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