CHANDAN KUMAR

Meditation is part of the modern-day wellness lexicon, but the truth is, the practice has been around for millennia.

“Meditation dates back thousands of years across many different cultures, and often shares elements with spirituality,” says Jillian Cohen, MD, an integrative medicine expert at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.

“In modern times, meditation is used often as an effective means of managing stress, anxiety, insomnia, and pain, among other chronic conditions.”

There’s no one single type of meditation, though techniques tend to overlap. “You can think of meditation like sports,” says Diana Winston, a mindfulness meditation teacher and director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Program. “It’s a huge category. Just like there are so many different types of sports, there are so many varieties of meditation.” Here’s a list of common types of meditation and how they are practiced.
Mindfulness Meditation This is the process of being fully present with what you are experiencing in the current moment — including your body and your thoughts — in a way that is concentrated, curious, and open. “I define mindfulness as paying attention to our present moment experiences with an openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be without experience,” Winston says. “It’s a way of helping us live more in the present moment, not being lost in the past and future.”

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction This is a specific type of mindfulness meditation taught over an eight-week period using meditation and yoga. It usually involves group classes and daily mindfulness activities practiced at home. Researchers are currently studying its effects on stressright up arrow and certain health conditions.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy This is another type of mindfulness meditation, which combines facets of mindfulness-based stress reduction with cognitive behavioral therapy. It is a common type of meditation for treating depression.right up arrow.

Concentrative Meditation Different than mindfulness meditation, which encourages being present in a curious and open way, concentrative meditation keeps the mind fixated on one object, like the body as it sits on a chair. “It typically has you focus on one thing in order to concentrate, gather your focus, and calm your mind,” Winston says.

Mantra Meditation This is a type of concentrative meditation that uses a repeated calming word, thought, or phrase to prevent distracting thoughts. The mantra can be said out loud or simply thought.

Transcendental Meditation A style of mantra meditation that involves a personally assigned mantra, such as a word, a sound, or a small phrase, repeated in a specific way.

Guided Meditation Another method of concentrative meditation, in which you form mental pictures of situations that you find relaxing. “You might imagine that you’re in a beautiful garden with the birds chirping,” Winston says. “So you’re using your imagination to create states of being.”

Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation The practice of directing well wishes toward others and wishes to help oneself or another to suffer less. “You may wish them happiness or peace or that they’re at ease, and what that does is it may affect the other person, but it’s really about cultivating it within ourselves,” Winston explains.

Meditative Movement This includes the traditional Chinese practices of qigong and tai chi, as well as some forms of yoga and dance. Generally, meditative movement is a term for forms of exercise that are done in conjunction with meditative attention to body sensations.
Winston notes that certain activities such as running or drawing, while not considered forms of meditation, can produce a meditative state for many people. “I think of it as you’re using art or running to help create a meditative approach or meditative mind, but it’s not in and of itself a meditation,” she says.

In recent years, a growing body of research has focused on how meditation affects the brain.

Some studies suggest that practicing mindfulness meditation can actually change the structures of the brain. While scientists are still working to understand the effects of this practice, it is generally believed that it correlates to improved emotional regulation.

“Mindfulness meditation has been shown to activate the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with our higher cognitive functions, and deactivate the amygdala, an area of the brain associated with anger, fear, anxiety, and depression,” Dr. Cohen says. “It strengthens the neurological circuits that calm the part of the brain that acts as a trigger for fear and anger.”

In one study, for example, imaging tests found increased brain activity in long-term practitioners of loving-kindness and compassion meditation, compared with people in states of non-meditative rest.right up arrow The left prefrontal cortex, which is an area of the brain associated with happiness, was particularly activated, Cohen says.

Other research has found an increase in activity in another part of the brain, called the insula, after mindfulness training, compared with control groups.right up arrow “The insula is key in self-awareness of one’s own body and feelings,” Cohen explains.

Finally, Cohen notes that other studies have found that mindfulness leads to an increase in the anterior cingulate cortex, and the caudate nucleus, areas that allow for nonjudgmental acceptance

A growing body of research has found that meditation is beneficial to mental and physical health because of the effect it has on our stress response.
“The primary health benefit from meditation appears to be related to the general shift in the autonomic nervous system that decreases sympathetic tone and increases parasympathetic tone,” Cohen says.
The sympathetic nervous system is our fight-or-flight response, while our parasympathetic nervous system is rest-and-digest, she says.
“As humans, we’re wired to fight-or-flight very easily, since it’s a survival mechanism,” Cohen explains. “So we want and need more parasympathetic. When the parasympathetic system is stimulated, heart rate and breathing slow, stress hormones decrease, blood vessels dilate, and digestion is improved.”
In recent years, a growing body of scientific evidence has shown how a meditation practice can help improve health, including mental and emotional health.
Research suggests that people who practice meditation react better to stressful situations and have lower stress-related hormone levels and inflammatory responses than people who do not.
For many people, meditation can help with emotional regulation, as well as improve attention, memory, and mood.
Additionally, some research suggests that a meditation practice can help with managing negative emotions, such as anger.

Meditation can also be a helpful tool in managing chronic illnesses. While research is limited, and larger, more long-term studies are needed, there’s some evidence that meditation may play a role in helping manage various conditions — from mental health disorders to chronic pain to skin ailments.
Chronic stress promotes an increased inflammatory load, chronic low-grade inflammation, and prolonged increased levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) — “all of which are associated with increased chronic illness,” Cohen says.
For instance, meditation may help you manage or improve:
1)Depressionright up arrow and anxietyright up arrow by reducing worry and rumination Blood pressure, by helping to alleviate stress.
2)Heart conditions like coronary artery diseaseright up arrow and heart failureright up arrow by reducing stress, controlling blood pressure, and improving overall quality of life
3)Chronic pain, by potentially changing how the brain responds to pain.
4)Sleep issues, such as insomnia and sleep disturbances, by increasing the body’s relaxation response, reducing worry and rumination, and alleviating mood disorders.
5)Gastrointestinal disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and irritable bowel disease (IBD), by suppressing the activities of genes that can cause inflammation.
6)Obesity, by encouraging mindful eating and aiding weight loss.
Diabetes, by reducing stress, improving mood, and encouraging positive healthcare behaviors and the development of positive coping skills.
7)Rheumatoid arthritis, by potentially improving pain intensity and depression symptoms.
8)Skin conditions like psoriasisright up arrow and eczemaright up arrow by helping to reduce stress, a trigger for symptoms Multiple sclerosis, by improving pain, fatigue, and overall quality of life.
9)Cancer, potentially by changing the cellular activity of cancer survivors in a way that scientists believe may have protective benefits against disease.