Effects of meditation
This means that the effect of meditation is roughly comparable to that of the standard measures of self-care like sleep, exercise, nutrition and social intercourse.
In one meta-analysis from 2022, involving a total of 7782 participants, the researchers found that a higher baseline level of psychopathology (e.g., depression) was associated with deterioration in mental health after a meditation intervention, and thus was contraindicated.
[13] A previous study commissioned by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that meditation interventions reduce multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress.
[10] Other systematic reviews and meta-analyses show that mindfulness meditation has several mental health benefits such as bringing about reductions in depression symptoms,[14][15][16] improvements in mood,[17] stress-resilience[17] and attentional control.
[22][23][24] A recent meta-analysis by Hilton et al. (2016) including 30 randomized controlled trials found high quality evidence for improvement in depressive symptoms.
[38] In an 8-week mindfulness meditation study, Gotink et al. discovered that amygdala, insula, cingulate cortex, and hippocampus activity decreased.
[38] Importantly, these short-term changes are often equated to a brain with longer time spent doing mindfulness meditation and interventions, such as months or years.
[17] Alpha wave neural oscillation power (which is normally associated with an alert resting state) has been shown to be increased by mindfulness in both healthy subjects and patients.
Mindfulness can help people become more aware of thoughts in the present moment, and this increased self-awareness leads to better processing and control over one's responses to surroundings or circumstances.
[66] It is debated as to whether top-down executive control regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC),[76] are required[74] or not[67] to inhibit reactivity of the amygdala activation related to the production of evoked emotional responses.
Based on self-report questionnaires, the participants who engaged in meditation showed a significant increase in psychological well-being and perceived workplace support.
[17] Brief, daily meditation sessions can alter one's behavioral response to stressors, improving coping mechanisms and decreasing the adverse impact caused by stress.
Moreover, the results suggested an increased capacity for emotional regulation, acceptance, compassion, and mindfulness as well as higher quality of life scores following the retreats across all populations.
For the study, 81 participants aged 55 and older who had subjective memory complaints and met criteria for mild cognitive impairment, indicated by a total score of 0.5 on the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale.
One study has led to suggestions that Sahaja meditation involves 'switching off' irrelevant brain networks for the maintenance of focused internalized attention and inhibition of inappropriate information.
[101] Sahaja meditators appear to benefit from lower depression[102] and scored above control group for emotional well-being and mental health measures on SF-36 ratings.
[107] A 2013 statement from the American Heart Association said that Transcendental Meditation could be considered as a treatment for hypertension, although other interventions such as exercise and device-guided breathing were more effective and better supported by clinical evidence.
[40] Published research suggests that meditation can facilitate neuroplasticity and connectivity in brain regions specifically related to emotion regulation and attention.
Meditation can allow the brain to decrease attention to unwanted responses of irrelevant environmental stimuli and a reduces the Stroop effect.
[119] Meditation may be able to expand the amount of information that can be held within working memory and by so doing is able to improve IQ scores and increase individual intelligence.
[136] Herbert Benson, founder of the Mind-Body Medical Institute, which is affiliated with Harvard University and several Boston hospitals, reports that meditation induces a host of biochemical and physical changes in the body collectively referred to as the "relaxation response".
In the podcast, the FT's special investigations editor Madison Marriage looks at claims of harm from people who had attended Goenka Vipassana retreats.
[154] Other adverse affects may include depersonalization[154] or altered sense of self or the world,[162] distorted emotions or thoughts, and, in a few cases, visual and auditory psychosis, and with pre-existing historical factors suicide.
Hafenbrack et al. (2022), in a study on mindfulness with 1400 participants, found that focused-breathing meditation can dampen the relationship between transgressions and the desire to engage in reparative prosocial behaviors.
The study, consisting of two interrelated parts and totaling 691 participants, found that a mindfulness induction, compared to a control condition, led to decreased prosocial behavior.
The report concluded: Scientific research on meditation practices does not appear to have a common theoretical perspective and is characterized by poor methodological quality.
Of more than 3,000 scientific studies that were found in a comprehensive search of 17 relevant databases, only about 4% had randomised controlled trials (RCTs), which are designed to exclude the placebo effect.
[2] In a 2013 meta-analysis, Awasthi argued that meditation is defined poorly and despite the research studies showing clinical efficacy, exact mechanisms of action remain unclear.
"[187] According to the American Heart Association, while there are promising results about the impact of meditation in reducing blood pressure and managing insomnia, depression and anxiety, it is not a replacement for healthy lifestyle changes and is not a substitute for effective medication.
Interestingly, a recent study compared electroencephalogram activity during a focused-attention and open monitoring meditation practice from practitioners of two Buddhist traditions.
