Meditation Works After Only 80 Minutes of Instruction

A study on 18 healthy young adults who had never previously practiced meditation shows that just over an hour of instructional meditation can help reduce the feeling of pain when meditation is employed during a burning sensation.

The study examined 18 young adults who had never practiced meditation before in their lives. The participants attended only four 20-minute classes and were exposed to a 120°F heat on their right calf both before and after the meditation classes. After they were taught Shamatha meditation, also called “focused attention”, they experienced an average of 57% less unpleasantness and 40% less intensity when they were burned.

Shamatha meditation teaches people to observe what’s going on inside their minds and shows them how to release their thoughts without judgment, continuously focusing on their breath or a spoken phrase. “There’s not just one thing happening”, said Dr. Fadel Zeidan of Wake Forest University in North Carolina. “Mindfulness meditation incorporates multiple mechanisms, multiple avenues for pain relief”.

The study itself raised another important question which needs to be explored by further research, and that is whether or not such meditation can have the same effect on chronic, real-life pain, especially since this type of pain is much more complex than the pain created inside of a lab or testing facility.

Source: Frenchtribune.com