16%. Only 15% endorsed Christianity, whereas global surveys list Christianity at 32% [ 83 ]. In general, we speculate that our sample was similar enough to a general sample of meditators to make our results likely generalizable, though limited by the lack of population-based random sampling.

Another limitation of our sample is that only 63% of eligible participants who started the survey completed it. This could have led to selection bias. There may also be inherent bias in those who complete a lengthy questionnaire without compensation. A randomly selected population-based survey of meditators would be valuable for future research, as well as replication of this survey. Other limitations include the self-report and retrospective nature of the survey. Future studies could include a prospective study of meditators using daily experience sampling or ecological momentary assessment to capture experiences in real-time.

Since the results of this survey show that experiences associated with the domains identified in our working group are prevalent and frequent, and there is little to no empirical research on them in the literature, the following section provides more robust recommendations and future directions for scientifically pursuing these lines of inquiry.

Readers interested in pursuing any of these domains should refer to the Future of Meditation Research (FOMR) ( http://noetic.org/fomr ) website for links to papers which provide methods, measures, and protocols for studying these experiences.

I. Mystical and transcendent experiences in meditation

Experiences that transcend ordinary perception are a common component of religious and spiritual traditions across human history. They can occur spontaneously [ 84 ] or can be elicited by a variety of rituals, such as meditation, prayer, fasting, and dance, as well as ingestion of naturally occurring substances (e.g. plants with psychoactive properties) [ 77 , 85 – 87 ]. These experiences are not as rare as they might seem. In the general public, 30–50% of people report having had what they would consider a mystical experience [ 88 , 89 ]. Both historical and modern descriptions of mystical experiences reveal common themes, including feelings of unity and interconnectedness with all people and things, a sense of sacredness, feelings of peace and joy, a sense of transcending normal time and space, ineffability, or an intuitive belief that the experience is a source of objective truth about the nature of reality [ 89 , 90 ].

Our respondents reported a high frequency of mystical experiences during or related to their meditation practice, the vast majority reporting having them “2–5 times” or “many times” for almost all items. Increased scientific investigations of these experiences may be important to understanding the full range of human potential and well-being.

As reviewed earlier, a common component of many contemplative practices is the recognition of the difference between awareness and the contents of awareness (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc.). In fact, an “altered sense of awareness, such as awareness going beyond the physical senses, an increased intensity of awareness, or awareness of awareness,” was the most endorsed overall experience (91%) among our participants. Some traditional contemplative theories propose that these experiences spring from awareness recognizing itself [ 91 ], or the presence of a background non-conceptual awareness which cognizes without subject-object dichotomy (i.e. “nondual”), and are thought to under certain circumstances be brought into the foreground of experience through the practice of meditation [ 92 ]. In this mode, perceptions, emotions, cognitions, and the global states of arousal appear to this awareness as contents, whereas awareness is experienced as a contextual space (like weather patterns appear in the sky). While neuroscience research in this area is still in its very early stages, studies conducted so far indicate that such unitary states are accompanied by increased large scale synchronization and connectivity in the brain [ 93 – 95 ].

Past experiments carried out with split brain patients indicate that the distinction between thoughts and awareness might have a biological basis [ 96 ]. Recently, studies have focused on moments when meditators realize that they have lost track of their meditation and are mind wandering, followed by re-orienting of attention on the meditation task [ 97 , 98 ]. Meta-cognitive or meta-conscious processes are arguably related but different from the awareness responsible for mystical experiences.

In addition, sacred texts in contemplative traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism claim that meditative practices can result in states of mind that have not been adequately explored or differentiated phenomenologically in the scientific literature. For example, the yoga tradition describes multiple kinds of samadhi (states of intense concentration, absorption, calm and equanimity), differentiating between for example, nirvikalpa samadhi of pure awareness, and sahaj samadhi in which awareness and daily experience both co-arise but are perceived as inseparable, nondual, or coessential [ 99 ]. Investigation of these states may offer us new insights about cognition and perception that can only be reached through expanding contemplative science.

Mystical or transcendent aspects of meditation can be challenging to measure, and difficult to predict or produce in a laboratory. With rare exceptions, current research on mystical and transcendent experiences to date rely almost completely on retrospective self-reports using face-valid measures, and are therefore highly open to recall bias and demand characteristics. Future research should focus on better conceptualization and measurement of mystical or transcendent experiences, including objective, implicit, and first, second, and third-person measures. In addition, methods of reliable induction of mystical experiences, and further investigations of those able to produce such experiences at will, may allow for more controlled investigations.

Given the frequency and salience of mystical and transcendent experiences related to meditation practice, we recommend this as a fruitful area for future research. In particular, we suggest conducting studies that 1) investigate the subjective nature and salience of mystical and transcendent experiences, 2) develop improved methods and measures for investigating them, 3) explore the effects of these experiences on health, psychological and prosocial outcomes, 3) examine psychophysiological moderators and mechanisms of such experiences (when, why and how do they happen?), and 4) determine acute and long-term physiological correlates of such experiences. For example, prospective studies of novice meditators could include a measure of mystical or transcendent experiences, examine the predictive value of the occurrence or type of such experiences on outcomes of interest, explore them as potential mechanisms of other psychological or physical changes, or correlate the occurrence and intensity of such experiences with mood data from experience sampling or biomarkers.

II. Social and relational aspects of meditation

To date, most experimental studies of meditation have focused on cognitive, emotional, and physical correlates of meditation practice within individual subjects. However, meditation has traditionally been taught in a relational manner, from a teacher to a student or in a group of students. There are numerous meditation approaches that encourage meditators to come together to practice, and individuals often find that that meditating in the presence of others can deepen concentration, focus and the overall meditation experience.

Practitioners from a wide variety of spiritual traditions have reported strong psychophysiological responses when they are in the presence of a spiritual teacher who has achieved some level of mastery, particularly when the teacher directs attention or intention toward the practitioner. These reports are common across spiritual traditions, being described most frequently in those that are based in Hinduism and Buddhism. In these traditions, the phenomenon is thought to reflect a “transmission” of a state of consciousness or a form of energy from teacher to student. Recipients also report subjective experiences of receiving such transmissions at a distance, or by listening to a recording or simply looking at a picture of the spiritual teacher. Sensing a collective energy “many times” or “almost always” during meditation practice was endorsed by nearly half of our survey respondents, and three-quarters reported this happening at least once. Connection with a teacher who was not physically present was endorsed “many times” or “almost always” by 28% of respondents, and 45% experienced this at least twice.

Research on social norms and social influence suggests that the mere presence of other people changes the nature of an individual’s experience such that his or her motivations and behavioral choices occur in response to the normative behaviors [ 100 ]. Simple examples of this can be found in the social conformity and social facilitation literature [ 101 – 103 ]. The social aspects of meditation practice have just begun to be studied, such as comparing meditation programs taught in groups versus individually [ 104 ], and long-term meditation retreats [ 60 , 105 ]. Interestingly, our sample of meditators reported that mystical/transcendent and extraordinary experiences happened more frequently when meditating alone (35–46% depending on the category of experience) vs. meditating in a group (16–29%) or on retreat (10–16%).

Some questions for future research on the social and relational aspects of meditation include: 1) to what extent does meditating alone vs. meditating in a group of people influence outcomes from biomarkers to mood to behavior? 2) does meditating in a group affect one’s practice positively, negatively, or does it depend on the outcome? 3) do group effects require proximity, or is it enough to know others are meditating at the same time (or asynchronously) in different locations? 4) do group meditation effects depend on personality (such an introversion/extroversion) or other baseline or contextual elements? 5) what is the role of the teacher-student relationship in meditation? 6) are there reliable means of measuring group “energy” or spiritual transmission from teacher to student? 7) what is the impact of meditating with all women or all men, vs. co-ed meditation? and 8) what is the impact of meditating with a significant other? These are intriguing research questions that have only barely been explored. There are also opportunities to study dyadic or group outcomes of meditation practice, such as effects on intimate relationships, work groups, classrooms, or organizations. Multiple simultaneous measures of biomarkers such as heart rate variability or EEG in groups could also be used investigate whether dyadic or group synchrony is detectable, and whether it enhances benefits of meditation.

Furthermore, many goals of meditation practice are specifically oriented toward developing pro-social emotions and behaviors. These include emotions such as love and joy, attitudes such as ethics and altruism, relational skills such as empathy and compassion, virtues such as patience and humility, as well as insights and wisdom about the self and the world [ 106 , 107 ]. Contemplative science is growing rapidly in studying these prosocial emotions and behaviors related both to meditation practices [ 108 – 112 ] as well as clinical outcomes of compassion and lovingkindness practices [ 113 ], but the mechanisms by and extent to which meditation cultivates them are just beginning to be investigated. There remains an enormous opportunity for more work in this promising area.

III. Physical and perceptual phenomena

Body-based meditation practices are some of the most commonly disseminated techniques in the West. Awareness of the body, particularly awareness of breathing, is a foundational practice across many contemplative traditions. It is not surprising that an “altered sense of breathing” was the body sensation most endorsed by respondents in our survey (88% ever, and 33% almost always).

A large and growing amount of studies have been conducted on physiological correlates of meditation. A variety of research and clinical studies have focused on physical and perceptual outcomes following meditation training, such as changes in autonomic measures [ 114 , 115 ], tactile and pain perception [ 116 – 118 ], visual and auditory perception [ 119 – 122 ] and even increasing body temperature at will in freezing conditions [ 123 , 124 ]. In some meditation traditions, practitioners intentionally attempt to control basic physiology, such as respiration rate [ 125 ] and heart rate [ 126 ].

Physical and perceptual sensations not apparently caused by the physical environment were experienced by the vast majority of our survey respondents, including: heat, cold, pressure, or tingling; seeing lights, visions, or images; lightness or heaviness, floating, out of body experiences, body parts disappearing, or feeling like the body changed in shape or size; hearing buzzing sounds, humming, or voices or music that were not in the physical environment. These are experiences that have rarely been examined in a scientific context, but were endorsed by 60–90% of our respondents. Smelling or tasting things that were not physically there was the least endorsed item, though still reported by 35% of those surveyed.

Some meditation practices focus attention on “energy” flowing through the body. Contemplative traditions each have their own understanding of what this subjectively experienced “energy” is, such as kundalini, chi, or subtle energy, and others describe in detail energy pathways (such as meridians) or nodes (such as chakras) in the body. Many moving meditations such as yoga, qi gong, tai chi, and martial arts are designed for moving or balancing energy in the body, and were at times used to prepare the body for, or used in conjunction with, sitting meditation. These physical phenomena associated with meditation have just barely been addressed by the scientific community, and future studies on these topics could not only help us learn more about the correlates and outcomes of meditation, but also more about the connection between mind and body, and potentially more about what has come to be known as the “biofield” and its role in our well-being [ 127 ].

Other outcomes of meditation practice have to do with a visceral sense of greater embodiment, or feeling comfortable, awake, and aware in one’s body. Repeatedly directing attention toward what are typically implicit or automatic body sensations may increase the sense of embodied presence—in other words, experiencing oneself to be fully one’s body in the present moment. Interoceptive awareness (awareness of signals from inside the body) is also an area of increasing interest [ 128 ]. While a number of early studies showed that meditators are no better at accurately assessing heart rate than non-meditators [ 129 , 130 ], other researchers have found increased breath awareness [ 131 ], increased heartbeat detection accompanied by increased emotional awareness [ 132 ], and increased coherence between subjective assessment of emotion and heart period in trained vipassana meditators [ 133 ]. The increasing evidence that humans can become aware of what were previously purely non-conscious processes has profound implications, and provides a large and potentially valuable sphere of scientific inquiry.

Once again, these phenomena certainly provide challenges in terms of measurement and methodology, but so do other areas of inquiry that require ingenuity to operationalize. Future directions for rigorous research on anomalous physical and perceptual phenomena during or as a result of meditation could include 1) qualitative measures to better understand the nature of these experiences; 2) development of quantitative measures to assess subjective experiences of embodiment/physicality, heat, cold, tingling and prickling of the skin, “energy” surges, etc.; 3) objectively measuring physiological correlates of subjective physical, perceptual, or energy experiences; 4) investigations of whether meditative activities can result in functional physical improvements (e.g. strength, balance) or extraordinary capacities for physical performance; or 5) exploring how embodied presence due to meditation practices influence human interactions with virtual or augmented reality (see [ 134 ]).

These and other areas of body sensations and perceptual phenomena that occur naturally in meditation provide a rich open field for new research. These lines of inquiry not only provide an opportunity to learn more about the effects of meditation, but also to learn more about mind-body interactions in the context of the special training that meditation practices provide. Just as we learn more about the potential of the human body through Olympic level sports, we might learn more about how the mind and body work together by investigating those with extensive mental training through meditation.

