The Role of Meditation in Shaping Resilience.

Resilience, the capacity to adapt and recover from adversity, can be cultivated through meditation, but different types of meditation may contribute in distinct ways. This perspective article introduces the Meditation-Resilience Interaction Model (MRIM), which proposes that focused attention meditation (FAM) enhances recoverability by strengthening executive control, while open monitoring meditation (OMM) reduces vulnerability and fosters interactivity through a process of decentering. The two practices work synergistically: FAM builds the attentional foundation that allows OMM to promote broader resilience. The model provides a framework for designing personalized meditation interventions and for guiding future empirical research.

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Abstract

Resilience-the capacity to adapt, recover, and engage dynamically with adversity-has emerged as a central construct for understanding psychological health. Although meditation offers a promising route for cultivating resilience, current scholarship rarely differentiates between the mechanisms of focused attention meditation (FAM) and open monitoring meditation (OMM), thereby obscuring their distinct contributions to adaptive functioning. This perspective article integrates contemporary resilience theory with cognitive-affective models of meditation to propose the Meditation-Resilience Interaction Model (MRIM). The MRIM conceptualizes resilience as a dynamic triad of recoverability, vulnerability, and interactivity, each mapping onto distinct neurocognitive and regulatory processes. Specifically, FAM enhances recoverability via executive control, whereas OMM attenuates vulnerability and facilitates interactivity through decentering. Importantly, these practices operate synergistically: FAM provides the essential attentional scaffold for OMM to exert its broader resilience-promoting effects. By unifying contemplative science and resilience theory, the MRIM advances a process-based framework that informs personalized meditation interventions and lays a robust conceptual foundation for future empirical validation.