Meditation

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Meditation refers to a practice where an individual uses mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity; to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.

 

 

It is practiced in numerous religious traditions. 

 

 

It may significantly reduce stress, anxiety, depression, pain, and enhance peacefulness, perception, self-concept, and well-being.

 

 

Meditation term can include efforts to train the attention of mind or to teach calm or compassion.

 

 

Attempts to achieve a deeper, or more relaxed state, a state of psychophysical relaxation, a state of suspension of logical thought processes, a religious/spiritual/philosophical context, or a state of mental silence.

 

 

A self-regulation practice that focuses on training attention and awareness to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control.

 

 

It  fosters general mental well-being and development of calm, clarity, and concentration.

 

 

Meditation is used to self-regulate the body and mind, thereby affecting mental events.

 

 

Meditation retrains attention through concentration or mindfulness.

 

 

Meditation can be focused on one particular mental object: concentrative meditation, on all mental events that enter the field of awareness. mindfulness meditation, or both.

 

 

Meditation is used use for increasing calmness and physical relaxation, improving psychological balance, coping with illness, and enhancing overall health and well-being.

 

 

The practice of mindfulness meditation for two to six months by people undergoing long-term psychiatric or medical therapy produces small improvements in anxiety, pain, or depression.

 

 

It may be a reasonable addition to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

 

 

Evidence indicates that meditation may help with irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, cognitive decline in the elderly, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

 

Corporate meditation programs exist.

 

 

The 2012 US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) of 34,525 subjects found 8% of US adults used meditation, with lifetime and 12-month prevalence of meditation use of 5.2% and 4.1% respectively.

 

 

In the 2017 NHIS survey, meditation use among workers was 10%.

 

 

Clinical psychology and psychiatry have developed meditation techniques for numerous psychological conditions: 

 

Mindfulness techniques  are employed in psychology to alleviate mental and physical conditions, such as reducing depression, stress, and anxiety, and 

 

treatment of drug addiction.

 

 

Meditation has a moderate effect to reduce pain.

 

 

Meditation studies provide insufficient evidence for any effect on positive mood, attention, eating habits, sleep, or body weight.

 

 

Subjective and objective reports and brain scan evaluation have shown that meditation can improve attention, as well as self-awareness.

 

The right anterior insula is significantly thicker in people that meditate.

There is increased grey matter concentrations in this and other areas of the brain in experienced meditators.

 

 

Meditation has small to medium effects on self-reported and observable outcomes for prosocial emotions and behaviors.

 

 

Evidence is very weak on its effects on compassion.

 

 

Meditation has been associated with unpleasant experiences in some people: anxiety, fear, distorted emotions or thoughts, altered sense of self or the world