IV. Spatial/Temporal phenomena

Contemplative practitioners anecdotally report experiencing time and space differently during or as a result of meditation practice. Indeed, an altered sense of time such as regular time seeming shorter or longer than usual, or experiencing awareness in the past or in the future was reported by 86% of our survey participants, with over 60% reporting this “many times” or “almost always.” Over half of our respondents experienced an altered sense of space such as feeling something crackling in the air, sensing something across a distance, or a sense of space being distorted from its usual mode, with over 30% reporting one of these “many times” or “almost always.” Increased synchronicities (meaningful coincidences, or events or information appearing at the same time or place for no apparent reason) were endorsed by 82% of the participants. Indeed, increased synchronicities was the sixth most common experience among all those surveyed (82% having experienced it at least once), even higher than the rate of experiences we might expect from meditation practice, such as altered body sensations.

Recommendations for future research in this domain include: 1) using qualitative research to assess more fully the subjective descriptive nature of meditators’ altered perceptions of time, space, or synchronicities in their lives; 2) using experience sampling, daily assessments, or questionnaires to evaluate the frequency and salience of such experiences; 3) exploring objective physiological correlates of the subjective experience of timelessness [ 69 ] or connections with others at a distance (see [ 135 ]), or the sense of spaciousness or timelessness (see [ 136 ]); 4) assessing the effects of these experiences on identity, decision-making, mood regulation, or other clinical outcomes; and 5) developing methods for reliable induction of these experiences under controlled conditions.

V. Extended perception

Extended perception refers to perceptions people may have naturally, or develop over the lifespan, that go beyond traditionally understood notions of how information can be perceived. Advanced meditators have demonstrated at least twelve perceptual capacities that scientists once dismissed as impossible [ 107 ]. These capacities include, for example, lucid dreaming, lucid nondream sleep, and heightened perceptual speed and sensitivity. What further capacities await recognition?

Over half of the meditators in our sample reported experiencing clairvoyance or telepathy (perceiving information that could not have been known to them by any known physical means, but later turned out to be true) at least once. Not only that, but the majority also found the experience “somewhat pleasant” and “quite meaningful or important.”

Discussions of the relationship between meditation practice and advanced capacities of meditators can be traced in written form back to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, published roughly two thousand years ago [ 36 ]. Claims such as precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, and mind-matter interactions are still controversial, although a growing body of literature suggests that some such claims could be supported by data [ 137 – 139 ]. External physical phenomena, or objects moving by a non-physical force, physical objects appearing when they had not been there before, objects falling over, a light going out, psychokinesis (the supposed ability to move objects by mental attention or intention alone), or other physical manifestations that seemed to have no physical cause are also discussed in historical literature. Approximately one-third of the meditators in our sample endorsed having experienced something like this at least once.

People also reported sensing a connection with non-physical entities (defined as nonphysical entities in your awareness, vision, or hearing, such as a God presence, higher powers, divine beings or angels, demons or negative figures, guides, or other visitors) even more often than experiencing a connection with real-life meditation teachers, with 32% reporting this “many times” or “almost always”, and another 52% at least twice.

If new to this literature, scientists encountering these ideas for the first time might argue that if these experiences were prevalent, they would have heard more about them. However, the vast majority of clinicians and researchers do not ask about these experiences in their assessments of meditative practices, and given their controversial nature, modern meditators may be reluctant to share such experiences under non-anonymous conditions. However, many but not all respondents in our survey reported their extraordinary experiences to their meditation teachers. When they did share the experience, they perceived teachers as “somewhat” to “very much” willing to discuss the experience with them, and 75% of teachers gave the impression that they were important to reflect upon, 40% “very much” so.

It is important to note here again that there did not appear to be a substantially higher rate of psychological disorders in this sample than in the general population. While these experiences could be completely illusory, they also could point to aspects of human potential and reality that challenge prevailing paradigms. Western scientists may hesitate to entertain the possibility that one possible explanation for these perceptions of non-local aspects of consciousness are that they are ontologically real. In many meditative traditions, whether they are considered real or not, these experiences are discounted as potentially derailing. Patanjali and others have cautioned that focusing on such experiencing can be seductive, cause egocentricity, or become distractions [ 140 ].

At the same time, there are views within some contemplative traditions that such experiences can be utilized with wisdom and compassion by experienced masters, and some highly respected practitioners of contemplative traditions have encouraged more research on such domains. For example, Buddhist monk and collaborator on several neuroscience studies of meditation, Matthieu Ricard was asked at the Mind and Life Institute’s International Symposium on Contemplative Studies in 2012 what he thought would be important for scientists to study next. He responded that reincarnation/past lives and telepathy might be important frontiers to investigate [ 141 ], sharing his own personal experience of telepathy with a meditation teacher. Indeed, two of the strongest positive correlations between self-reported length of lifetime meditation practice were with “connection with a teacher or guru who was not physically present” ( r = .29, r 2 = .08, p < .01) and “clairvoyance or telepathy” ( r = .30, r 2 = .09 p < .01).

While respecting the concerns of both perspectives, it is possible that the time has arrived to cautiously move beyond earlier assumptions and for investigations to include some of these capacities. Methods currently exist that allow empirical evaluation in the areas described in this paper. Some empirical research already shows that those with a history of meditation practice demonstrate greater “psi” capacities [ 68 , 69 , 71 , 142 – 144 ]. Future directions that intrepid researchers may consider include 1) correlating different types, frequency, and length of meditation practice with a variety of rigorous tests for extraordinary capabilities [ 145 ]; 2) testing for extended human capacities such as precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, or mind-matter interactions under controlled conditions during or just following meditation; 3) utilizing implicit measures (i.e. those that do not require conscious choice but examine physiological or reaction-time measures) to investigate extended human capacities during or related to meditation practice; or 4) including extended human capacities variables or questionnaire items in more traditional studies of meditation, to assess them as predictors, outcomes, or mediators, and 5) studies of people engaging in long-term or high intensity meditation practices who have been reported to exhibit exceptional capacities, virtues, states of consciousness, and postconventional stages of development.

VI. Other recommendations

Difficult experiences in meditation..

Meditation is usually considered a low risk intervention and adverse events are relatively rare. While reports of fear and terrors were the least commonly reported type of experience among respondents in our survey, this does not mean that such reports should be ignored. A full 32% of participants in our sample reported feeling disturbing feelings of fear, dread, or terror during or as a result of their meditation practice. A small but growing body of research on adverse effects from meditation practice exists, and there is opportunity to investigate this domain further.

For example, meditation practices have at times been associated with antisocial behavior, restlessness, reduction in emotional stability [ 146 ]. Even long term meditators have reported adverse effects [ 147 ]. There have been some reports of psychosis and mania triggered by meditation in the scientific literature [ 148 – 150 ] [ 151 ] and in lay publications [ 152 ]. Further examples include depersonalization [ 153 ], and case reports of brain activity correlated with seizures [ 154 , 155 ]. Generally these findings are consistent with the notion that meditative practices can have powerful effects on mind and body. Changes in self-image and worldview can be signs of psychospiritual progress, but can also be accompanied by significant anxiety. Like other active interventions, significant negative psychological side-effects may occur in a minority of individuals, especially those with a pre-disposition towards mania or psychosis.

Among researchers who are enthusiastic about the benefits of meditation being discovered in contemplative science, there may be hesitance to examine adverse events, negative side effects of meditation, for fear that this will engender fear, restrict research, or lessen enthusiasm for the practice. Most studies do not include any items asking about difficult states or struggles with meditation practice. However, it is possible that difficult and distressing experiences may be involved in one of the major challenges to clinical research on meditation: adherence.

As mentioned earlier, Lindahl and Britton [ 156 ] have addressed these questions by collecting data on challenging, difficult, or impairing experiences associated with meditation, the resulting taxonomy of which should aid in encouraging further research. Building and extending this research using a variety of methodologies will only strengthen the field of meditation research. In addition, distressing or difficult states can be viewed as natural aspects of the trajectory of spiritual or contemplative growth, and when properly supported can catalyze positive outcomes [ 157 , 158 ]. As one American Buddhist teacher, Shinzen Young [ 159 ] puts it:

It is certainly the case that almost everyone who gets anywhere with meditation will pass through periods of negative emotion, confusion, disorientation, and heightened sensitivity… for some duration of time, things may get worse before they get better…. This phenomenon, within the Buddhist tradition, is sometimes referred to as “falling into the Pit of the Void.” It entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No Self. … In a sense, it’s Enlightenment’s Evil Twin…In some cases it takes months or even years to fully metabolize, but in my experience the results are almost always highly positive.

Conducting more research on these difficult states and stages should help clinicians help their clients navigate and potentially leverage these experiences.

Though not included explicitly in our survey, we recommend that investigation of the role of the environmental context in which meditation practice occurs represents another essentially wide-open field for future researchers. The physical environment, and use of objects, icons, rituals and sacred places have traditionally been thought to enhance meditation practice. There are a potpourri of perceptual cues such as incense, candles, images, music, bells, and the wearing of special clothing, use of sacred foods, or fasting or avoiding certain foods that are routine parts of contemplative traditions and have yet to be investigated scientifically. In some cases, these contextual elements are thought to help “carry” a person into deeper meditative practice, and enhance its benefits.

Environmental cues such as color [ 160 ], odor [ 161 ], and images [ 162 ] have been demonstrated to affect emotion, cognitive processing, and behavior. This may account for the role that environmental cues play in meditation. However, some spiritual lore suggests that buildings, rooms, places, or objects in which many people have engaged in spiritual practices or long periods of meditation feel qualitatively/subjectively different than objects or places that have not been associated with such practices. For example, some talk about the “stillness” or “vibration” of a temple or old church—but objective measures of that subjectively perceived phenomenon are lacking. Only a small amount of research has been conducted on what has been termed “conditioned space [ 163 ],” in other words, space that has been purported to be imprinted by intentions alone, and this may warrant further exploration.

In addition, the cultural context, intentions, purpose, and values held by the meditator’s tradition or community (and within the practitioner) likely impact meditative experiences and outcomes. For example, a person who operates from a collectivist cultural orientation [ 164 ] might have different experiences of meditative benefit than those who come from more individualistic cultures. Many long term meditation practitioners hold rich worldviews, belief systems and ethical guidelines that inform their motivations for meditative practice and quite possibly the phenomenology of their experiences in meditation. However, the impact of worldview and ethical systems components has not been specifically measured in the bulk of the clinical and neurophysiologic research to date. The novices assayed in meditation research to date hold a broad range of worldviews, often poorly informed by the spiritual and/or religious foundations of the meditative practices in which they are engaging. For better or worse, in clinical settings these meditative practices have by and large been divorced from teachings about ethical guidelines or philosophical understanding about the nature of self and relation of self to world and/or the sacred. There are benefits and drawbacks to this. Secularizing these practices allows for much larger dissemination of them, as well as practices unburdened by dogmas that may or may not be supported by evidence. However, some of the “built-in” ethical protections in traditional settings and teachings have also been stripped away (such as, for example, a meditation student being assigned to clean the temple to learn humility and service while also experiencing transcendent states), and practices run the risk of becoming superficial when decontextualized.

The field of meditation studies is likely to benefit from assessing even in a rudimentary way some of these contextual elements of meditation practice, and how they might impact outcomes. For example, researchers could randomly assign participants to different contextual environments for practice and then collect subjective and objective measurements. One test might include having persons meditate in a room with an object randomly selected as one that is regarded to deepen practice versus a control object. Alternatively, repeated measures designs could also be used in which the same person meditates in various environments, and differences in neurophysiological correlates are measured.

Psychological development.

One of the most dramatic findings of developmental psychology and neurobiology is that, contrary to previous beliefs, development can continue throughout much of adulthood [ 165 , 166 ]. There are now more than 100 models of advanced or postconventional [ 167 ] stages of adult psychological development [ 168 , 169 ]. Preliminary maps have been offered over the centuries by contemplatives, but a growing body of empirical research suggests that for moral, cognitive, and many other capacities such as wisdom and self-transcendence, development can continue well into the elder years [ 170 – 177 ]. However, there have been very few studies of the effects of meditation on psychological development, even though accelerating such development may be one of the most important contributions the practice of meditation can make, and one of our contemporary world’s greatest needs.

Ethical issues.

As the scope of meditation research is broadened, and extraordinary experiences are the increasingly the focus of studies, it will be important to identify and address ethical issues that may arise. Indeed, a barrier to including these experiences and topics in the field of meditation research may have been a concern that too much emphasis on these experiences could encourage people to become distracted from the primary goals of meditation, foster experiences in meditation that could be iatrogenic for patients and clients, or bring to light experiences that clinicians were unequipped to address. However, simply ignoring such experiences does not make them go away, does not preserve the ethical foundations of meditation practice, nor is it an effective clinical approach [ 178 ]. Instead, we must create a set of clinical and ethical guidelines for helping clients, students and patients navigate and integrate these experiences to enhance, rather than detract from, their well-being. Educating clinicians and researchers about the potential for these experiences to occur, including questions to screen for distress, depersonalization, or changes in functioning related to meditation practice in assessments, and identifying a clinician with expertise in treating such issues for referrals or consultation are all possible components of an ethical approach.

