User:Hollyb98/Meditation

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Technique

Posture

Asanas or body postures and positions such as the padmasana or full-lotus, half-lotus, Burmese, Seiza, and kneeling positions are popular in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, although other postures such as sitting, supine (lying), and standing are also used. Meditation is also sometimes done while walking, known as kinhin, while doing a simple task mindfully, known as samu, or while lying down, known as savasana. Postures involve focus attention and move body coordinately or hold still with rhythmic inhalation and exhalation.

Frequency[edit]

The Transcendental Meditation technique recommends practice of 20 minutes twice per day. Some techniques suggest less time, especially when starting meditation, and Richard Davidson has quoted research saying benefits can be achieved with a practice of only 8 minutes per day. Research shows improvement in meditation time with simple oral and video training. Some meditators practice for much longer, particularly when on a course or retreat. Some meditators find practice best in the hours before dawn.

Definitions

Classifications

Religious Typologies [edit]

The Buddhist tradition often divides meditative practice into samatha, or calm abiding, and vipassana, insight. Mindfulness of breathing, a form of focused attention, calms down the mind; this calmed mind can then investigate the nature of reality, by monitoring the fleeting and ever-changing constituents of experience, by reflective investigation, or by "turning back the radiance," focusing awareness on awareness itself and discerning the true nature of mind as awareness itself.

Technique Typologies [edit]

Another typology divides meditation approaches into concentrative, generative, receptive and reflective practices:

• concentrative: focused attention, including breath meditation, TM, and visualizations;
• generative: developing qualities like loving kindness and compassion;
• receptive: open monitoring;
• reflective: systematic investigation, contemplation.

Matko and Sedlmeier (2019) "call into question the common division into “focused attention” and “open-monitoring” practices." They argue for "two orthogonal dimensions along which meditation techniques could be classified," namely "activation" and "amount of body orientation," proposing seven clusters of techniques.

Seven clusters of meditation by techniques

Name of technique cluster:	Description of technique:
Mindfulness Observation	Observing thoughts or emotions, supine (lying down) meditation, sitting in silence
Body-centered meditation	Concentrating on energy centers or channeling, body scan, breath at the abdomen, observing the body, breath at the nose
Visual concentration	isualization, concentrating on an object
Contemplation	Contemplating on question, contradiction or paradox
Affect-centered meditation	Cultivating compassion etc., opening up to blessings
Mantra meditation	Meditation with sound, singing sutras or mantras, repeating syllables
Meditation	Meditation with movement, manipulating the breath, walking and observing senses

Jonathan Shear argues that transcendental meditation is an "automatic self-transcending" technique, different from focused attention and open monitoring. In this kind of practice, "there is no attempt to sustain any particular condition at all. Practices of this kind, once started, are reported to automatically “transcend” their own activity and disappear, to be started up again later if appropriate." Yet, Shear also states that "automatic self-transcending" also applies to the way other techniques such as from Zen and Qigong are practiced by experienced meditators "once they had become effortless and automatic through years of practice."

Clinical applications

See also: Mindfulness applications, Mindfulness-based stress reduction, Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and Mindfulness-based pain management

The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states that "Meditation is a mind and body practice that has a long history of use for increasing calmness and physical relaxation, improving psychological balance, coping with illness, and enhancing overall health and well-being." [*][*] A 2014 review found that practice of mindfulness meditation for two to six months by people undergoing long-term psychiatric or medical therapy could produce small improvements in anxiety, pain, or depression.[*] In 2017, the American Heart Association issued a scientific statement that meditation may be a reasonable adjunct practice to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, with the qualification that meditation needs to be better defined in higher-quality clinical research of these disorders.[*] Recent findings have also found evidence of meditation affecting migraines in adults. Mindfulness meditation may allow for a decrease in migraine episodes, and a drop in migraine medication usage.[*]

Low-quality evidence indicates that meditation may help with irritable bowel syndrome,[*] insomnia,[*] cognitive decline in the elderly,[*] and post-traumatic stress disorder.[*][*] Sitting in silence, body scan meditation and concentrating on breathing was shown in a 2016 review to moderately decrease symptoms of PTSD and depression in war veterans. Researchers have found that participating in mindfulness meditation can aid insomnia patients by improving sleep quality and total wake time.[*] Mindfulness meditation is not a treatment for insomnia patients, but it can provide support in addition to their treatment options.[*]

Effects

A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of meditation on empathy, compassion, and prosocial behaviors found that meditation practices had small to medium effects on self-reported and observable outcomes, concluding that such practices can "improve positive prosocial emotions and behaviors".^{[unreliable medical source?]*delete*} Another study reported increased ability to correctly report others facial expressions over time after meditating using fMRI. Loving kindness meditation has also been shown to have positive effects on feelings of connection and decreased attention to oneself However, a meta-review published on Scientific Reports showed that the evidence is very weak and "that the effects of meditation on compassion were only significant when compared to passive control groups suggests that other forms of active interventions (like watching a nature video) might produce similar outcomes to meditation".

Meditation in the workplace [edit]

A 2010 review of the literature on spirituality and performance in organizations found an increase in corporate meditation programs.

As of 2016 around a quarter of U.S. employers were using stress reduction initiatives. The goal was to help reduce stress and improve reactions to stress. Aetna now offers its program to its customers. Google also implements mindfulness, offering more than a dozen meditation courses, with the most prominent one, "Search Inside Yourself", having been implemented since 2007. General Mills offers the Mindful Leadership Program Series, a course which uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, yoga and dialogue with the intention of developing the mind's capacity to pay attention.

Meditation in School

A review of 15 peer-reviewed studies of youth meditation in schools indicated transcendental meditation a moderate effect on wellbeing and a small effect on social competence. insufficient research has been done on the effect of meditation on academic achievement. Evidence has also shown possible improvement to stress, cognitive performance,

Positive effects on emotion regulation, stress, anxiety, can also be seen in students in university and nursing.

[*] indicates use of references in main article

References

Instructor Feedback:

I am not sure what "lying" meditation means? Same with "breath nose"? Does citation 1 only apply to the final bullet? If not, I would create a header for the table and put the citation there. I feel like you can consider deleting some of the preceding paragraph since you are basically relaying the same information (with more detail) in bullet form. Your statement from the 2016 review has too many quotes and needs to be paraphrased. While you have relayed very interesting findings, is that the best location for this information? It feels like you just placed it at the end. Could it be better integrated with existing content. Is PTSD spelled out elsewhere in your article? If not, you need to spell it out.

Summary of changes made to feedback:

Made changed to further explain the meaning of "lying" and of "breath nose" so it will read as "lying down" and "concentrating on breath at the nose" since it refers to the origin of concentration in the body. I consolidated the information into a chart with the heading to include the citation at the beginning so that it refers to the entire chart. I completely resummarized my addition and added it into the main paragraph. Jade recommended I add a sentence to the lead paragraph to summarize the main points of the article. I did not make this edit. While I understand where she is coming from, since it was also my initial thought, through rereading this article I however respectfully disagree that it is what the article needs. While there is no one sentence to summarize everything, the lead section does a good job of outlining a brief description of where it will take you through the article. I can see myself adding to that lead paragraph detailing additional pieces of the article, however, I am still unsure of the best way to add without disrupting the original flow of the article.