Meditation Reduces Stress, Instills Compassion

A meditation practice invented more than 1,000 years ago may have real health benefits for people today, researchers at Emory University say.

These scientists are looking at how an ancient Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice called Lojong may help reduce stress itself, as well as improve the immune system's response to stress, said Dr. Charles Raison, principal investigator of the study at Emory and CNNHealth mental health expert.

Raison planned to present preliminary results of the study to the Dalai Lama, who attended the Compassion Meditation Conference on Monday. The project is called the Compassion and Attention Longitudinal Meditation Study (CALM).

"Lojong" means "mind training," and this specific practice is aimed at making a person more compassionate toward others, including friends and enemies. This is the type of meditation that the Dalai Lama primarily practices, Raison said.

"It tries to train people to rethink and reimagine their relationships with other people," Raison said. "It's a series of visualizations and mental challenges where you use meditation to challenge why you feel the way you do about people."

Participants are taught to look at all people equally as being valuable and important, and then attempt to develop strong feelings of compassion. They first examine compassion toward people they already care about, then toward people about whom they feel neutral, and then finally enemies. (MORE)

Source: CNN Health