Meditation as an Intervention for Health: A Framework for Understanding Meditation Research
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key points | Proposes a seven-component framework for describing meditation interventions to support scientific rigor and comparability across studies. |
Abstract
We propose a framework for understanding meditation that can support greater scientific rigor in reporting meditation research, and selecting meditation health interventions. There is no consistent and thorough framework for describing meditation research interventions. This impedes rigor of meditation research design and interpretation of findings. This also limits meaningful comparisons across research studies. The audience for this article includes researchers, meditation experts, healthcare professionals, and those with interest in meditation. The framework describes the key components of a meditation intervention. We also discuss how meditation can effect individuals differently, and provide suggestions for describing the qualifications of the expert who designed the meditations in an intervention. The meditation framework supports (1) comparing different meditation interventions, and (2) understanding how meditation interventions lead to outcomes. We provide examples from a Yoga Therapy perspective of meditation (our domain of expertise), and from published research on meditation to illustrate applications of the meditation framework. The meditation framework provides a way of characterizing meditation interventions by distinguishing seven essential components. The first four components describe the meditation session (individual, object, experience, and immediate effects). Approach describes the foundation and source of a meditation practice. The outcome component represents both intended goals or reasons for prescribing the meditation intervention and other longer term effects that may occur. The engagement component refers to duration, spacing and frequency of doing the practice and quality of attention. These seven components can be applied to any type of meditation intervention. We explain the components of the framework and then offer examples. Our goal is to express the importance of having a framework for describing components of meditation across systems of knowledge and methods of application. We hope this article begins a dialogue with experts in other forms of meditation interventions, as they apply, adapt and respond to the proposed framework.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 18
- Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences June 28, 2007
- The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review Frontiers in Psychology November 3, 2015
- A narrative review of yoga and mindfulness as complementary therapies for addiction. Complementary Therapies in Medicine June 1, 2013
- Toward a unifying taxonomy and definition for meditation Frontiers in Psychology 2013
- Phenomenological Fingerprints of Four Meditations: Differential State Changes in Affect, Mind-Wandering, Meta-Cognition, and Interoception Before and After Daily Practice Across 9 Months of Training Mindfulness August 18, 2016
and 13 more in the library