mindfulness meditation - religious vs secular - does it work? - new research

C'mon, you don't
recognize the Dalai Lama?

The recent "Mind and Life International Symposium for Contemplative Studies" (MLI-ISCS) drew much attention and many teachers, researchers and speakers on mindfulness meditation.   With mindfulness meditation being "everywhere", there are many factions eager to capitalize on and/or determine its future direction.  (Tks > Paul Frost for link) 

"What If Meditation Isn't Good For You?" in the Daily Beast highlighted the different perspectives on what mindfulness is, could be, and whether/where it "works".   Much controversy centers around whether religious or secular folk will be leading the charge.  

Meditation has been around for a long time.  The oldest written records are from 1500 BCE in some Vedanta texts - 1,000 years before Buddhism manifested.  Sitting quietly and watching one's breath until one's mind was stilled, stretches back far, far earlier than that, perhaps 10,000 BCE or earlier.

Adam Engle
Founding Head of MLI

The explosion in mindfulness' popularity was catalyzed by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner.   What the Dalai Lama did was to create the Mind Life Institute (MLI) and engage western scientists in evaluating the mental states of monk folk w/many years of meditative practice.

"Destructive Emotions" captured the 2000 MLI discussions (started in 1987) w/the Dalai Lama and his charge to the scientists to develop technology to determine where/why destructive emotions arose, and how to ameliorate them.  Adam Engle, a weekly skypee, was the architect of the first 25 years of the MLI.

Within a year, research began under Richie Davidson @ the U. of Wisconsin (MLI-IICS Keynote).  Those experiments recorded the EEG brain-scans of a Tibetan Buddhist monk w/> 10,000 hrs of practice, as he moved into a meditative state designed to generate compassion.   When he did, the EEG showed a dramatic shift to a state of great joy...and the rest is history.

Antoine Lutz

Ricard w/His Holiness

What is "mindfulness meditation"?   Well, it depends...  The current Scientific American article "Mind of the Meditator" was authored by Matthieu Ricard, Antoine Lutz and Davidson.  (Ricard and Davidson are, arguably, the two most prominent Buddhists in the West x/c for the Dalai Lama.)

This article described beginning meditation as "The meditator begins by assuming a comfortable physical posture, neither too tense nor too lax, and by wishing for self-transformation and a desire for others' well-being and for the alleviation of their suffering."   That is not a general description; other traditions are different.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

The second major catalyst came from Jon Kabat-Zinn who recognized the challenges of having a religiously-based practice being broadly accepted, and so developed a secular approach - mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR), which incorporates body awareness and yoga.

MBSR and mindfulness are the subjects of extensive research showing that mindfulness "works" in many situations.  This has been critical.  As the Dalai Lama stated, "When I tell people some teaching, they don't pay attention.  When I tell them some scientific data - then they pay some attention."

Mahayana Buddhist Triad

Some Buddhists claim that Buddhism isn't a religion.  However, the general public, and media, categorizes Buddhism as a religion, which is what, practically-speaking, matters.  No one could mistake His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, the perceived world leader of Buddhism, for a secular leader.  

Nor would the Mahayana Buddhist (the largest sect) triad of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, the Buddha and the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara be mistaken for secular icons, nor would their worship be confused w/secular activities.

So who's going to lead the way on "mindfulness meditation", the secular or the religious folk, or is it now so media-hyped and wide-spread that it is really out of anyone's control?

The opening Keynote of the MLI - ISCS by former Wellesley President Diana Chapman Walsh argued for rigorous "norms, procedures and evidence".   However, there are excellent, dedicated Buddhist scientists who argue for "evidence-based faith" ("The Neuroscience of Suffering - And Its End").   The challenge is to not have research turn into "faith-based evidence".  

Science and faith are rarely compatible.  As my collaborator @ Princeton, Robert Wright, states in "The Evolution of God", faith is necessary when there is no science to support belief.   Historically, they can disagree for long periods as w/Galileo, but science ultimately prevails.

Galileo

Re the state of mindfulness research, an excellent recent study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) done by Goyal, et al. @ Johns Hopkins, "Meditation Programs for psychological stress and well being: a systematic review and meta-analysis".  JAMA is one of the premier arbiters of health research/policy.

This study was to "determine the efficacy of meditation programs in improving stress-related outcomes (anxiety, depression, stress/distress, positive mood, mental health-related quality of life, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, pain, and weight) in diverse adult clinical populations."

The Johns Hopkins folk looked at "randomized clinical trials with active controls for placebo effects" and "graded the strength of evidence using 4 domains (risk of bias, precision, directness, and consistency) and determined the magnitude and direction of effect by calculating the relative difference between groups in change from baseline. When possible, we conducted meta-analyses using standardized mean differences to obtain aggregate estimates of effect size with 95% confidence intervals."

Madhav Goyal
Johns Hopkins

"After reviewing 18,753 citations, we included 47 trials with 3515 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety at 8 weeks and at 3-6 months, depression at 8 weeks and at 3-6 months, and pain and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life.

We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight.  We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (i.e., drugs, exercise, and other behavioral therapies)."

"Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress...Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior."  

A parallel report concluded "Only 10 trials had a low risk of bias.  Limitations included clinical heterogeneity, variability in the types of controls, and heterogeneity of the interventions (e.g., dosing, frequency, duration, technique)."   (All italics are mine.)

Willoughby Britton's work cautions that as mindfulness grows, w/o skilled teachers and adequate guidance, there can be very problematic outcomes.

Careful, unbiased research with "stronger study designs" on both positive and negative outcomes on mindfulness meditation are needed.   There is the possibility that much existing work will have to be redone, or ignored, as happened w/the extensive Transcendental Meditation research.   

It will really come down to what the funding agencies, promotion and tenure committees at the universities, and the reviewers of journals will accept as meaningful research.  As the JAMA article indicates, this will be a higher bar than has been used to date.  

BTW1:  i now have a channel on SoundCloud w/my chants on it.   The ones from Happiness Beyond Thought are "under" the website tile of the cover, but they are several clicks away.  This is easier.

BTW2;  i will be presenting @ a workshop in west Philadelphia on Nov. 15 on neuroscience and consciousness.

BTW3:  i was interviewed by Mindful Cyborgs this week for 2 upcoming podcasts, #37 and #38.