Did you give meditation a chance and decide it’s not your cup of tea? New research suggests you could be missing out on all the health benefits of meditation by simply starting out with a technique not well matched to your personal tastes. […]
Burke and colleagues recently conducted a study of college students new to meditation and their preferences among four meditation techniques — mantra, mindfulness, zen, and qigong visualization. […]
Published on July 7 in the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, the findings reveal that by finding a form of meditation that works for you, you are less likely to quit. The result of sticking with it? Research-backed benefits of reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and help with addiction problems.
The paper is here, behind a paywall.
July 18, 2012 at 10:25 pm
I’m a meditator, and I’m all in favor of it, but focusing on the “research backed benefits” and picking a meditation style because it’s easy makes me feel a little nervous.
Different types of meditation have different results that are not so well validated by reductionist materialist research.
Then too there is a point of no return which will be more quickly reached by some styles of meditation than others, after which one is committed to a meditation practice, with failure to continue resulting in a prolonged stay in the “dark night”
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha is made available for free by the author via the internet, and discusses from the point of view of a particular technique (not the one I use) the territory one might begin unwittingly navigating.
I suppose it might result in a better world if the mainstream media incites hordes of people to meditate, but there will be some broken bodyminds along the way to the path of our glorious mainstream meditation future. Maybe that’s how it always is with change… reminds me now of your subsequent post about Jacques Ellul. His view of “technique” applies here.
July 24, 2012 at 5:02 pm
What about more active meditation? Dancing, laughing, walking.. ‘chop wood, carry water.’ 🙂
January 25, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Here’s some details about a study that found that different types of meditation have different effects on the brain: http://phys.org/news198836667.html