Conclusions

The goal of this paper and the accompanying online materials is to share the findings and conclusions reached by the Future of Meditation Research working group. These include the findings of a survey investigating the prevalence of extraordinary meditative experiences and recommendations for expanding future research on meditation. The survey demonstrated that a number of experiences—mystical/transcendent, social/relational, physical/perceptual, and spatial/temporal experiences, and extended human capacities are prevalent and salient to those who experience them, and that meditation teachers are generally willing to discuss them with students.

One theoretical trajectory of psychological and spiritual development through meditation practice could be described in broad strokes as 1) participant comes in with distress or a desire for greater understanding or contentment, 2) through beginning mindfulness practices, the participant learns to stabilize attention, 3) the participant learns to de-center and observe the contents of their awareness or experience rather than being completely fused with their experiences, 4) the participant learns to volitionally make choices about how they wish to approach experiences (e.g. with acceptance, friendly investigation, with contemplation, with simple non-reactive awareness, with compassion), 5) through both subtle and profound insights, realizations, and experiences the participant begins to see themselves and reality as less fixed, is better able to understand context, shifts their sense of identity, and feels a sense of connectedness (less duality) between themselves and others, and 6) through these experiences becomes more compassionate for themselves and others, less reactive, less stressed, and observes improved relationships, less depression and anxiety, and more happiness. The premise of this paper is that in addition to experiences recognized in the contemplative literature as signs of spiritual progress, such as decentering from individual ego-based concerns, the kinds of extra-ordinary experiences we have entertained in this paper may also be important parts of this process.

We propose that these experiences are important to study. They hold the potential not only to shed light on effects of meditation in those who practice it, but may also illuminate new understandings about human potential and the nature of reality. Some of these experiences may be purely subjective or even illusory, but if this is the case, they remain worth investigating to learn more about their functional utility and transformative (or disruptive) potential. In addition, as meditation practice continues to increase in health care settings, it will be important for clinicians to be aware of potentially important, distressing or overwhelming experiences patients may have.

Researchers wishing to explore some of these domains may encounter reluctance, resistance or even ridicule from the scientific and academic community. Many aspects of meditation have been excluded from scientific dialogue to allow contemplative science to mature and be accepted as a field with scientific rigor. A focus on the cognitive and physiological outcomes of meditation, once itself a highly unconventional topic of study, assured that the field of contemplative science would be respected as “hard science,” rather than soft or pseudoscience. The field has understandably de-emphasized what may be essential aspects of meditation by focusing on component parts that are easier to operationalize and more palatable to scientists.

But as shown by our survey results, there are deeper and more mysterious aspects of meditation practice that are worth exploring. Our premise is that these important aspects of meditation are within the bounds of scientific investigation, can and should be studied with scientific rigor, and that their exclusion from scientific dialogue unnecessarily limits our knowledge. Our experience thus far, presenting this research to students and at professional meetings is that 1) researchers are fascinated by these topics, 2) that emerging findings often map on to their personal experiences and observations of students and research participants as well as the spiritual traditions from which many of these practices emerged, and 3) they are gratified to hear that there are intelligent, rigorous, and empirically sound methods to study them. Students and researchers who are interested in investigating these domains of meditation may find it useful to visit the Future of Meditation Research website to find a wealth of references and recommendations, an online course expanding on the topics reviewed in this paper, and a community of researchers who are pursuing these domains of inquiry.

The aim of this paper was to bring attention to some of the more controversial and less studied domains of meditation. We suggest that these aspects of meditation may be crucial to people’s psychological and spiritual development, and rather than being side-effects, could represent important outcomes of meditation practice, or serve as mediators and/or mechanisms by which meditation confers benefits. These arenas represent largely uncharted scientific terrain and provide excellent opportunities for new and experienced researchers. We hope this paper provided a foundation from which future research can expand. We believe it offers preliminary support to Maslow’s [ 179 ] provocative claim that “what we call ‘normal’ in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don’t even notice it ordinarily” (p. 16). The intention of this paper is to invite all of us to step into a new paradigm from which to explore one of the greatest of human quests—the understanding, healing, and enhancement of the human mind.

Supporting information

S1 file. meditation experiences survey..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740.s001

S2 File. Meditation experiences survey codebook.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205740.s002

Acknowledgments

Our grateful acknowledegements to colleagues who contributed feedback at various stages of this project include Willoughby Britton, Mark Coleman, Elissa Epel, Alfred Kaszniak, Edward Kelly, Jared Lindahl, Alan Pierce, Clifford Saron, Marilyn Schlitz, Jonathan Schooler, Frances Vaughan, and Fadel Zeidan. Thanks also to Learnist.com for collaborative tools.

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Daily meditation may work as well as a popular drug to calm anxiety, study finds

April Fulton

A new study on anxiety in JAMA Psychiatry shows a mindfulness program works as well as the popular anti-anxiety medication Lexapro. FatCamera/Getty Images hide caption

Anxiety symptoms like restlessness, feelings of worry and dread, and sleep problems, can interfere with daily life, relationships and career goals. Many people get relief using psychiatric medications, but finding the treatment that works best is an individual journey, and some look to find additional ways of coping with their symptoms.

Meditation is a well known method of calming anxiety , but now there's new evidence showing it to be effective at managing anxiety.

For the first time, scientists compared patients who took an intensive eight-week mindfulness meditation program to patients who took escitalopram , the generic name of the widely-prescribed and well-studied anxiety drug Lexapro. They found that both interventions worked equally well in reducing debilitating anxiety symptoms. (Talk therapy, another effective treatment for anxiety for some people, was not addressed in this study.)

The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday, and the research began long before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, when it could still be conducted in person.

Researchers took 276 adults diagnosed with untreated anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety, panic disorder, or social anxiety, and split them into two randomized groups. One group received a 10 to 20 mg daily dose of Lexapro – a standard beginning dose.

The other half was assigned to weekly two-and-a-half hour mindfulness classes at a local clinic — using an approach called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction — plus 45 minutes of daily meditation homework for eight weeks, as well as a day-long retreat around week five or six.

Stressed? Instead of distracting yourself, try paying closer attention

The study participants who took the drugs and those who participated in the meditation program were evaluated at the end of eight weeks using the same clinical scale, and both groups showed about a 20% reduction in the severity of their symptoms.

"The fact that we found them to be equal is amazing because now that opens up a whole new potential type of treatment," says study author Elizabeth Hoge , director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Hoge notes that she's not suggesting that meditation replace escitalopram — she herself prescribes the drug regularly to her anxiety patients. She says her intent is to add new treatment options, and ultimately, provide evidence that would get insurance companies to cover mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety.

How mindfulness may help

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, the technique taught in the study, was developed more than 40 years ago by Jon Kabat-Zinn and is based on the principles of meditation established in Buddhist vipassana meditation .

It teaches students to focus on the breath and direct attention to one body part at a time to see how it feels, and encourages them to try to focus on what is happening now, rather than the past or the future.

It suggests a way to look at their negative thoughts with less judgment, explains Hoge.

"Somebody with anxiety tends to worry about bad things that may happen, like failing an exam," she says. "When the thought comes up, then the person can learn to experience that as just a thought, not the truth or anything that needs to be acted on," she says, and that can calm anxiety.

MBSR is widely used to reduce stress among health care professionals and in clinical settings and has been studied as an intervention for pain, depression and several other conditions.

The new study provides another piece of evidence of the potential of the approach.

A potential complement to medication

Researchers and clinicians who treat anxiety praised the study.

"It does suggest that both treatments are helpful, and about equally so," says Michael Mrazek , a research associate professor at the University of Texas, Austin and the co-founder of the Center for Mindfulness & Human Potential at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"Importantly, the study shows that MBSR can achieve similar outcomes with tremendously fewer side effects," Mrazek tells NPR in an email.

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Side effects of escitalopram include suicidal thoughts in extreme cases, but more commonly diarrhea, loss of sexual desire or ability, nausea, and constipation.

Though numerous participants in the medication arm of the study had side effects like sleep problems and nausea, none of the patients in either group left the trial because of side effects.

Joy Harden Bradford , a psychologist in Atlanta who hosts the podcast Therapy for Black Girls, says she was "surprised but not shocked" that the meditation treatment works as well as the medicine, and is excited that a new avenue of treatment might become more widely available.

"The thing I would hate to have happen is for people to pit medication against the mindfulness-based resources," Harden Bradford cautions. For example, someone with panic attacks may have a much quicker reduction in those attacks with escitalopram, rather than waiting weeks for meditation practices to take hold, she says.

It's worth noting that longer term adherence to the treatments was higher for participants taking Lexapro than for the meditators. At 24 weeks, just 28% of the MBSR arm were still doing daily meditation, compared to 52% taking the drugs.

That could point to the challenges of learning mindfulness techniques. Many people may not have the time or money required to participate in an eight-week guided program, and scrolling meditation apps or trying out a free course at the YMCA is not exactly comparable.

Meditation is a skill that takes time and dedication and practice. "If you want to take it seriously, you've got to get a teacher," says Hoge.

Mrazek, who studies how to teach mindfulness, says it might be a good idea to see how both MBSR and Lexapro work together. "Neither MBSR or escitalopram eliminated participants' anxiety, and it's possible that larger improvements would arise from combining both treatments," he says.

More research to come on meditation apps and online tools

There are shortcomings to the study. For one, the majority of the participants were single, white, well-educated women with full time jobs. "Not everyone can clock out at 5 o'clock to get to the 6 o'clock [meditation] meeting," notes Harden Bradford.

Schools Are Embracing Mindfulness, But Practice Doesn't Always Make Perfect

However, women have higher rates of anxiety disorders than men. And "there is plenty of existing evidence that MBSR can benefit a wide variety of folks, so there's not much reason to doubt the generalizability," says Mrazek.

One way to make meditation more widely accessible to people with anxiety would be to use an app instead of in person training.

Mrazek says the future of MBSR must be online. "Hopefully this study will help make MBSR more widely available, but it's extremely hard to scale up in-person programs to reach millions of people. That's why I think digital programs are the future of mindfulness training," he says.

Hoge is planning future research to determine if using online guided meditation could help with anxiety, though she emphasizes the value of learning meditation in a class.

"I really don't think apps are going to provide the same benefit as having in-person training. ... The benefit of having a meditation teacher is that you can ask questions," Hoge says.

Still, mindfulness apps, says Harden Bradford, can teach people "concrete skills," she says, which may help reach more people. "Giving people something is better than having nothing," Harden Bradford says.

Editor's note, Nov. 11, 2022: This story has been updated to include additional comments from researchers and clinicians on how medication and meditation may complement one another, and on future avenues of research.

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New study finds links between meditation and brain functions

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Meditation has been used to help treat pain, addiction, anxiety disorders, and depression; but it was personal experience that prompted Judson Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., to study the neural mechanisms behind it.

Brewer, assistant professor of psychiatry and medical director of the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, began practicing meditation to deal with stress while a student at the Washington University School of Medicine. “I had seen that it was helpful for my life and that was why I went into psychiatry,” he said. During his residency he found that meditation helped addicts manage their cravings. But until recently scientists did not understand what brain mechanisms account for meditation’s beneficial effects.

In a study published online in November 2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Brewer and colleagues reported that the brains of experienced meditators—those who have been meditating for at least 10 years—showed decreased activity in the areas linked to attention lapses, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and plaque buildup in Alzheimer disease. This effect was seen regardless of the type of meditation practiced. The areas in question comprise the default mode network, which consists of the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices.

The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of experienced and novice meditators as they practiced three different techniques. When the default network was active, regions associated with cognitive control and self-monitoring—which keep the brain on task and prevent the mind from wandering—were also active in experienced meditators but not in novices. This co-activation happened even when they weren’t meditating, suggesting that meditators may be constantly monitoring mind-wandering and “me”-centered thoughts. Brewer believes that over time, the meditators may have developed a new default mode in which there is more present-centered awareness and less self-centered thought.

Bob Agoglia, executive director of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., who participated in the study and has been practicing meditation daily for over 30 years, isn’t surprised that meditation appears to be responsible for long-lasting changes in the brain. Two years ago he underwent major surgery. As he was waking from the anesthesia, he experienced intense pain quickly followed by fear. Suddenly, without any conscious intention on his part, the phrases he uses in his daily meditation began going through his mind and he relaxed immediately. “It was an unforgettable example, but on a daily basis it happens in much more subtle ways that are not quite as memorable,” he said.

Even those who had no experience with meditation before the study—novice participants received instruction just before undergoing the fMRI—were able to see its benefit. “It was almost like resetting my mental state,” said Kirk Snyder, 29, who felt a calm focus while meditating.

Despite the promise of meditation in the clinical setting, Brewer’s colleagues were lukewarm when he first suggested studying it. “The old me would have thought it was too touchy-feely,” said David McCormick, Ph.D., Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neurobiology. “But after having directly experienced meditation and how it can change your day-to-day perceptions, I’m much more interested in the neuroscience behind it.” McCormick began practicing meditation about three years ago because he was intrigued by the idea of having greater control over his mind and decreasing anxiety and stress.

