Study: Short-term meditation training

[Guest guest]

Relevant to recent discussions:

From Deric Bownd's blog:

An interesting study from Tang et al. showing that even short term

meditation training can influence attention and self-regulation. The

integrative meditation method used:

....stresses no effort to control thoughts, but instead a state of

restful alertness that allows a high degree of awareness of body,

breathing, and external instructions from a compact disc. It stresses

a balanced state of relaxation while focusing attention. Thought

control is achieved gradually through posture and relaxation, body–

mind harmony, and balance with the help of the coach rather than by

making the trainee attempt an internal struggle to control thoughts

in accordance with instruction.

Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/43/17152

Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation

Yi-Yuan Tang*, , , ,, Yinghua Ma*, Junhong Wang*, Yaxin Fan*, Shigang

Feng*, Qilin Lu*, Qingbao Yu*, Danni Sui*, K. Rothbart , Ming

Fan||, and I. Posner ,

Contributed by I. Posner, August 16, 2007 (received for

review July 26, 2007)

Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and

systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the

lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random

assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings.

This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of

meditation practice with the integrative body–mind training method

shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a

similarly chosen control group given relaxation training.

The training method comes from traditional Chinese medicine and

incorporates aspects of other meditation and mindfulness training.

Compared with the control group, the experimental group of 40

undergraduate Chinese students given 5 days of 20-min integrative

training showed greater improvement in conflict scores on the

Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and

fatigue, and higher vigor on the Profile of Mood States scale, a

significant decrease in stress-related cortisol, and an increase in

immunoreactivity. These results provide a convenient method for

studying the influence of meditation training by using experimental

and control methods similar to those used to test drugs or other

interventions.

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Carruthers

Wakefield, UK