September 30, 2025
Toby J. Woods, Andrew W. Corcoran, Olivia Carter et al.
preprint
The most well known study on doing nothing concluded that being alone for 15 mins with nothing to do but think is aversive. Here we examine skilful doing nothing in the form of Stillness Meditation. Meditation-naive adult participants (N = 165) were randomly allocated to 15 mins of Stillness Meditation or one of two active controls (Focused Attention and Audiobook). Stillness Meditation...
Mindfulness
June 1, 2023
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Lydia Brown et al.
15 citations
Abstract Objectives Contentless experience involves an absence of mental content such as thoughts and perceptions. It is often described as pure consciousness or complete stillness/silence, and is a goal in Shamatha, Thai Forest, and Stillness Meditation. This study examined the subjective character of the deepest experience of stillness/silence typically reported in each practice, and whether...
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
June 2, 2022
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
13 citations
Abstract In contentless experience (sometimes termed pure consciousness ) there is an absence of mental content such as thought, perception, and mental imagery. The path to contentless experience in meditation can be taken to comprise the meditation technique, and the experiences (“interim-states”) on the way to the contentless “goal-state/s”. Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation...
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
May 24, 2022
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
17 citations
Abstract Contentless experience involves an absence of mental content such as thought, perception, and mental imagery. In academic work it has been classically treated as including states like those aimed for in Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation. We have used evidence synthesis to select and review 135 expert texts from within the three traditions. In this paper we identify the...
Frontiers in Psychology
July 8, 2020
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
25 citations
Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation are said to aim for "contentless" experiences, where mental content such as thoughts, perceptions, and mental images is absent. Silence is understood to be a central feature of those experiences. The main source of information about the experiences is texts by experts from within the three traditions. Previous research has tended not to use an...