Brewer hopes to translate the study’s findings into more clinically viable tools. He’s done a follow-up study in which experienced and novice meditators viewed real-time feedback of activity in their own posterior cingulate cortex. The subjects reported a strong correlation between mind-wandering and an increase in activity in this region, but a decrease in activity when they were meditating. Brewer believes that this type of neurofeedback may help patients learn how to meditate correctly, thereby increasing the therapeutic benefit of the practice.

Learning how to practice meditation rapidly is important because many people find it difficult to maintain. Brewer likens the process to traipsing through a river with mud on the bottom. At first the water is cloudy because the mud is stirred up, but eventually it washes downstream. “If you keep practicing you’ll keep that mud from depositing on the bottom in the future,” he said. “That analogy is what we have found clinically.”

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Mindfulness meditation: A research-proven way to reduce stress

Mindfulness meditation can improve both mental and physical health.

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People have been meditating for thousands of years, often as part of a spiritual practice. But in more recent years, mindfulness has become a popular way to help people manage their stress and improve their overall well-being — and a wealth of research shows it’s effective. Psychologists have found that mindfulness meditation changes our brain and biology in positive ways, improving mental and physical health.

What is mindfulness meditation?

Meditation can be defined in many ways. But a simple way to think of it is training your attention  to achieve a mental state of calm concentration and positive emotions.

Mindfulness is one of the most popular meditation techniques. It has two main parts: attention and acceptance.

The attention piece is about tuning into your experiences to focus on what's happening in the present moment. It typically involves directing your awareness to your breath, your thoughts, the physical sensations in your body and the feelings you are experiencing. The acceptance piece involves observing those feelings and sensations without judgment. Instead of responding or reacting to those thoughts or feelings, you aim to note them and let them go.

Mindfulness classes and mindfulness-based therapies provide the tools to put those concepts into practice. Such programs might include breathing exercises, yoga and guided lessons to help you become aware of your body sensations, thoughts and feelings.

Much of the research on mindfulness has focused on two types of interventions:

• Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a therapeutic intervention that involves weekly group classes and daily mindfulness exercises to practice at home, over an 8-week period. MBSR teaches people how to increase mindfulness through yoga and meditation.
• Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a therapeutic intervention that combines elements of MBSR and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat people with depression.

Researchers reviewed more than 200 studies of mindfulness among healthy people and found mindfulness-based therapy was especially effective for  reducing stress, anxiety and depression . Mindfulness can also help treat people with specific problems including depression, pain, smoking and addiction . Some of the most promising research has looked at people with depression. Several studies have found, for example, that MBCT can significantly reduce relapse in people who have had previous episodes of major depression . What's more, mindfulness-based interventions can  improve physical health , too. For example, mindfulness may  reduce pain, fatigue and stress in people with chronic pain . Other studies have found preliminary evidence that mindfulness might  boost the immune system and help people recover more quickly from cold or flu.

How mindfulness works

How could simply tuning into your thoughts and feelings lead to so many positive outcomes throughout the body? Researchers believe the benefits of mindfulness are related to its ability to dial down the body's response to stress.

Chronic stress can impair the body's immune system and make many other health problems worse. By lowering the stress response, mindfulness may have downstream effects throughout the body.

Psychological scientists have found that mindfulness influences  two different stress pathways in the brain , changing brain structures and activity in regions associated with  attention and emotion regulation . Scientists are also beginning to understand which elements of mindfulness are responsible for its beneficial effects. In a review of meditation studies, psychology researchers found strong evidence that people who received MBCT were less  likely to react with negative thoughts or unhelpful emotional reactions in times of stress . They also found moderate evidence that people who participated in MBCT or MBSR were better able to focus on the present and less likely to worry and to think about a negative thought or experience over and over.

[ Related:  6 mental health tips psychologists use]

How to get started

Ready to give it a try? Learning mindfulness is easier than ever. Mindfulness classes and interventions are widely available in settings including yoga centers, athletic clubs, hospitals and clinics, though the classes can vary in their approach. Find a therapist trained in MBSR or MBCT — interventions that have the most evidence of benefits.

A number of mindfulness-based interventions are now available online or through smartphone apps as well, although more long-term research is needed to explore how they affect the body and the brain. Still, early studies have found that  online mindfulness-based interventions can have a positive effect on mental health .

It can take a little while for mindfulness meditation to feel natural and to become a part of your regular routine. But with practice, you may discover a powerful tool for relieving stress and improving well-being.

Thanks to psychologists J. David Creswell, PhD, and Bassam Khoury, PhD, who assisted with this article.

The Meeting of Meditative Disciplines and Western Psychology: A Mutually Enriching Dialogue Walsh, et. al., American Psychologist 2006

Mindfulness-Based Therapy: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Khoury, B., et. al. Clinical Psychology Review, 2013

Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Psychiatric Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Goldberg, S.B., et. al. Clinical Psychology Review, 2018

Mindfulness Interventions Creswell, J.D., Annual Review of Psychology, 2017

Mindfulness Training and Physical Health: Mechanisms and Outcomes Creswell, J.D., et. al.,  Psychosomatic Medicine, 2019

Mindfulness and Cognitive–Behavioral Interventions for Chronic Pain: Differential Effects on Daily Pain Reactivity and Stress Reactivity Davis, M.C., et. al., Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2015

Mindfulness Meditation and The Immune System: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials Black, D.S., et. al. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2016

Meditation or Exercise for Preventing Acute Respiratory Infection: A Randomized Controlled Trial Barrett, B., et. al., Annals of Family Medicine, 2012

The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation Tan, Y.-Y., et. al., Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2015

How Do Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Improve Mental Health and Wellbeing? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Mediation Studies Gu, J., et. al. Clinical Psychology Review, 2015

Effectiveness of Online Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Improving Mental Health: A Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials Spijkerman, M.P.J., et. al., Clinical Psychology Review, 2016

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The Benefits of Morning Meditation

Starting a regular practice doesn’t have to be hard — it can take as little as five minutes as soon as you wake up.

By Holly Burns

There are some things we all know we’re supposed to do to feel better: drink more water , take more walks , go on fewer tequila benders. Meditation is another — research has shown it to help with everything from anxiety and depression to better sleep , lower stress levels and chronic pain relief.

But if you’re new to meditating, it can be hard to know where to start. So start small — with five minutes of breathing exercises to calm and focus the mind every morning.

Not only will it “set the tone for the day,” said Dr. Eva Tsuda, a meditation instructor at the UMass Memorial Health Center for Mindfulness, but meditating earlier may make the practice easier to stick to. In a recent study of almost 900,000 meditation app users, those who meditated in the morning were more likely to maintain the habit.

Here’s how to kick off your day — every day — with a quick and simple meditation.

Decide where and when you’ll meditate.

Alma Ivanovic, the owner of Sun and Moon Meditation studio in Chicago, meditates every morning after she wakes up, sitting on the floor against her bed frame. Designating a specific spot helps with consistency, she said, because “it’s like a pattern. When you see that space, it’s like ‘OK, that’s what we do there.’”

Tie the practice to something you already do each morning, like brushing your teeth. One small study found that people who did an in-app meditation “anchored” to a morning routine stuck with meditation longer.

Set a timer.

Even if your mornings are chaotic, research suggests that just five minutes of meditation can decrease stress and anxiety the rest of the day. Ms. Ivanovic likes to use an hourglass so she can gaze at the moving sand, but a digital alarm on your phone works too, she said — “just make it something gentle, like a chime or a bell.”

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Mindfulness meditation reduces pain through distinct brain mechanisms

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Pain is a complex, multifaceted experience shaped by various factors beyond physical sensation, such as a person's mindset and their expectations of pain. The placebo effect, the tendency for a person's symptoms to improve in response to inactive treatment, is a well-known example of how expectations can significantly alter a person's experience. Mindfulness meditation, which has been used for pain management in various cultures for centuries, has long been thought to work by activating the placebo response. However, scientists have now shown that this is not the case.

A new study, published in Biological Psychiatry , has revealed that mindfulness meditation engages distinct brain mechanisms to reduce pain compared to those of the placebo response. The study, conducted by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, used advanced brain imaging techniques to compare the pain-reducing effects of mindfulness meditation, a placebo cream and a "sham" mindfulness meditation in healthy participants.

The study found that mindfulness meditation produced significant reductions in pain intensity and pain unpleasantness ratings, and also reduced brain activity patterns associated with pain and negative emotions. In contrast, the placebo cream only reduced the brain activity pattern associated with the placebo effect, without affecting the person's underlying experience of pain.

The mind is extremely powerful, and we're still working to understand how it can be harnessed for pain management. By separating pain from the self and relinquishing evaluative judgment, mindfulness meditation is able to directly modify how we experience pain in a way that uses no drugs, costs nothing and can be practiced anywhere."  Fadel Zeidan, PhD, Professor of anesthesiology and Endowed Professor in Empathy and Compassion Research at UC San Diego Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion

The study included 115 participants, which consisted of two separate clinical trials in healthy participants, who were randomly placed into groups to be given four interventions: a guided mindfulness meditation, a sham-mindfulness meditation that only consisted of deep breathing, a placebo cream (petroleum jelly) that participants were trained to believe reduces pain and, as a control, one group listened to an audiobook. The researchers applied a very painful but harmless heat stimulus to the back of the leg and scanned the participants' brains both before and after the interventions.

To analyze the participant's brain activity patterns, the researchers used a novel approach called multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), which uses machine learning to disentangle the many complex neural mechanisms underlying the experience of pain, including those stemming from specific heat stimulus, negative emotions and pain responses that are driven by the placebo effect. The researchers were then able to identify if mindfulness meditation and placebo engage similar and/or separate brain processes.

Although placebo cream and sham-mindfulness meditation lowered pain, the researchers found that mindfulness meditation was significantly more effective at reducing pain when compared to placebo cream, sham-mindfulness meditation and the controls.

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They also found that mindfulness-based pain relief reduced synchronization between brain areas involved in introspection, self-awareness and emotional regulation. These parts of the brain together comprise the neural pain signal (NPS), a documented pattern of brain activity thought to be common to pain across different individuals and different types of pain. In contrast, the placebo cream and sham-mindfulness meditation did not show a significant change in the NPS when compared to controls. Instead, these other interventions engaged entirely separate brain mechanisms with little overlap.

"It has long been assumed that the placebo effect overlaps with brain mechanisms triggered by active treatments, but these results suggest that when it comes to pain, this may not be the case," said Zeidan. "Instead, these two brain responses are completely distinct, which supports the use of mindfulness meditation as a direct intervention for chronic pain rather than as a way to engage the placebo effect."

In modern medicine, new therapies are generally deemed effective and reliable if they outperform placebo. As the present study found that mindfulness meditation is more powerful than placebo and does not engage the same neurobiological processes as placebo, the findings have important implications for the development of new treatments for chronic pain. However, it will take more research to demonstrate these effects in people living with chronic pain as opposed to healthy participants.

In the long term, the researchers hope that by understanding the distinct brain mechanisms underlying mindfulness meditation, they can design more effective and accessible interventions that harness the power of mindfulness to reduce pain in people with various health conditions.

"Millions of people are living with chronic pain every day, and there may be more these people can do to reduce their pain and improve their quality of life than we previously understood." said Zeidan. "We are excited to continue exploring the neurobiology of mindfulness and how we can leverage this ancient practice in the clinic."

University of California - San Diego

Riegner, G., et al. (2024). Mindfulness meditation and placebo modulate distinct multivariate neural signatures to reduce pain.  Biological Psychiatry . doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.08.023 .

Posted in: Medical Science News | Medical Research News

Tags: Anesthesiology , Brain , Breathing , Chronic , Chronic Pain , Drugs , heat , Imaging , Imaging Techniques , Machine Learning , Medicine , Meditation , Pain , Pain Management , Placebo , Psychiatry , Research

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The Latest Research News on Meditation, Well-Being and the Brain

In this article, we explore some of the latest research on meditation, the brain and well-being.

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In our exceedingly fast-paced society, it can be challenging to exist in any state other than “doing mode”. Even when we think we’re resting, are we really?

Think about it – when did you last create some space in your day to put down your to-do list, your phone or turn off the television and simply be with yourself in the present moment?

It’s not easy, but it seems more of us are trying to do this by practicing techniques, such as meditation. According to Statista , the global meditation apps market is estimated to reach $7.09 billion by 2028. A 2017 survey conducted in the United States found that the percentage of adults practicing some form of meditation tripled between 2012–2017.

There are many different ways to meditate, which can make defining what meditation is a challenge. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says that “the term ‘meditation’ refers to a variety of practices that focus on mind and body integration and are used to calm the mind and enhance overall well-being.” Meditation has inspired many scientific studies over recent decades, with researchers increasingly eager to pinpoint if – and how – these ancient techniques can deliver such benefits in modern-day life.

