How to Meditate Scientifically to Reduce Stress and Other Issues
Although it is now included in the vocabulary of modern wellness, meditation has been practiced for thousands of years.
“Spirituality and meditation have similarities and have been practiced for thousands of years in many different cultures,” says Jillian Cohen, MD, an integrative medicine specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. “These days, among other chronic conditions, meditation is frequently used as an effective way to manage stress, anxiety, insomnia, and pain.”
What Is Meditation?
In its simplest terms, meditation is the practice of deepening one’s awareness or focusing one’s mind for a period of time. It has religious and spiritual roots in cultures all around the world.
Some of the earliest evidence of meditation includes wall art from the Indus Valley that dates back to between 5,000 and 3,500 B.C., according to Psychology Today. The images illustrate people sitting on the ground with their legs crossed, hands on their knees and eyes resting — in positions widely recognized as meditation postures.
Descriptions of meditation techniques have also been found in ancient Indian scriptures from 3,000 years ago.
Common Questions & Answers
How many ways are there to meditate?
There are many different ways to meditate. Popular forms of meditation include mindfulness meditation, concentration meditation, mantra meditation, guided meditation, and meditative movements like yoga and tai chi.
What exactly does meditation do?
What are the steps to take to meditate?
What is a good mantra for meditation?
Can meditation worsen anxiety?
Types of Meditation
There’s no one single type of meditation, though techniques tend to overlap. “You can think of meditation like sports,” says Diana Winston, a mindfulness meditation teacher and director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Program. “It’s a huge category. Just like there are so many different types of sports, there are so many varieties of meditation.”
Here’s a list of common types of meditation and how they are practiced:
Mindfulness Meditation
This is the process of being fully present with what you are experiencing in the current moment — including your body and your thoughts — in a way that is concentrated, curious, and open. “I define mindfulness as paying attention to our present moment experiences with an openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be without experience,” Winston says. “It’s a way of helping us live more in the present moment, not being lost in the past and future.” A common technique to begin a mindfulness meditation practice is with a body scan. This involves checking in with, or scanning, all parts of your body from your head to your feet (or vice-versa) to become aware of pain, tightness, or any out-of-ordinary sensations you notice, observing them without judgement.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
This is a specific type of mindfulness meditation taught over an eight-week period using meditation and yoga. It usually involves group classes and daily mindfulness activities practiced at home. Researchers are currently studying its effects on stress
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
This is another type of mindfulness meditation, which combines facets of mindfulness-based stress reduction with cognitive behavioral therapy. It is a common type of meditation for treating depression, per Psychology Today.
Concentration Meditation
Different from mindfulness meditation, which encourages being present in a curious and open way, a concentrative practice keeps the mind fixated on one object, like the body as it sits on a chair. “It typically has you focus on one thing in order to concentrate, gather your focus, and calm your mind,” Winston says.
Mantra Meditation
This is a type of concentration meditation that uses a repeated calming word, thought, or phrase to prevent distracting thoughts and support a focused mindset. The mantra can be said out loud or simply thought, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Transcendental Meditation
This is a style of mantra meditation that involves a personally assigned mantra, such as a word, a sound, or a small phrase, repeated in a specific way, per Mayo Clinic.
Guided Meditation
This is another method of concentration meditation, in which you form mental pictures of situations that you find relaxing. “You might imagine that you’re in a beautiful garden with the birds chirping,” Winston says. “So you’re using your imagination to create states of being.”
Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation
This is the practice of directing well wishes toward others and wishes to help oneself or another to suffer less. “You may wish them happiness or peace or that they’re at ease, and what that does is it may affect the other person, but it’s really about cultivating it within ourselves,” Winston explains.
Meditative Movement
This includes the traditional Chinese practices of qigong and tai chi, as well as some forms of yoga and dance. Generally, meditative movement is a term for forms of exercise that are done in conjunction with meditative attention to body sensations, according to a past review.
Winston notes that certain activities, such as running, walking, or drawing, while not considered forms of meditation, can produce a meditative state for many people.
“I think of it as you’re using art or running to help create a meditative approach or meditative mind, but it’s not in and of itself a meditation,” she says.
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How Meditation Works to Change the Brain
In recent years, a growing body of research has focused on how meditation affects the brain.
Some studies suggest that practicing mindfulness meditation can actually change the structures of the brain. While scientists are still working to understand the effects of this practice, it is generally believed that it correlates to improved emotional regulation.
