Abstract Can meditation support ethical scientific practice? And how might this work? Considering the contradictory evidence for the impact of commonly practiced mindfulness meditation on moral change currently available, Berryman et al. (2025) suggested that meditation programs should include additional ethical components. We fully agree with this recommendation and add further arguments in...
People with post-stroke aphasia show verbal-language difficulties and verbal working memory problems, but can also present with attention-related deficits. Meditation can positively impact attention in healthy meditators; however, few studies have investigated effects of meditation on different attention processes in people with aphasia. The aim of this study was to explore whether an intensive...
Abstract Objectives Meditation encompasses a variety of techniques, but little is known on how and for whom they work. This study explored potential mechanisms of four different meditation techniques in beginners and which technique might be suited for whom. Method Using an experimental single-case design, we compared the longitudinal effects of concentrative, humming, observing-thoughts, and...
Abstract This comment on “Mindfulness for global public health: Critical analysis and agenda” by Doug Oman focuses on the difficulties associated with the current use and understanding of the term mindfulness. In particular, I argue that the current lack of agreement on what mindfulness practice is, or, perhaps more realistically, what mindfulness practices are, and how their effects can be...
Objectives: We explored the effects of a mindfulness program based on the satipatthana sutta (instead of a contemporary Western program), with participants as collaborators, using a single-case experimental design. The main question was whether such a training has positive effects and, if so, whether and how the effects vary across participants and measures. Method: Participants chose the...
Yoga is an embodied contemplative practice considered as a path toward long-term well-being, which fosters an integrated processing of bodily and emotional stimuli. However, little is known about how the different components of yoga contribute to these processes. This was the aim of this single-case multiple-baseline study. Herein, we explored how different yoga components affect body...
Mind-Body Medicine (MBM) includes a broad range of interventions with proven preventive and clinical value, such as yoga and meditation. However, people differ in their preferences and response to different MBM treatments and it remains unclear who benefits most from what type of practice. Thus, finding moderators of treatment outcome seems to be a promising approach. This was the aim of the...
Depression is a global key challenge in mental health care. The implementation of effective, low‐risk and cost‐effective interventions to reduce its disease burden is a necessity. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of the new Meditation‐Based Lifestyle Modification (MBLM) program, a “second‐generation” mindfulness‐based intervention, in depressive outpatients.
Yoga is an embodied contemplative practice entailing multiple components, such as ethical teachings, postures, breathing practices, and meditation. Little is known to date how these different components affect aspects of embodied cognition. This single-case multiple-baseline study explored the differential and incremental effects of four different combinations of yoga components on body...
Background: Meditation-Based Lifestyle Modification (MBLM) is a new mind–body intervention that is based on classical yoga; it implements virtue-based ethical living, physical yoga, and meditation in a therapeutic context. This qualitative study aimed at understanding better how depressive patients who received MBLM as a treatment experience intra- and interpersonal outcomes of their practice....
Traditionally, yoga is a multicomponent practice consisting of postures, breathing techniques, meditation, mantras, and ethics. To date, only a few studies have tried to dismantle the effects of each of these components and their combinations. To fill this gap, we examined the incremental effects of ethical education and physical Hatha yoga on mantra meditation using a single-case...
Meditation is an umbrella term for a vast range of contemplative practices. Former proposals have struggled to do justice to this variety. To our knowledge, there is to date no comprehensive overview of meditation techniques spanning all major traditions. The present studies aimed at providing such a comprehensive list of meditation techniques. In a qualitative study, we compiled a collection...
BACKGROUND Integrative mental health care can be used to treat depression with a person-centered, lifestyle-modifying, and more salutogenic approach to mental health and human flourishing. In this article, we report on the feasibility and acceptability of a new mind-body program, Meditation Based Lifestyle Modification (MBLM), in outpatients with mild or moderate depression. METHODS This is a...
In a comprehensive meta-analysis on the effects of mindfulness meditation, Eberth and Sedlmeier (2012) identified a multitude of positive effects that covered a wide range of psychological variables, such as heightened mindfulness as measured through contemporary mindfulness scales, reduced negative emotions, increased positive emotions, changes in self-concept, enhanced attention, perception,...
Meditation is an umbrella term, which subsumes a huge number of diverse practices. It is still unclear how these practices can be classified in a reasonable way. Earlier proposals have struggled to do justice to the diversity of meditation techniques. To help in solving this issue, we used a novel bottom-up procedure to develop a comprehensive classification system for meditation techniques. In...
Abstract Ancient Indian spiritual and philosophical approaches contain psychological theories of meditation that specify (a) what meditation is, (b) what its aim is and how it works, and (c) predictions about its effects. This chapter introduces two representative theories that date back more than two millennia, one derived from early Buddhism and the other from the classical Hindu thought...
Meditation is a family of mental practices that encompasses a wide array of\ntechniques employing distinctive mental strategies. We systematically reviewed\n78 functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) studies of meditation, and used\nactivation likelihood estimation to meta-analyze 257 peak foci from 31\nexperiments involving 527 participants. We found reliably dissociable patterns\nof brain...
Meditation is a family of mental practices that encompasses a wide array of techniques employing distinctive mental strategies. We systematically reviewed 78 functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) studies of meditation, and used activation likelihood estimation to meta-analyze 257 peak foci from 31 experiments involving 527 participants. We found reliably dissociable patterns of brain...
Meditation is a family of mental practices that encompasses a wide array of techniques employing distinctive mental strategies. We systematically reviewed 78 functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) studies of meditation, and used activation likelihood estimation to meta-analyze 257 peak foci from 31 experiments involving 527 participants. We found reliably dissociable patterns of brain...
Unknown to most Western psychologists, ancient Indian scriptures contain very rich, empirically derived psychological theories that are, however, intertwined with religious and philosophical content. This article represents our attempt to extract the psychological theory of cognition and consciousness from a prominent ancient Indian thought system: Samkhya-Yoga. We derive rather broad...
We are grateful to Orme-Johnson and Dillbeck (2014) for raising several potential methodological concerns they have with our meta-analysis of the psychological effects of meditation and for thereby providing us with the opportunity to clarify these points. Orme-Johnson and Dillbeck raised 4 points that they believed might have led to unfair treatment of studies that reported the effects of...
In this meta-analysis, we give a comprehensive overview of the effects of meditation on psychological variables that can be extracted from empirical studies, concentrating on the effects of meditation on nonclinical groups of adult meditators. Mostly because of methodological problems, almost ¾ of an initially identified 595 studies had to be excluded. Most studies appear to have been conducted...
Traditionally, yoga is a multicomponent practice consisting of postures, breathing techniques, meditation, and ethics. To date, only a few studies have tried to dismantle the effects of each of these components and their combinations. To fill this gap, we examined the incremental effects of ethical education and physical yoga on mantra meditation using a single-case multiple-baseline design....