Could meditation support human flourishing in later life?

Our global population is aging in a society that presents a myriad of challenges and complexities, all of which carry the potential to adversely impact our physical and psychological well-being. Could practicing long-term meditation help?

That was the question fueling a recent randomized, controlled clinical study co-led by University College London (UCL) scientists. This trial, lasting 18 months, is the longest randomized meditation training study conducted to date.

“It is increasingly crucial to understand how we can support older adults in maintaining and deepening their psychological well-being,” said Dr. Marco Schlosser , honorary research fellow at UCL’s Division of Psychiatry and the study’s lead author. “We tested whether long-term meditation training can enhance important dimensions of well-being. Our findings suggest that meditation is a promising non-pharmacological approach to support human flourishing in late life.”

One hundred and thirty-seven healthy individuals aged 65–84 years in Caen, France, were assigned to either an 18-month meditation training program, an English language training program of the same duration or a passive control group with no training.

The meditation program consisted of a nine-month mindfulness module followed by a nine-month loving kindness and compassion module. Often used interchangeably, mindfulness meditation refers to a type of meditation that encourages the practitioner to experience a state of mindfulness, which is the presence of the current moment without judgment.

These modules were delivered in various formats: weekly group sessions that were two hours long, a retreat day and daily home practice sessions that were 20 minutes in length. All participants were assessed at a baseline visit, mid-intervention at 9 months and post-intervention at 18 months.

Credit: iStock.

Schlosser and colleagues collected self-report data on several measures of well-being in the study, including the Psychological Well-Being Scale and the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-BREF Assessment. They also collected data on participants’ experiences of awareness, connection and insight.

In the context of this study, awareness refers to undistracted attention to our thoughts, feelings and surroundings, while connection denotes feelings of respect, gratitude and kinship. Insight describes self-knowledge and understanding how our thoughts or feelings can contribute and shape our perception.

“The 18-month meditation training was superior to English training on changes in awareness, connection, insight and global scores (comprising awareness, connection and insight) and superior to no-intervention only on changes in awareness and global scores,” the authors said .

While long-term meditation training induced changes in awareness, connection and insight, it was not associated with higher scores on the Psychological Well-Being Scale, nor the WHOQOL-BREF Assessment compared to the English language training or control groups. The researchers question whether these measures accurately capture the “depth” of human flourishing that long-term meditation training could bring.

As with many studies in the realm of psychological well-being, the study is limited by its reliance on self-report data, which is sensitive to biases. The research team also highlighted that the sample, being well-educated, healthy participants that were recruited from one geographical location, is not necessarily representative of the general population.

“We hope that further research will clarify which people are most likely to benefit from meditation training, as it may confer stronger benefits on some specific groups. Now that we have evidence that meditation training can help older adults, we hope that further refinements in partnership with colleagues from other research disciplines could make meditation programs even more beneficial,” Dr. Natalie Marchant , associate professor at UCL and co-author of the study, said .

Can mindfulness improve emotion regulation and sleep quality?

Mindfulness has been linked to improved sleep, but how and why remains unclear.

Researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) sought to explore this further, focusing on employee well-being specifically and drawing from a theory known as emotion regulation. A simple definition of emotional regulation is that it describes an individual’s ability to influence which emotions they have and when. The study is published in Health Psychology .

Led by Dr. Claire Smith , assistant professor of psychology at USF, the research group followed two independent cohorts of nurses (144 in total) over two weeks in the United States. Nurses were selected as the study population because they typically experience disrupted sleep patterns and are subjected to high-stress environments.

“We know that good sleep restores us physically and psychologically, and it keeps us happier, safer and even more ethical at work. We wanted to explore which aspects of sleep are influenced by mindfulness and why,” Smith said .

Participants were required to complete a survey three times a day which explored their state and trait mindfulness, and how much time they spent fixated on negative thoughts. Quality of sleep data was recorded through self-report methods and actigraphy data the following morning.

The study findings suggest that being mindful helped nurses reduce negative emotions and the amount of time spent ruminating. “For instance, if you got a negative performance review at work, you might choose to shift your focus from negative thoughts of how you have failed and are incompetent to positive thoughts of what you did right and how you can grow,” Smith said .

This, in turn, is associated with better sleep quality. “Our research suggests that day-to-day mindful attention may help people regulate their emotions in a way that promotes their sleep quality. Particularly for those in high-stress occupations, like health care workers examined here, mindfulness may be helpful in daily maintenance of emotional well-being and sleep health,” the authors said .

Smith and colleagues hope that future research on mindfulness confronts not only “big picture” results like sleep or productivity, but also how we handle emotions.

"Mindfulness is a hot topic, but we need to understand why it works," Smith said . "Our research is about going back to the drawing board to understand the reasons behind the benefits of mindfulness at work.”

A single mindfulness and compassion session reduces anxiety and depression, but not loneliness

Research shows that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can be effective at helping individuals manage symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, a key barrier to the study of MBIs and their clinical implementation is time – they typically require several weeks of commitment from participants to complete.

Professor Michael J Telch and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin recently devised a mindfulness-based single-session intervention (SSI), which is designed to overcome this barrier and improve the accessibility of MBIs. Telch and colleagues recently conducted a randomized clinical trial, recruiting 91 participants, which evaluated the effects of this intervention on self-perceptions of loneliness, stress, depression and anxiety. 

“Preliminary research suggests SSIs may reduce anxiety, stress and improve mental well-being in nonclinical samples,” the authors said . “Further, research suggests single-session mindfulness-based interventions may reduce negative affectivity (e.g., depression, rumination, anxiety, stress).”

To date, only one clinical trial has evaluated the effectiveness of an SSI on loneliness, which became increasingly prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic when the study was conducted.

The 91 participants (60.44% female) were randomized to receive either a one-hour mindfulness-only telephone intervention, a one-hour randomized mindfulness and compassion intervention, or were placed on a one-week waitlist to form a control group.

“Those assigned to the mindfulness and compassion intervention were taught a third skill related to compassion […] Participants were instructed to think of a person, place, object, or spiritual or religious figure that consistently evokes feelings of warmth, love, kindness or whatever compassion feels like to them. They were encouraged to focus their attention on any sensations that arose after evoking this feeling,” the authors said .

A variety of scales were used to evaluate perceived levels of loneliness, stress, anxiety and depression at one-week follow-ups. Data analysis revealed that, compared to the waitlist control group, the inclusion of a compassionate element in the SSI led to “meaningful” reductions in perceived levels of stress, anxiety and depression after one week, as described by the authors.

“Contrary to our expectations, there was no meaningful effect for either intervention on loneliness compared to the waitlist at the one-week follow-up and we did not find any group differences between the active intervention conditions at the one-week or two-week follow-ups. However, we did find that by the two-week follow-up there was a moderate decrease in loneliness across both conditions,” Telch and colleagues said.

The researchers believe that SSIs offer an approach that could be easily adopted in a wide range of contexts, but further research is required to evaluate whether changes in self-reported symptoms are maintained for long durations of time. 

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The latest coverage of scientific studies about meditation.

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A recent study found that different types of meditation, specifically concentrative and analytical, produce distinct patterns of brain activity.

Meditation practices linked to altered states of consciousness

A study found that 45% of participants experienced altered states of consciousness through meditation or mindfulness, with many reporting positive effects. However, 13% experienced moderate to severe suffering, highlighting the need for better support and awareness of these experiences' potential...

Brain connectivity maps shed light on the synergistic effects of meditation and psilocybin

Combining psilocybin with meditation enhances brain connectivity and information flow, according to new research. This was evidenced by increased centrality in brain networks, suggesting improved cognitive integration.

Study reveals the remarkable impact of meditation on basic cognitive mechanisms during learning

A recent study found that brief mindfulness meditation significantly improves learning from positive surprises and promotes exploration over exploitation in decision-making, highlighting its potential to enhance cognitive flexibility and openness to new experiences.

Long-term meditation might change your poop, hinting at effects on the gut–brain axis

Tibetan monks engaged in long-term meditation practices have a distinctly different composition of gut bacteria present in fecal samples compared to their non-meditating neighbors, according to new research published in General Psychiatry.

Mindfulness meditation skills do not affect attentional blink task performance, study finds

A recent study found no significant differences in attention task accuracy or general neural activity between mindfulness meditators and non-meditators, although meditators showed neural patterns suggestive of enhanced attention.

Mindfulness monotherapy shows promise for reducing sexual dysfunction symptoms in women

New research has found mindfulness monotherapy is linked to enhanced sexual desire, arousal, lubrication, and orgasm in women with and without sexual dysfunctions. The therapy also improves sexual quality of life, but further research is needed for its wider recommendation.

Breathing practices temporarily bolster prosocial behaviors in girls, study finds

A study in Germany involving primary school children found that short daily breathing exercises in classrooms may improve peer relationships and girls' prosocial behavior. However, these effects diminished five months post-intervention.

Breathwork study: Largest controlled trial to date finds no psychological benefits beyond placebo effect

Scientists have found that coherent breathing may not be more effective than a placebo in reducing stress or improving mental health. The findings, emerging from one of the largest and most robustly controlled trials in this area, suggest that the...

Meditation shows promising results for enhancing awareness, connection, and insight in older adults

New research published in PLOS One suggests that meditation may enhance certain aspects of psychological well-being in older adults. The study, which is the longest randomized meditation trial to date, suggests that specific meditation practices can improve awareness and insight,...

Mindfulness meditation shows promise in reducing problematic pornography use

A recent study provides initial evidence that mindfulness meditation could reduce problematic pornography use among young adults. This intriguing finding opens a new avenue for addressing a growing concern in the digital age. The study was published in the journal...

Neuro-meditation program shows promise in treating Long COVID cognitive symptoms

A study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that a neuro-meditation program could improve cognitive function in Long COVID patients. Despite promising results, the absence of a traditional meditation group and short follow-up duration highlighted...

Mindfulness meditation might help people manage emotional distractions, new study suggests

A recent study from the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement reveals that individuals who practice mindfulness meditation demonstrate improved attentional control and are less impacted by emotional distractions, particularly positive ones, compared to non-meditators. The research, conducted by IIT Bombay, suggests...

Guided meditations were useful in decreasing emotional distress during COVID lockdowns, but the effect was not lasting

A study examined the effect of 30-minute guided meditations focused on enhancing mindfulness and self-compassion on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns in Spain. The results demonstrated that the meditations reduced symptoms of emotional distress,...

Neuroimaging study shows traditional Buddhist meditation tunes out external distractions

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Mindfulness & Meditation

• Welcome to Harvard

Although the practices of mindfulness and meditation are thousands of years old, research on their health benefits is relatively new, but promising.

Being in the moment.

Learning to focus your attention on the present moment can have a wide variety of benefits.

Mindfulness is the simple process of noticing new things about the familiar. When we notice actively, we become sensitive to perspective and change.” Ellen Langer, professor of psychology Learn more about Professor Langer Learn more from Professor Langer

Mindfulness and meditation may help:

Reduce stress.

Those who learn the techniques of mindfulness and meditation often say they feel less stress and have clearer thoughts . Researchers have explored how mindfulness meditation and relaxation affect our brains , and learned that mindfulness in the classroom can reduce students’ stress and lengthen attention spans.

Ease depression

Researchers are studying how mindfulness may help those with depression . They have observed that mindfulness seems to change the brain in some patients , and are exploring what meditation can do for our minds, moods, and health.

Improve well-being

Mindfulness can help people become more self-aware and improve general wellbeing. Research has shown that mindfulness helps us to unwind , and can help educators practice self-care . Experts say that we can “train” our brains to improve both mental and physical health.

Mindfulness can help us recognize that some fear reactions are disproportional to the threat, and thus reduces the fear response …” Sara Lazar, MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program Learn more about the study

Mindful moment

Get comfortable and try this mindfulness exercise.

Sit on a straight-backed chair or comfortably on the floor.

Focus on your breath and pay attention to things such as the sensations of air flowing into your nostrils and out of your mouth, or your belly rising and falling as you inhale and exhale.

Once you’ve narrowed your concentration in this way, begin to widen your focus. Become aware of sounds, sensations, and ideas.

Embrace and consider each thought or sensation without judging it good or bad. If your mind starts to race, return your focus to your breathing. Then expand your awareness again.

Quiet Harvard spaces

There are several quiet, restful places on and near campus that are conducive to contemplation and reflection.

Explore the spaces

Calm your mind

Harvard’s Center for Wellness and Health Promotion offers a number of pre-recorded mediations for anyone to explore.

See more meditations

Awareness of breath meditation

Guided imagery meditation, body scan meditation, more to muse.

New and old spaces to pray and meditate at Harvard

Why leaders need meditation now more than ever

Rethinking mental health for veterans

Mindful eating

Calming the working mind — Harvard Gazette

Meditation may relieve IBS and IBD — Harvard Gazette

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Meditation research, past, present, and future: perspectives from the Nalanda contemplative science tradition

Joseph loizzo.