“Mindfulness meditation has been shown to activate the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with our higher cognitive functions, and deactivate the amygdala, an area of the brain associated with anger, fear, anxiety, and depression,” Dr. Cohen says. “It strengthens the neurological circuits that calm the part of the brain that acts as a trigger for fear and anger.”
In a past study, for example, imaging tests found increased brain activity in long-term practitioners of loving-kindness and compassion meditation, compared with people in states of nonmeditative rest.The left prefrontal cortex, which is an area of the brain associated with happiness, was particularly activated, Cohen says.
Another study, published in May 2018 in Scientific Reports, found an increase in activity in another part of the brain, called the insula, after mindfulness training, compared with control groups. “The insula is key in self-awareness of one’s own body and feelings,” Cohen explains.
Finally, Cohen notes that other research has found that mindfulness leads to an increase in the anterior cingulate cortex, and the caudate nucleus, areas that allow for nonjudgmental acceptance.
Potential Health Benefits of Meditation
A growing body of research has found that meditation is beneficial to mental and physical health because of the effect it has on our stress response.
“The primary health benefit from meditation appears to be related to the general shift in the autonomic nervous system that decreases sympathetic tone and increases parasympathetic tone,” Cohen says.
The sympathetic nervous system is our fight-or-flight response, while our parasympathetic nervous system is rest-and-digest, she says.
“As humans, we’re wired to fight-or-flight very easily, since it’s a survival mechanism,” Cohen explains. “So we want and need more parasympathetic. When the parasympathetic system is stimulated, heart rate and breathing slow, stress hormones decrease, blood vessels dilate, and digestion is improved.”
In recent years, a growing body of scientific evidence has shown how a meditation practice can help improve health, including mental and emotional health.
Research suggests that people who practice meditation react better to stressful situations and have lower stress-related hormone levels and inflammatory responses than people who do not.
For many people, meditation can help with emotional regulation, as well as improve attention, memory, and mood, studies have shown.
Additionally, some research suggests that a meditation practice can help with managing challenging emotions, such as anger.
Meditation and Chronic Conditions
Meditation can also be a helpful tool in managing chronic illnesses. While research is limited, and larger, more long-term studies are needed, there’s some evidence that meditation may play a role in helping manage various conditions — from mental health disorders to chronic pain to skin ailments.
Chronic stress promotes an increased inflammatory load, chronic low-grade inflammation, and prolonged increased levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) — “all of which are associated with increased chronic illness,” Cohen says.
For instance, some research shows meditation may help you manage or improve:
- Depression and anxiety, by reducing worry and rumination
- Blood pressure, by helping to alleviate stress
- Heart conditions like coronary artery disease and heart failure, by reducing stress, controlling blood pressure, and improving overall quality of life
- Chronic pain, by potentially changing how the brain responds to pain
- Sleep issues, such as insomnia and sleep disturbances, by increasing the body’s relaxation response, reducing worry and rumination, and alleviating mood disorders
- Gastrointestinal disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and irritable bowel disease (IBD), by suppressing the activities of genes that can cause inflammation
- Obesity, by encouraging mindful eating and aiding weight loss
- Diabetes, by reducing stress, improving mood, and encouraging positive healthcare behaviors and the development of positive coping skills
- Rheumatoid arthritis, by potentially improving pain intensity and depression symptoms
- Skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema by helping to reduce stress, a trigger for symptoms
- Multiple sclerosis, by improving pain, fatigue, and overall quality of life
- Cancer, potentially by changing the cellular activity of cancer survivors in a way that scientists believe may have protective benefits against disease
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Are There Any Drawbacks to Meditating?
While research has shown that there are certainly many health benefits of meditation, not everyone will necessarily experience those positive effects.
Indeed, some research finds that certain individuals may have negative experiences when meditating.
A meta-analysis published in August 2020 in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica looked at four decades of studies on meditation and mindfulness and determined that these practices led to negative effects in about 8 percent of people. The most common adverse effects were increases in anxiety, depression, and stress.
The researchers could not determine what brought on these negative effects but note many factors could be at play, including the intensity of the practice, the competence of the teacher, and vulnerabilities of the person doing the meditating (if they were already predisposed to depression or anxiety, for example). Yet the study authors say it’s not clear whether having a previous mental health issue will make an individual more at risk of a negative event and that it could happen to anyone.
