“Twenty years ago, when I used to tell people I meditated, they would think I was in a cult or something,” notes Kathryn Devaney, a neuroscientist who researches meditation at the University of California, Berkeley. “Then something changed around six years or so. Now when I talk to people about meditation, the response I get often is ‘Oh, I know I should be doing that.’”
What these modern meditation enthusiasts are learning is that there really are health benefits from doing breathing exercises for a few minutes a day—and research has begun to confirm it.
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Meditation relieves stress and anxiety
Sara Lazar, a psychologist at Harvard University, and her colleagues have conducted studies that illuminate how meditation reduces anxiety, which has very similar symptoms to stress.
In one study, researchers compared stress-reduction programs: one mindfulness-based, in which 42 volunteers learned awareness meditation and yoga practices for eight weeks, the other exercise-based, during which 25 volunteers performed light aerobic exercises.
The researchers put both groups through a fear-conditioning task in which an anxiety-inducing stimulus is repeatedly presented to the patient until it no longer triggers anxiety. The volunteers were shown an image of a lamp that glowed blue, red, or yellow, receiving a mild electric shock with two of the colors. Later, the same image was presented to them without the shock.