Center for Integrative Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York

This article offers an overview of meditation research: its history, recent developments, and future directions. As the number and scope of studies grow, the field has converged with cognitive and affective neuroscience, and spawned many clinical applications. Recent work has shed light on the mechanisms and effects of diverse practices, and is entering a new phase where consensus and coherent paradigms are within reach. This article suggests an unusual path for future advancement: complementing conventional research with rigorous dialogue with the contemplative traditions that train expert meditators and best know the techniques. It explores the Nalanda tradition developed in India and preserved in Tibet, because its cumulative approach to contemplative methods produced a comprehensive framework that may help interpret data and guide research, and because its naturalistic theories and empirical methods may help bridge the gulf between science and other contemplative traditions. Examining recent findings and models in light of this framework, the article introduces the Indic map of the central nervous system and presents three testable predictions based on it. Finally, it reviews two studies that suggest that the multimodal Nalanda approach to contemplative learning is as well received as more familiar approaches, while showing promise of being more effective.

Traditional contemplative science: ancient history or timely perspective?

It is a great honor and rare privilege to be invited to share some of my reflections on the past achievements, current advances, and future directions of a field that promises to be increasingly relevant to the future of science, health care, and global well-being. Since a clear survey of current advances in basic research has already been covered by previous reviews, this article will focus on providing an overview of the field from the standpoint of future trends in research and application.

Unlike many other meditation researchers, I come at this field from an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural point of view. As an integrative psychiatrist, contemplative psychotherapist, and Buddhist scholar, my approach to meditation research relies mainly on qualitative and intersubjective methods closer to those used in humanity's ancient traditions of contemplative science than to the modern laboratory methods we think of as defining science. Of course, I also do conventional research with my colleagues at the Weill Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine and will offer a snapshot of our latest findings below to illustrate some of the points I hope to convey. But the thrust of my comments will be to share a perspective I believe is neglected in our field: the perspective of the ancient contemplative traditions that train the expert practitioners we study and that best understand the practices we try to teach novice subjects in basic and applied research.

While we are taught to assume that our current methods of science are always and in every way more reliable and definitive than any other, I will ask you for the moment to reflect on this article of faith. As I have done so myself over the years, I have come to appreciate what our philosophers and sociologists of science have been saying for decades: that this belief reflects a relative, culturally specific, and practically limiting point of view. 1 For example, as we gain more and more detailed knowledge of the effects of various meditation techniques on different regions, pathways, and neurotransmitters in the brain, we often find ourselves further and further from any broad consensus or coherent model of their diverse mechanisms and effects. As Francisco Varela saw it, 2 this challenge is not unique to meditation but is a general limitation of studying a system as complex as the human mind/brain with research methods that privilege analytic thinking and reductive measures over systemic thinking and multidisciplinary assessments.

In struggling with these limits over the course of my career, I have found it helpful to complement the reductive perspective of neuropsychology with two multidisciplinary sciences from very different cultural traditions: modern psychotherapy and Buddhist contemplative science. 3 In these comments, I will try to share some of the insights I have gleaned from this complementary approach to meditation research and application.

Past history, current models, and future directions: a topical review

From the first physiological studies of meditation in the 1950s and 1960s 4 – 7 and the first clinical studies by Benson et al . in the 1970s, 8 – 10 meditation research has come a long way. The enormous strides in the field over the last three decades have been mainly driven by two synergistic lines of advancement. The first of these is the convergence of meditation research with the explosive growth of basic neuroscience in recent years. The second is the emergence of mindfulness meditation as the dominant paradigm for clinical research and application in the field. 11

Since I hypothesized in my 2000 review 12 that meditation shares a common mechanism with psychotherapy and hypnosis—the enrichment of learning through use-dependent neural plasticity—a key study by Lutz et al . helped confirm a link between meditation and the greatest paradigm shift in modern neuroscience. 13 , 14 The 2004 study by Lutz et al . 13 showed that Tibetan-trained expert meditators were able to consciously induce electroencephalography (EEG) findings indicative of increased learning and neural plasticity—unprecedented trains of gamma activity and synchrony—at will. As Lutz's colleague Richard Davidson explained, the publication of this finding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences marked a turning point for meditation research, a landmark on the way to the new field he called “contemplative neuroscience.” 15 Putting mechanistic teeth into Jon Kabat-Zinn's prior definition of mindfulness as a “discipline of attention,” 16 , 17 this finding reframed meditation as a missing link in conscious self-regulation, connecting mental training on the one hand to the electrochemical processes of neuronal firing, epigenetic regulation of gene transcription, and new neural connectivity on the other. 15 , 18

As for current advances along this line, a series of findings 19 – 21 show that meditation practice slows or may even stop the progression of global cortical atrophy underlying the normal cognitive decline of aging. But firm conclusions have not been drawn from these studies about basic mechanisms or clinical applications of meditation. More sanguine about the significance of such findings are groups like that of Davidson, which have shown meditation-induced increases in cortical thickness in specific regions, especially areas in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) associated with higher cognitive and social-emotional self-regulation. Specifically, one study by Lazar et al . found increased cortical thickness in the PFC of meditators; 22 another related finding is from the earlier work of Davidson on the role of the PFC in increased emotional regulation and resilience in mindfulness meditators. 23 Such findings have been linked to the syndrome of hypofrontality, a widely invoked model of psychopathology, to explain how meditation promotes self-healing and positive health. The idea articulated by Davidson et al . is that traumatic stress reactivity in the limbic system is poorly controlled when the left PFC is underactive, but resolves when meditation and/or psychotherapy increases its activity. 24 This model is also consistent with the recent finding that meditation reduces prefrontal connectivity with the amygdala. 25

Of course, the idea that meditation enhances prefrontal regulation of stress reactivity and aversive emotions fits well with the growing clinical interest in mindfulness as an adjunct in the cognitive behavioral treatment of anxiety, depression, and personality disorders. One articulate proponent of this convergence, Dan Siegel, is not a meditation researcher but a child psychiatrist who studies the interpersonal neurobiology of early development. His synthesis of the neurobiology of the PFC with current mindfulness applications in psychotherapy and education 26 has helped extend a prefrontal model of mind/brain health to the exploding field of clinical research on modalities like dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. 27 , 28

So given this growing coalescence, why should our field not adopt the hypothesis of optimizing prefrontal health—or eufrontality —as a general model of meditation? Let me answer by sharing my thoughts about a recent historic conference held in April 2012 in Denver, the First International Symposia on Contemplative Studies. As Yi-Yuan Tang showed by referencing a recent chart of the rise of meditation research, studies of mindfulness alone have climbed dramatically from a handful per year in the 1980s to upward of 450 in the last year. 11 Familiar with this historic groundswell, I went to the Denver conference expecting to learn more about mindfulness and its diverse applications. Many familiar faces were there, including mindfulness pioneers Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dan Goleman, and Sharon Salzberg, but to my surprise much if not most of the new research presented focused on the neurobiology of compassion. Most remarkable were the replication of findings first reported in two papers from Davidson's group, 13 , 29 suggesting that the unusual neural activity associated with compassion meditation in expert practitioners can be developed in novices after a short period of traditional compassion training. 30 , 31

As I see it, this latest wave of studies represents a second line of convergence linking meditation research and neuroscience, namely the convergence of research on affective meditations focused on cultivating equanimity, gratitude, love, and compassion, with the exploding field of affective neuroscience and its clinical counterparts, positive psychology and transformational affect therapy. The larger significance of this second line of advancement may be twofold. First, it challenges and expands preconceived notions of meditation as a practice limited to dispassionate, emotionally cool, and metacognitive states of heightened mindfulness, contentless awareness, and nonjudgmental attention. Second, these practices challenge any simplistic model of meditation as a cure for hypofrontality.

Not only does compassion meditation typically rely on positive images of loved ones or loving mentors, but also it uses such mental contents to consciously evoke strong positive feelings of love and care, and gradually extend them toward any and all others. Unlike simple mindfulness models of resilience based on a shift to left PFC activation and downregulation of prefrontal–amygdala circuitry, the neurobiology of compassion involves increased activation of and connectivity with limbic regions including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the insula, and the nucleus acumbens of the ventral striatum. 13 , 29 – 31 So while mindfulness may work in part by decreasing activation of limbic regions like the amygdala, involved in negative affect and stress reactivity, compassion meditation appears to work by increasing activation of limbic regions involved in social responsiveness, empathy, positive affect, and internal reward.

Another general model of meditation challenged by the new research on compassion meditation is the model of reduced self-reflective presence proposed by Judson Brewer. Brewer bases this model on his finding that the default mode network (DMN), which is active when the mind/brain are off-task and at rest, involves less mental wandering and less self-reflective memory or fantasy in meditators than in nonmeditating controls. 32 His recent study found that the two main nodes of the DMN—the medial PFC (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)—are less active in mindfulness practitioners while they meditate and are more connected with attention-control regions like the dorsal ACC when they are not meditating. 33 Brewer applies his model generally to meditation teaching and clinical interventions using neural feedback of PCC activation as biofeedback markers for novices and practitioners trying to check their mastery of meditation. 34

Like the eufrontality model, the DMN model assumes a unitary view of meditation as dispassionate, contentless, and nondiscursive mindfulness, and so is unlikely to apply equally to positive affective practices like compassion meditation. Some of the key regions active in compassion meditation—such as the dorsolateral PFC, the insula, and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ)—involve developing a stronger than usual self-awareness or agency, and using facial recognition and emotional memories to develop empathic models of the suffering of other minds.

One might predict that both these models will have even more difficulty accounting for the poorly studied family of meditation practices that I expect to be the focus of a third and last line of advancement in meditation research. I am referring to an array of advanced meditation practices that use imagery, affirmations, body movements, and gestures, together with intensive breath control practices, to develop exceptional degrees of mind/brain integration and altruistic agency.

As I look to the future advancements of our field, I see research on the diverse array of such integral practices—including Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, Kundalini Yoga, TM Siddhi, Qi-gong, Cabbala, Christian mysticism, and Sufism—converging with research on the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). I believe this would allow us to study a broad network of related mechanisms linking the practices studied by Zoran Josipovic, 35 , 36 Fred Travis, 37 , 38 Yi-Yuan Tang, 39 , 40 Luciano Bernardi, 41 , 42 and my own work with my colleagues Mary Charlson and Janey Peterson. 43 , 44 Stephen Porges’ groundbreaking synthesis of the neuropsychology of the vagal nerve 45 has opened a new horizon for meditation research that goes deeper than the increasingly accepted link between mindfulness and the PFC, and deeper than the emerging link between compassion meditation and the limbic system, promising to help explain how integral meditation may affect the primal centers of mind/body regulation in the brainstem.

Porges’ polyvagal theory explains how the myelinated “smart vagus” that evolved in mammals not only supports voluntary breathing but also helps modulate primitive vagal and sympathetic reflexes—partly via interneurons in the brainstem and partly by the mammalian neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin—to support more consistent and expanded use of higher cortical capacities for social engagement. This theory can be invoked to help explain how mindful breathing helps modulate amygdalar fear reactivity, as well as how compassion training may enhance empathy and caretaking responses by stimulating oxytocin release. But the full explanatory power of the theory lies in its ability to synthesize several seemingly unrelated lines of current research in a way that permits a complex convergence of these lines with preliminary studies of the effects of integral meditation techniques.

Given the phylogenetic linkage between the evolution of the smart vagus and its four related cranial nerves—trigeminal, facial, glossopharyngeal, and accessory—the theory overlaps with recent research on the recognition of facial expressions and vocal tone, 46 , 47 clarifying one plausible basis for the calming effects of envisioning benevolent human faces and reciting prayers or mantras that represent a dialogue with a benevolent presence. Finally, the fact that the smart vagus and its related neuropeptides can modulate the defensive fight, flight, or freeze reactions of the primitive sympathetic and vagal systems overlaps with research on embodied cognition and fearless immobilization states like diving, hibernation, and orgasm, clarifying one plausible basis for integral movement and breath-holding practices that induce seemingly paradoxical states of profound physical relaxation and peak heart–brain arousal. 48 – 51

A comparative, interdisciplinary approach to contemplative science

Despite our recent advances and the promise of more ahead, our young field still falls far short of a coherent picture of meditation mechanisms and effects. At this juncture, I believe we can benefit from consulting the explanatory models of traditional contemplative science. In particular, my own research has focused on the models developed at the Buddhist University of Nalanda in ancient India and preserved in Tibet.

Since the Buddhist University of Nalanda was dedicated to developing the most scientific approach to Buddhist teaching and practice, and making it accessible to mainstream students—Buddhist and non-Buddhist, lay and religious—this living tradition represents a useful resource for contemporary meditation research. 52 And since the Nalanda tradition is both continuous and cumulative—integrating multiple models and methods in a complete system of contemplative arts and sciences preserved to the present day—it also represents what may be the world's most comprehensive and rigorous framework of ancient meditative teachings and practices. 53 While it is specific to a given cultural tradition, its emphasis on explaining meditation mechanistically in terms of mind/body causation, combined with its systematic approach to diverse practices, makes this synthesis a potential Rosetta Stone that can help modern science decipher the symbolic language and ritualized methods of meditation techniques drawn from many different religious traditions.