Cohen theorizes that people with mental health disorders like depression and anxiety may be more susceptible to feelings of inadequacy if they don’t feel like they’re getting meditation “right.”
“Because meditation reminds us that we all to varying degrees have psychological agency — that we can shift our own attitudes and thought processes — there can potentially be those who are suffering with psycho-emotional imbalances, such as depression or anxiety, who may experience shame or self-deprecation when results are not realized at the same pace as others, or at the pace they might expect,” she says. “This can cause many feelings of guilt or inadequacy.”
Those side effects may not be forever, though. One multicenter online survey of women in Spain found that although some reported side effects, they were short term and didn’t stop further practice. What’s more, the researchers say it’s unknown whether the negative side effects were because of the practice and “can be considered inherent to it, or simply facilitate the emergence of undiscovered mental or physical problems.”
Similarly, another recent study found rates of side effects of meditation were similar to other psychological interventions and were also short term.
While more research is needed in this area, experts say it’s important to note that meditation, just like any other practice, is not for everyone.
“Sometimes, there’s an assumption that meditation is going to solve all my problems,” Winston says. “But medically there’s no medication that works for everybody, and there’s no meditation that works for everybody.”
If you’ve tried meditation and have found that it’s not for you, there are plenty other avenues to explore that can help alleviate stress and anxiety.
“The most important thing is that we can all find ways to reduce stress in our lives, whether that’s running or dancing or taking long walks in nature, and not to assume that you’ve got to be a meditator in order to reduce stress,” Winston says.
Beginner’s Tips for Meditating
If you’re new to meditation, you may find the practice intimidating. Luckily, once you know the basics, you can practice meditation just about anywhere, at any time.
Experts recommend the following tips to get started:
Explore Different Types of Meditation
Meditation is a personal practice, so it’s helpful for beginners to explore the different forms to find the one they like best, Winston says. Read about the various types and see where you might like to get started. “There’s a whole variety to experiment with,” Winston says. “If one doesn’t work for you or you don’t respond to it, try another one.”
Find a Teacher
Find a certified meditation instructor for guidance to develop your practice by going to medical centers in your area and checking with the integrative medicine or psychology departments and asking for recommendations. Often, instructors may offer a formal meditation class or individual lessons. If you find an instructor on your own, do your homework and make sure they are certified, or have evidence of quality and substantial training and teaching. The International Mindfulness Teachers Association has listings of teachers on its website who have gone through accredited teacher training programs. If you’re interested in trying a meditation group, check out the Buddhist Insight Network.
Use Tools to Practice Meditation on Your Own
If you prefer not to work with an instructor or attend a meditation class, or there are no certified teachers in your area, you can still practice meditation on your own. Head to your local library and find a book on meditation, or download one of the many meditation apps to your mobile phone or tablet. “It’s not a regulated industry, so it’s best to use something that you see has a high adoption rate or if you can get a recommendation from a trusted friend,” Winston says.
Don’t Get Discouraged
Oftentimes people will try meditation and feel like they’re failing because they can’t concentrate or do it “right.” This is normal, but it’s not necessary to put pressure on yourself. Your thoughts may wander, but try to practice with awareness and without judgement.“For most people, meditation does not come easily,” Winston says. “We live in a state of perpetual distraction, and it’s so hard to stay focused.” The key is to start out slowly and keep your expectations in check. “You can try meditating for five minutes, or you can try for one minute,” Winston says. “There’s not a set time that you have to do it to feel the effects.”
A Simple 5-Minute Concentration Meditation to Try
If you’re interested in trying meditation, Winston recommends the following five-minute exercise to get started:
- First, find a quiet place and get into a posture that is comfortable for you. You may wish to sit up straight with your feet on the floor, sit cross legged, or lie down.
- Close your eyes if you wish and rest your hands in a comfortable position, for example, on your knees or by your sides.
- Pay attention to your breath. Become aware of your inhales and your exhales.
- Observe how your abdomen is rising and falling or your chest is expanding and contracting as you breathe.
- Choose an aspect of your breathing to focus on. Examples include your chest, belly, or the air flowing in and out of your nose. If you are having trouble doing this, avoid passing judgement on yourself and simply listen to the sounds around you and focus on one of them.
- Try to sustain your attention on the spot or sound you’ve chosen.
- If you notice your mind wandering, remember that this is normal and try to redirect your attention back to whatever you were focusing on.
- Repeat until the five minutes are up.
