Only 25 minutes of mindfulness meditation alleviates stress
Mindfulness meditation has become an increasingly popular way for people to improve their mental and physical health, yet most research supporting its benefits has focused on lengthy, weeks-long training programs.
New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice - 25 minutes for three consecutive days - alleviates psychological stress. Published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people’s ability to be resilient under stress.
“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” said lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
For the study, Creswell and his research team had 66 healthy individuals aged 18-30 years old participate in a three-day experiment. Some participants went through a brief mindfulness meditation training program; for 25 minutes for three consecutive days, the individuals were given breathing exercises to help them monitor their breath and pay attention to their present moment experiences. A second group of participants completed a matched three-day cognitive training program in which they were asked to critically analyze poetry in an effort to enhance problem-solving skills.
Following the final training activity, all participants were asked to complete stressful speech and math tasks in front of stern-faced evaluators. Each individual reported their stress levels in response to stressful speech and math performance stress tasks, and provided saliva samples for measurement of cortisol, commonly referred to as the stress hormone.
The participants who received the brief mindfulness meditation training reported reduced stress perceptions to the speech and math tasks, indicating that the mindfulness meditation fostered psychological stress resilience. More interestingly, on the biological side, the mindfulness mediation participants showed greater cortisol reactivity.
What is Mindfulness Meditation?
Picture
Mindfulness Meditation is a western, non-sectarian, research-based form of meditation derived from a 2,500 year old Buddhist practice called Vipassana or Insight Meditation. It is a form of meditation designed to develop the skill of paying attention to our inner and outer experiences with acceptance, patience, and compassion. The University of California Center for Mindfulness, part of the medical school’s psychiatry department, defines Mindfulness Meditation this way:
“(Mindfulness) is a quality, which human beings already have, but they have usually not been advised that they have it, that it is valuable, or that it can be cultivated. Mindfulness is the awareness that is not thinking but which is aware of thinking, as well as aware of each of the other ways we experience the sensory world, i.e., seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling through the body.
“Mindfulness is non-judgmental, open-hearted, friendly, and inviting of whatever arises in awareness. It is cultivated by paying attention on purpose, deeply, and without judgment to whatever arises in the present moment, either inside or outside of us. By intentionally practicing mindfulness, deliberately paying more careful moment-to-moment attention, individuals can live more fully and less on ‘automatic pilot,’ thus, being more present for their own lives.”
“When you initially learn mindfulness mediation practices, you have to cognitively work at it - especially during a stressful task,” said Creswell. “And, these active cognitive efforts may result in the task feeling less stressful, but they may also have physiological costs with higher cortisol production.”
Creswell’s group is now testing the possibility that mindfulness can become more automatic and easy to use with long-term mindfulness meditation training, which may result in reduced cortisol reactivity.
###
Mindfulness for Stress Reduction
The mind and the body are intimately connected, our physical health being greatly determined by our mental and emotional disposition. Kenneth Pelletier, PhD., of Stanford Medical School succinctly stated, “Mind and body are inextricably linked, and their second-by-second interaction exerts a profound influence upon health and illness, life and death.”
According to the American Psychological Association, the six leading causes of death in the U.S. are all linked to stress - heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide, and research has implicated chronic stress as a major contributor to a wide variety of diseases and other health issues such as:
· Headaches
· Suppressed immune system
· Rheumatoid arthritis
· Diabetes
· Sleep disorders
A landmark, 20-year study conducted by the University of London concluded that “unmanaged reactions to stress were a more dangerous risk factor for cancer and heart disease than either cigarette smoking or High cholesterol foods.”
Chronic stress also exerts a strong and adverse affect on the brain even altering brain cells, brain structure, and brain function. Research has shown that unmanaged stress:
· Diminishes short, and long-term memory
· Inhibits the formation of new memories
· Diminishes the ability to learn new things
· Diminishes problem-solving abilities
· Diminishes the ability to concentrate
Through the regular daily practice of Mindfulness Meditation we can completely change our relationship to stressors while at the same time greatly reducing the adverse affects of chronic stress. Every time we sit to meditate we are actively supporting and promoting our own health and well-being in heart, mind, and body.
In addition to Creswell, the research team consisted of Carnegie Mellon’s Laura E. Pacilio and Emily K. Lindsay and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Kirk Warren Brown.
The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund supported this research.
###
Shilo Rea
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
412-268-6094
Carnegie Mellon University