Brief online training in gratitude, positive word, and loving-kindness/compassion meditation improved health professionals' gratitude, well-being, self-compassion, and confidence in providing compassionate care. Among 177 enrollees including nurses, physicians, and social workers, scores on the Gratitude Questionnaire rose from 38.3 to 39.5, well-being on the WHO-5 index rose from 16.4 to 17.9, self-compassion rose from 39.5 to 43.1, and confidence in providing calm, compassionate care rose from 73.3 to 80.9. All improvements were statistically significant.
Loving-kindness meditation is associated with stress reduction in inexperienced meditators. Experienced meditators had higher nitrate levels, trended toward having higher nitrite levels, and had significantly lower stress levels than inexperienced meditators. In a study of 12 healthy meditators (7 inexperienced, 5 experienced), stress fell significantly with meditation in the inexperienced group (from 52 to 11 on a 100-point scale), while relaxation increased (from 55 to 89). Experienced meditators had more than twice the plasma nitrate levels and lower baseline stress (15 vs. 49) and heart rate compared to inexperienced meditators. Nitric oxide metabolism may be involved in the cardiovascular effects of persistent meditation practice.
A preliminary study tested whether the psychophysiologic benefits of non-verbal communication of compassion (NVCC) could be detected even when subjects were blinded to the intervention. Healthy women (mean age 43.6 years) were told the study examined time and touch on the autonomic nervous system. A practitioner with over 10 years of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) experience delivered both non-tactile and tactile LKM. Blinding was maintained. Despite this, subjects reported significant improvements in stress (5.5 vs. 2.2), relaxation (3.8 vs. 8.8), and peacefulness (3.8 vs. 9.0) on visual analog scales, and showed significant reductions in respiratory rate and improved heart rate variability during both tactile and non-tactile LKM. Extending compassion may be good medicine.