Meditation and mindfulness – fad or fact?!
It seems that in the last several years meditation has hit the pop culture scene in the Western world just as hard as many of the fads that have come and gone before it. Promising amazing results with just a few minutes every day, almost seems too good to be true? And just like most fads it has permeated most of our lives, from TV shows, to news, books, apps, social media, adds, and even that one friend who describes themselves as “adventurous”. However, meditation has one thing that most fads don’t, a history dating back to roughly 1500 BCE in India and 6th century BCE in China. So, in this short blog we will be applying our Western understanding, using the scientific method, consulting peer reviewed articles to figure out if everyone should be incorporating meditation or if it should go the way of the tear-away pants.
I will not lie this next part is dry so the TLDR is that YES, meditation has a lot of amazing benefits and it is worth incorporating into most peoples lives. As promised let’s dive into the research. One meta-analysis of 25 studies and 1492 participants examining “Mindfulness Based Intervention” on college students anxiety showed a large effect compared to a control group, specifically in those studies that included a greater number of sessions. Another, smaller meta-analysis including 330 participants and 6 randomised controlled trials looking at mindfulness meditation for insomnia showed significant improvement in total wake time and sleep quality in the participants. Lastly, we’ll look at a very broad meta-analysis including 20 studies with populations ranging from individuals with pain, heart disease, depression, and people with general life stressors. It was shown that improvements were consistent across a range of standardized mental heath and physical health measures. The former including measures looking at depression, anxiety and the latter looking at functional quality of life, physical impairment among many others. We don’t need to get into the plethora of research articles showing the benefits of meditation, but this small sample is already making a strong case!
With the boring data stuff out of the way, let’s talk about how you can incorporate meditation into your day. There are plenty of different meditation practices that exist, too many to cover right now, so we will talk about just one to get us started. All you need is a quiet place free of distraction and with technology it doesn’t even have to be that quiet thanks to noise canceling headphones such as Air Pods. The next step is, get comfortable, close your eyes, and think about your breath. That’s it. If your mind starts to wander (about emails, chores, kids, homework, etc.), no worries, that’s how you know you’re on the right track, just let that thought pass and bring your focus back to your breath…until inevitably another thought comes. Rinse and repeat. Do this for a desired period of time on a consistent basis and boom! You’ve incorporated meditation into your life. Now for a word of caution, you want to set yourself up for success and we know how hard habits can be to form, so do not underestimate how frustrating staying focused on your breath can be. Start small and I mean SMALL, a couple minutes every day for a while is great, then eventually three, then four, and build up to what you think works best for you. The hardest part about meditation is how easy it seems and once we try it and realise that staying focused on our breath is WAY harder than we thought it’s easy to get discouraged.
Let’s wrap this up. Can meditation have great benefits? YES. Should you forgo everything anyone has every told you or anything you know works for you to meditate 8 hours a day? NO. Meditation is not for everyone but with the extensive history and research and the incredibly low barrier to entry, why not give it an honest try?
– Daniel Krasner, Physiotherapy Resident
References:
Elaine Mead, B. S. (2022, November 13). The history and origin of Meditation. PositivePsychology.com. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://positivepsychology.com/history-of-meditation/
Bamber, M.D., Morpeth, E. Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on College Student Anxiety: a Meta-Analysis. Mindfulness 10, 203–214 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-0965-5
Hong Gong, Chen-Xu Ni, Yun-Zi Liu, Yi Zhang, Wen-Jun Su, Yong-Jie Lian, Wei Peng, Chun-Lei Jiang, Mindfulness meditation for insomnia: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Volume 89, 2016, Pages 1-6, ISSN 0022-3999, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2016.07.016. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399916303579)
Paul Grossman, Ludger Niemann, Stefan Schmidt, Harald Walach, Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A meta-analysis, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Volume 57, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 35-43, ISSN 0022-3999, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3999(03)00573-7. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399903005737)