Of course, this comprehensive approach shares its basic science and technology with the Hindu tradition grounded in Patanjali's Yoga, which lays out four meditation practices over and above the familiar elements of lifestyle, posture, and breathing. 54 , 55 As in the Nalanda tradition, these advanced methods were elaborated on in later systems of Hindu meditation, including the wisdom-compassion methods refined in Vedanta/Bhakti Yoga, and the integral methods of recitation and breath control refined in the Hindu Tantras. Consequently, the Nalanda system has clear analogs from the Hindu side of Indic contemplative science, such as the comprehensive synthesis of Kashmiri Shaivism. These sister traditions integrate classical yoga practice with fully developed methods of compassion meditation and integral breath meditation. The main benefits of the Nalanda version lie in a less theistic explanatory language, and a more extensive and continuous academic tradition of oral and written commentary.

In two recent articles, 12 , 53 I have reviewed the literature and presented a rationale for integrating the Nalanda synthesis into a comparative framework for contemplative research and clinical application. Here I briefly summarize the framework proposed and suggest ways in which it may help interpret ambiguous findings, direct future studies, and improve methodology.

Although the Nalanda framework reflects the historic unfolding of Buddhist teaching and practice from its inception (ca. 500 B.C.E.) to the University's destruction (ca. 1250 C.E.), it was developed as a synchronic mapping of diverse systems of contemplative science and healing arts. The framework maps the field as a continuum of progressively more challenging systems of theory and practice, which yield increasingly more complete degrees of self-regulation based on increasingly more profound levels of mind/brain integration. Before explaining my use of the term brain, let me begin by briefly describing the three (or four) progressive systems of theory and practice defined in the framework. First comes the basic science and contemplative practice of personal healing using mindfulness; second comes the intermediate science and contemplative practice of interpersonal healing using compassion; and third comes the advanced science and contemplative practice of integral or primary process healing, using a combination of visual and auditory imagery with breath-induced transformational affect. The most modern map in effect divides the third system into a moderately advanced integral system and a highly advanced primary process system, yielding a fourfold framework that bears some resemblance to the Vedic model assumed by Fred Travis. 56

In light of current meditation research, this framework has both experimental and explanatory value. It makes testable predictions, many of which are seemingly being borne out, while also offering coherent models that account for the distinctions between practices as well as the overall family resemblances that make them part of one spectrum of self-healing and self-regulation. For instance, the threefold framework predicts that the basic science and beneficial effects of simple yoga and mindfulness will differ significantly from those of compassion meditation, and that the science and effects of both these will differ from those of integral practices. In addition, it explains the similarities and differences between the main types of practice by mapping them as a natural spectrum of related methods, each with its own distinct cognitive and affective-behavioral components. One traditional metaphor is that meditative arts and sciences are a polyandrous family born out of the marriage of one mother—cognitive self-transcendence—with three fathers—methods/levels of self-regulation—namely, dispassion (disarming stress emotions and reactions); compassion (cultivating social emotions and actions); and pure passion (tapping blissful flow states and open creative responsiveness). In this, it brings more specificity and variety to David Vago's S-ART model of mindfulness as based on the active ingredients of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence. 57

This brings us to the most distinctive aspect of the framework: cross-referencing current brain mapping with the contemplative map of the nervous system that the Nalanda tradition shares with many Indic traditions, from classical Yoga to Kashmiri Shaivism. Given the sensitivity and complexity of such cross-cultural comparisons from the perspective of all parties—modern scientists and scholars, traditional scholars and practitioners—I have considered the challenges and feasibility of this aspect at length elsewhere. 1 , 3 , 53 For now, suffice it to say that many elements of the scientific description of the model called the “subtle body” (skt. suksma-sarira ) in Ayruvedic medicine or Tibetan psychiatry make it quite clear that it is meant for use as a map of what we call the central nervous system (CNS). 58 Most pertinent are (1) the anatomical congruence between the traditional map and the neuraxis; (2) the use of naturalistic metaphors to describe the structure and function of the system—pathways called “reeds” or “channels” ( nadi ), complexes called “hubs” or “knots” ( chakra , grantha ), energies called “breaths” or “winds” ( prana , vayu ), and a range of different types of fluids called “drops” ( bindu ); and (3) the use of these descriptive elements to explain the basic functions we attribute to the CNS, including the transmission of sensorimotor and symbolic information based on the movement of winds and drops through, to, and from different channels and complexes; the central control of respiration, excretion, reproduction, digestion, metabolism, circulation, sensation and mentation, and proprioception and motor function, based on the movements of 10 kinds of winds and eight kinds of drops; the support of all activities and state changes of the four levels of consciousness—waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and orgasm—based on the movements of specific winds and drops through channels and complexes at three or four successively deeper, more elementary levels of the subtle material body.

Whatever the feasibility of such comparisons in principle, in practice I believe they permit testable predictions and heuristically valid models of the neural mechanisms and benefits of meditation that may help us design and interpret current research. To illustrate this, I very briefly allude to three examples drawn from the application of the traditional map to explain and guide contemplative practice. First, the traditional model predicts that mindful control of attention and body awareness will mainly involve the higher structures of the nervous system behind the forehead and under the crown; compassion meditation will involve intermediate structures that support language, mental imagery, and emotion; and integral meditation will involve deeper structures that support basic bodily functions like heart rate, respiration, sense input, states of consciousness, digestion, and reproduction. As I mentioned earlier, this prediction seems to have been borne out by mounting research on mindfulness 22 , 25 and compassion, 29 – 31 , 59 and there is preliminary evidence that the third aspect of this prediction may be borne out as well (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ). 49 – 52 , 60

Color-coded structural–functional congruence in modern and Indic central nervous system (CNS) maps. Illustration by Daniel Hakansson.

Second, the traditional model predicts that conscious self-regulation depends not only on vertical integration of different levels of structure and process, but also on the lateral integration of three systems of autonomic regulation present at each level: a right-sided system based in a “masculine” activating channel, with activating winds and drops; a left-sided system based in a “feminine” calming channel, with calming winds and drops; and a central system based in a “neuter” bliss-love channel, with blissful winds and drops, accessed by balanced, voluntary nostril breathing and conscious, prolonged breath holding. In my view, this prediction has found unexpected support from current research on the autonomic nervous system (ANS), not only from the unlikely finding that the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems show lateral dominance at all levels of the brain and body, 61 but also from the finding that that dominance, though variable and alternating, generally lines up with the traditional map, showing right-sided sympathetic dominance and left-sided vagal dominance. 62 Finally, this second prediction also finds support from current studies of alternate nostril breathing, 63 breath-slowing and breath-holding practices, 64 as well as from the emerging consensus that conscious breathing exerts smart-vagal dominance over the primitive sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and PNS, 65 balancing and integrating them to support social engagement with the help of the mammalian neuropeptides vasopressin and oxytocin. 66 Of note, this tradition would weigh in on current discussions of whether the slowing of cortical atrophy by meditation is due to neuroplasticity or to stress protection, predicting that these two mechanisms are linked and synergistic aspects of one general process of lateral integration are employed at all mind/brain levels in different ways by different meditative practices (see Figure ​ Figure2 2 ).

Autonomic laterality in modern and Indic autonomic nervous system (ANS) maps. Illustration by Daniel Hakansson.

Thirdly, the traditional model predicts that there is a central locus of self-regulation at the level of central cardiorespiratory control, that breath is controlled by two binary circuits above and below that level, and that voluntary breathing, breath slowing, and breath holding can help link the circuits, yielding full access and control of primal winds and drops that support motivation and reward as well as the vital rhythms of life. This prediction is supported by current research and thinking on the ANS, since the new brainstem nucleus that gives rise to the smart vagus—the ventral nucleus ambiguous—is close not just to the older dorsomedial nucleus of the vagus but also to the cardiorespiratory oscillator and the dopaminergic nuclei that innervate the ventral striatum, close enough for the growth of interneurons that permit the extension of smart-vagal control to these neighboring nuclei. 46

While the second and third predictions based on the traditional model of neural mechanisms of meditation have not been widely entertained or studied, they are broadly consistent with current research and testable by current methods. In response to the conventional wisdom that consulting such ancient models and methods is anachronistic and introduces unscientific beliefs and biases that obstruct solid research, I draw your attention to the fact that the most prolific and cutting-edge teams in the field work closely with traditional contemplative scientists and traditionally trained expert practitioners. 13 – 15 , 37 – 40 In response to the objection that integrating traditional models and methods of meditation limits the accessibility and efficacy of clinical applications, we need only consider the broad appeal and impact of mindfulness methods drawn from traditional Buddhist teaching and practice. In fact, an additional benefit of these models is that their qualitative, intersubjective approach to mapping the CNS, and their holistic elegance, makes them far more user friendly as heuristic learning guides for meditators trying to regulate their nervous system first-hand than are modern brain maps. 1 , 56 In that vein, I would now like to share with you the approach and findings of our own research, practically applying the multimodal approach to contemplative self-healing that Mary Charlson, Janey Peterson, and I have studied in women recovering from breast cancer treatment. 43 – 45

Contemplative self-healing: integrating the Nalanda synthesis in practice

The Nalanda 20-week program in contemplative self-healing combines simple yoga and mindfulness with compassion training and integral methods of role-modeling imagery, affirmation, and breath holding, based on the Nalanda tradition of gradual mind training. 43 In two recent pilot studies of breast cancer survivors conducted by the Weill Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine and funded by the Avon Foundation, the Nalanda program had stronger effects on quality of life and traumatic avoidance than any other psychosocial interventions studied, while also showing promising effects on biomarkers of stress, and matching or exceeding the efficacy of interventions like mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), aerobic exercise three times per week, and antidepressants. 44 , 45 The program in both these studies combined an 8-week contemplative skills learning component with a 12-week contemplative outlook and lifestyle-change program.

The first study in 68 female cancer survivors 41 found unprecedented within-patient improvements in quality of life as measured by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT) scale and the Short Form 36 (SF-36). Figure ​ Figure3 3 shows an overall FACT General (FACT-G) improvement of 6.4, along with significant improvements in emotional (2.3) and role functioning (2.0). Figure ​ Figure4 4 shows significant improvements (>10 points) in quality of life as measured by the SF-36, specifically in social, role-emotional, and mental functioning. Biologic measures in a small cohort of participants also showed statistically significant within-patient improvements in biomarkers of stress, specifically normalized waking cortisol and decreased resting heart rate.

Within-patient improvements in quality of life measured by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT) scale.

Within-patient improvements in quality of life measured by the Short Form 36 (SF-36).

In the second study of the Nalanda 20-week program 45 in an underserved population of 42, mostly minority female breast cancer survivors, the intervention had a positive effect of the same order of magnitude (3.7 on the FACT-G, and 4.6 corrected for women with recurrences during the study). This finding is remarkable considering both the women's unusually high levels of stress and their reported low adherence to the reading and homework program consisting of practice sessions. It is also notable in that the intervention was delivered by four clinicians newly trained for the study. The most remarkable finding of this second study was the strong intervention effect on the trauma symptoms reported by breast cancer survivors, as measured by the Impact of Events Scale (IES). Specifically, our study showed more than twice the reduction in overall symptoms (–6.3) and in traumatic avoidance (–3.9) than was found in a Danish observational study 67 and in a study of a 10-week cognitive behavioral intervention. 68

Although still preliminary, these findings suggest that applying the comprehensive Nalanda approach to tough clinical challenges, such as fear of recurrence and traumatic avoidance in cancer survivors, may improve the efficacy of familiar interventions involving mindfulness or cognitive behavioral techniques alone. Qualitative feedback from very diverse populations strongly supports our anecdotal experience that this traditional step-by-step tool-chest approach to contemplative interventions is both broadly accessible and effective.

Concluding thoughts and future directions: a modest proposal

Although still in its adolescence, the field of meditation research has come a long way. As an increasing number and range of studies has shed light on the neural mechanisms and beneficial effects of a wide array of contemplative practices, I believe we are entering a new phase where a broad consensus and coherent research and practice paradigms are within reach. I hope this article has helped to clarify the potential of bringing interdisciplinary, cross-cultural perspective and dialogue to our work at this critical phase. In particular, my aim in this article was to explore one such dialogue—with the Nalanda tradition developed in India and preserved in Tibet—for two key reasons. First, given its cumulative approach to contemplative methods, I believe the Nalanda tradition can help us interpret a diverse field of data in light of a comprehensive framework that helps reconcile conflicting findings and integrate partial models. Second, given its naturalistic causal theories and intersubjective empirical methods, this rare tradition may serve as a missing link or bridge between modern reductive science and traditional contemplative science in general.

