Meditation research is increasingly moving beyond mindfulness and other early-stage practices toward advanced meditation, encompassing states, stages, and endpoints that progressively unfold with increasing expertise through meditative development. This emerging subfield consists of interdisciplinary research that brings advanced meditation within reach of systematic scientific investigation....
This systematic review synthesizes evidence on the effects of meditation on physical and mental health in adults (ages 18 to 75) living with chronic physical health conditions. Meditation research in medical contexts has concentrated almost entirely on brief structured mindfulness programs such as MBSR and MBCT. Preliminary evidence from this literature indicates that mindfulness practice can...
Third wave meditation research-the study of advanced meditation-investigates states, stages, and endpoints of meditation practice that emerge with increasing mastery. We review current neuroscientific progress, outline future research directions, and highlight far-reaching implications of this emerging scientific subfield.
Despite decades of progress in the neuroscience of consciousness, prevailing empirical paradigms remain largely anchored in the study of typical, content-rich states that are characterized by layered perceptual, cognitive, affective, and self-referential processes. Such complexity may obscure the neural mechanisms that give rise to conscious experience. Here, we propose that advanced...
Focused attention meditation (FA) is a foundational and widely studied practice that cultivates sustained concentration by focusing on a specific object, such as the breath, while disengaging from distractions. Numerous studies have investigated the neurophysiological mechanisms of FA, examining aspects such as spectral power, connectivity patterns, and neural entropy. However, despite this...