Meditation Practice

topic

Formal meditation practice encompasses the structured, scheduled engagement with specific techniques for training attentional and awareness qualities — including focused attention meditation (concentration on a single object, typically breath), open monitoring meditation (receptive awareness of whatever arises without selective attention), loving-kindness meditation (cultivation of warmth toward self and others), body scan (systematic somatic awareness), and walking meditation — with the neurological effects of consistent practice accumulating progressively in the structural brain changes (prefrontal thickening, amygdala volume reduction, default mode network quieting) that distinguish experienced meditators.

Role

Formal meditation practice is the training vehicle for the attentional and regulatory capacities that mindfulness develops — with the consistent research finding that the health benefits of mindfulness are dose-dependent, with more practice producing greater neurological and psychological change, establishing the formal practice schedule as the development investment that produces the benefits that informal mindfulness applies. Most people who try meditation quit within weeks because the initially uncomfortable experience of sitting with a restless mind feels like failure rather than the actual training that it is — with the 'mind wandering' experience being not the failure of meditation but the practice opportunity, with each return of attention from wandering being equivalent to one repetition of the attentional control exercise that meditation trains.

Explore "Meditation Practice" on the interactive map →