To flesh out this suggestion, I briefly surveyed a few current research trends and explanatory models, and then tried to put these into the broad perspective of a comparative framework for contemplative research and application that draws on the Nalanda synthesis. On the basis of decades of integrative study and practice, I made the seemingly anachronistic suggestion that even our research and understanding of the neural mechanisms and effects of different meditation techniques could be strengthened and enriched by consulting the contemplative map of the CNS developed in ancient India and preserved in Tibet. I mentioned three testable predictions based on that map and reviewed some of the evidence that could be seen to support them. And I suggested that research teams that have engaged in ongoing dialogue with traditional contemplative scientists and practitioners have reaped tangible results in terms of the novelty and cogency of their work. Finally, I shared two studies conducted by my own team at Weill Cornell, which suggest that the multimodal approach to contemplative learning developed at Nalanda appears to be as well received and as reproducible as single-method approaches, while showing some promise of being more effective.

Although perspectives like the one shared here may not be common in today's research circles and literature, I believe there is nothing new or controversial in what I have shared. Rather, I submit that the simple anthropology of respecting traditional know-how and practical expertise has been a secret ingredient to successful meditation research for decades. 15 , 56 In a sense, I am simply suggesting that our young field has proven its rigor and relevance enough that we are ready to enter a new phase of open, rigorous, and systematic interdisciplinary dialogue with traditional contemplative science. My vision for the future of the field is that such an open, mutually respectful, and rigorous partnership promises to speed the advancement and align the direction of our field toward optimal science and maximal human benefit, as much or more than any conventional line of advancement through technical breakthroughs and new methodologies.

Conflicts of interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

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When science meets mindfulness

Researchers study how it seems to change the brain in depressed patients

Alvin Powell

Harvard Staff Writer

First of two parts

In 2015, 16.1 million Americans reported experiencing major depression during the previous year, often struggling to function while grappling with crippling darkness and despair.

There’s an arsenal of treatments at hand, including talk therapy and antidepressant medications, but what’s depressing in itself is that they don’t work for every patient.

“Many people don’t respond to the frontline interventions,” said Benjamin Shapero, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Depression Clinical and Research Program . “Individual cognitive behavioral therapy is helpful for many people; antidepressant medications help many people. But it’s also the case that many people don’t benefit from them as well. There’s a great need for alternative approaches.”

Shapero is working with Gaëlle Desbordes , an instructor in radiology at HMS and a neuroscientist at MGH’s Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging , to explore one alternative approach: mindfulness-based meditation.

In recent decades, public interest in mindfulness meditation has soared. Paralleling, and perhaps feeding, the growing popular acceptance has been rising scientific attention. The number of randomized controlled trials — the gold standard for clinical study — involving mindfulness has jumped from one in the period from 1995‒1997 to 11 from 2004‒2006, to a whopping 216 from 2013‒2015, according to a recent article summarizing scientific findings on the subject.

Studies have shown benefits against an array of conditions both physical and mental, including irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. But some of those findings have been called into question because studies had small sample sizes or problematic experimental designs. Still, there are a handful of key areas — including depression, chronic pain, and anxiety — in which well-designed, well-run studies have shown benefits for patients engaging in a mindfulness meditation program, with effects similar to other existing treatments.

“There are a few applications where the evidence is believable. But the effects are by no means earth-shattering,” Desbordes said. “We’re talking about moderate effect size, on par with other treatments, not better. And then there’s a bunch of other things under study with preliminary evidence that is encouraging but by no means conclusive. I think that’s where it’s at. I’m not sure that is exactly how the public understands it at this point.”

Desbordes’ interest in the topic stems from personal experience. She began meditating as a graduate student in computational neuroscience at Boston University, seeking respite from the stress and frustration of academic life. Her experience convinced her that something real was happening to her and prompted her to study the subject more closely, in hopes of shedding enough light to underpin therapy that might help others.

“My own interest comes from having practiced those [meditation techniques] and found them beneficial, personally. Then, being a scientist, asking ‘How does this work? What is this doing to me?’ and wanting to understand the mechanisms to see if it can help others,” Desbordes said. “If we want that to become a therapy or something offered in the community, we need to demonstrate [its benefits] scientifically.”

Desbordes’ research uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which not only takes pictures of the brain, as a regular MRI does, but also records brain activity occurring during the scan. In 2012, she demonstrated that changes in brain activity in subjects who have learned to meditate hold steady even when they’re not meditating. Desbordes took before-and-after scans of subjects who learned to meditate over the course of two months. She scanned them not while they were meditating, but while they were performing everyday tasks. The scans still detected changes in the subjects’ brain activation patterns from the beginning to the end of the study, the first time such a change — in a part of the brain called the amygdala — had been detected.

Functional MRI (left) showing activation in the amygdala when participants were watching images with emotional content before learning meditation. After eight weeks of training in mindful attention meditation (right) note the amygdala is less activated after the meditation training.

Courtesy of Gaelle Desbordes

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In her current work, she is exploring meditation’s effects on the brains of clinically depressed patients, a group for whom studies have shown meditation to be effective. Working with patients selected and screened by Shapero, Desbordes is performing functional magnetic resonance imaging scans before and after an eight-week course in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT.

During the scans, participants complete two tests, one that encourages them to become more aware of their bodies by focusing on their heartbeats (an exercise related to mindfulness meditation), and the other asking them to reflect on phrases common in the self-chatter of depressed patients, such as “I am such a loser,” or “I can’t go on.” After a series of such comments, the participants are asked to stop ruminating on the phrases and the thoughts they trigger. Researchers will measure how quickly subjects can disengage from negative thoughts, typically a difficult task for the depressed.

The process will be repeated for a control group that undergoes muscle relaxation training and depression education instead of MBCT. While it’s possible that patients in the control part of the study also will have reduced depressive symptoms, Desbordes said it should occur via different mechanisms in the brain, a difference that may be revealed by the scans. The work, which received funding from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health , has been underway since 2014 and is expected to last into 2019.

Desbordes said she wants to test one prevalent hypothesis about how MBCT works in depressed patients: that the training boosts body awareness in the moment, called interoception, which, by focusing their attention on the here and now, arms participants to break the cycle of self-rumination.

“We know those brain systems involved with interoception, and we know those involved with rumination and depression. I want to test, after taking MBCT, whether we see changes in these networks, particularly in tasks specifically engaging them,” Desbordes said.

Desbordes is part of a community of researchers at Harvard and its affiliated institutions that in recent decades has been teasing out whether and how meditation works.

In the 1970s, when transcendental meditation surged in popularity, Herbert Benson, a professor at Harvard Medical School and what was then Beth Israel Hospital, explored what he called  “The Relaxation Response,” identifying it as the common, functional attribute of transcendental meditation, yoga, and other forms of meditation, including deep religious prayer. Benson described this response — which recent investigators say is not as common as he originally thought — as the opposite of the body’s adrenalin-charged “fight or flight” response, which was also identified at Harvard, by physiologist Walter Cannon Bradford in 1915.

Other MGH researchers also are studying the effects of meditation on the body, including Sara Lazar , who in 2012 used fMRI to show that the brains of subjects thickened after an eight-week meditation course. Work is ongoing at MGH’s Benson-Henry Institute ; at HMS and Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine ; at the Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, where Zev Schuman-Olivier directs the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion ; and among a group of nearly a dozen investigators at Harvard and other Northeastern institutions, including Desbordes and Lazar, who are collaborating through the Mindfulness Research Collaborative .

Among the challenges researchers face is defining mindfulness itself. The word has come to describe a meditation-based practice whose aim is to increase one’s sense of being in the present, but it has also been used to describe a nonmeditative state in which subjects set aside their mental distractions to pay greater attention to the here and now, as in the work of Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer .

Another challenge involves sorting through the many variations of meditative practice.

Recent scientific exploration has largely focused on the secular practice of mindful meditation, but meditation is also a component of several ancient religious traditions, with variations. Even within the community practicing secular mindful meditation, there are variations that may be scientifically meaningful, such as how often one meditates and how long the sessions are. Desbordes herself has an interest in a variation called compassion meditation, whose aim is to increase caring for those around us.

Amid this variation, an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course developed in the 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center has become something of a clinical and scientific standard. The course involves weekly two- or 2½-hour group training sessions, 45 minutes of daily work on one’s own, and a daylong retreat. The mindfulness-based cognitive therapy used in Desbordes’ current work is a variation on that program and incorporates elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, which involves talk therapy effective in treating depression.

Ultimately, Desbordes said she’s interested in teasing out just what in mindful meditation can work against depression. If researchers can identify what elements are effective, the therapy may be refined to be more successful. Shapero is also interested in using the study to refine treatment. Since some patients benefit from mindfulness meditation and some do not, he’d like to better understand how to differentiate between the two.

“Once we know which ingredients are successful, we can do more of that and less, maybe, of the parts that are less effective,” Desbordes said.

Research funding includes the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

For more information about the Mindfulness & Meditation program at Harvard University, visit its website.

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• Published: 18 March 2015

The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation

• Yi-Yuan Tang 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Britta K. Hölzel 3 , 4   na1 &
• Michael I. Posner 2  

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume  16 ,  pages 213–225 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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• Cognitive neuroscience

An Erratum to this article was published on 10 April 2015

It is proposed that the mechanism through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects is a process of enhanced self-regulation, including attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness.

Research on mindfulness meditation faces a number of important challenges in study design that limit the interpretation of existing studies.

A number of changes in brain structure have been related to mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness practice enhances attention. The anterior cingulate cortex is the region associated with attention in which changes in activity and/or structure in response to mindfulness meditation are most consistently reported.

Mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation and reduces stress. Fronto-limbic networks involved in these processes show various patterns of engagement by mindfulness meditation.

Meditation practice has the potential to affect self-referential processing and improve present-moment awareness. The default mode networks — including the midline prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which support self-awareness — could be altered following mindfulness training.

Mindfulness meditation has potential for the treatment of clinical disorders and might facilitate the cultivation of a healthy mind and increased well-being.

Future research into mindfulness meditation should use randomized and actively controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes to validate previous findings.

The effects of mindfulness practice on neural structure and function need to be linked to behavioural performance, such as cognitive, affective and social functioning, in future research.

The complex mental state of mindfulness is likely to be supported by the large-scale brain networks; future work should take this into account rather than being restricted to activations in single brain areas.

Research over the past two decades broadly supports the claim that mindfulness meditation — practiced widely for the reduction of stress and promotion of health — exerts beneficial effects on physical and mental health, and cognitive performance. Recent neuroimaging studies have begun to uncover the brain areas and networks that mediate these positive effects. However, the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear, and it is apparent that more methodologically rigorous studies are required if we are to gain a full understanding of the neuronal and molecular bases of the changes in the brain that accompany mindfulness meditation.

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Meta-analytic evidence that mindfulness training alters resting state default mode network connectivity

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Office of Naval Research. We thank E. Luders for her contributions to an earlier version of this manuscript. We benefited from discussions with R. Davidson and A. Chiesa. We thank four anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and R. Tang for manuscript preparation.

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Yi-Yuan Tang and Britta K. Hölzel: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, 79409, Texas, USA

Yi-Yuan Tang

Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, 97403, Oregon, USA

Yi-Yuan Tang & Michael I. Posner

Department of Neuroradiology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, 81675, Germany

Britta K. Hölzel

Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, 02129, Massachusetts, USA

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Correspondence to Yi-Yuan Tang .

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Study designs that compare data from one or more groups at several time points and that ideally include a (preferably active) control condition and random assignment to conditions.

Study designs that compare data from an experimental group with those from a control group at one point in time.

Studies that assess the co-variation between two variables: for example, co-variation of functional or structural properties of the brain and a behavioural variable, such as reported stress.

(BOLD contrasts). Signals that can be extracted with functional MRI and that reflect the change in the amount of deoxyhaemoglobin that is induced by changes in the activity of neurons and their synapses in a region of the brain. The signals thus reflect the activity in a local brain region.

(ASL). An MRI technique that is capable of measuring cerebral blood flow in vivo . It provides cerebral perfusion maps without requiring the administration of a contrast agent or the use of ionizing radiation because it uses magnetically labelled endogenous blood water as a freely diffusible tracer.

The reliable patterns of brain activity that involve the activation and/or connectivity of multiple large-scale brain networks.

A parameter in diffusion tensor imaging, which images brain structures by measuring the diffusion properties of water molecules. It provides information about the microstructural integrity of white matter.

Derived from the eigenvalues of the diffusion tensor, their underlying biophysical properties are associated with axonal density and myelination, respectively.

A technique for coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging data. It determines the convergence of foci reported from different experiments, weighted by the number of participants in each study.

A method of analysing functional MRI data that is capable of detecting and characterizing information represented in patterns of activity distributed within and across multiple regions of the brain. Unlike univariate approaches, which only identify magnitudes of activity in localized parts of the brain, this approach can monitor multiple areas at once.

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Tang, YY., Hölzel, B. & Posner, M. The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nat Rev Neurosci 16 , 213–225 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916

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Published : 18 March 2015

Issue Date : April 2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916

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