meditation and wellbeing – Meditation for Health

Is meditation good for the heart?

Can meditation really improve heart health?

Meditation has been shown to have a positive effect on the cardiovascular system. Studies have found that regular meditation can lower blood pressure, improve heart rate variability, and reduce the risk of heart disease. However, it is important to note that meditation should not be used as a replacement for conventional medical treatment. Individuals with existing heart conditions should consult with their healthcare provider before starting a meditation practice.

Blood Pressure

Meditation may lower blood pressure by reducing stress and tension in the body. When we are under stress, our sympathetic nervous system is activated, which causes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Meditation can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which has the opposite effect and can help to lower blood pressure by slowing down the heart rate and relaxing the muscles. Additionally, meditation can also help to decrease inflammation and improve endothelial function, which can also help to lower blood pressure. It’s also important to note that meditation is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and different types of meditation might have different effects on blood pressure.

Heart Disease

Meditation may reduce the risk of heart disease by improving various cardiovascular risk factors.

Stress reduction: As mentioned earlier, meditation can reduce stress by activating the parasympathetic nervous system and decreasing levels of cortisol, which can have a positive effect on blood pressure, heart rate and overall cardiovascular health.
Improved endothelial function: Endothelial cells line the interior surface of blood vessels and play an important role in regulating blood flow and blood pressure. Studies have found that meditation can improve endothelial function, which can help to lower the risk of heart disease.
Inflammation reduction: Chronic inflammation is a major risk factor for heart disease. Meditation has been shown to reduce inflammation throughout the body, which can help to lower the risk of heart disease.
Improved Heart Rate Variability (HRV): HRV is a measure of how well the heart is able to respond to changes in the body. A low HRV is a risk factor for heart disease. Meditation has been shown to improve HRV, which can help lower heart disease risk.

It’s important to note that while meditation may positively impact these factors, it is not a substitute for other preventative measures such as proper diet, exercise, and conventional medical treatment.

Regulating heart rate

Meditation can regulate heart rate by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for slowing down the heart rate and relaxing the muscles. When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, it signals the heart to slow down and decrease the heart rate, known as heart rate variability. This can benefit cardiovascular health, as a high heart rate and low heart rate variability are risk factors for heart disease.

Additionally, meditation may also affect the regulation of heart rate by influencing the levels of neurotransmitters and hormones involved in heart rate regulation. For example, studies have shown that regular meditation practice can decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which can contribute to an increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Therefore, lowering cortisol levels through meditation may help to regulate heart rate.

It’s important to note that how meditation regulates heart rate may vary depending on the type of meditation, the practitioner and the duration of the practice. Therefore, it’s recommended to consult with a healthcare professional before starting a meditation practice, especially if you have a medical condition.

Generated by AI, edited by a human

Unlocking the Secrets of Compassionate Meditation

Scientists have been interested in compassion for decades, but only now can we begin to see why it offers such great health benefits.

Compassion is recognised as a fundamental human trait, a hard-wired cognitive mechanism to ensure the survival of the species. Without compassion, it’s unlikely that our most ancient ancestors could have sustained extended family units. developed them into tribes and, through collaboration, founded proto civilisations. So why is compassion important here? Evolutionary psychologists contend that collaboration underpins human societies. And it naturally follows that concern for the wellbeing of all group members was a smart strategy to sustain cohesion and allowed these groups to survive threats and challenging conditions.

There is one additional factor to introduce to complete this picture, compassion must have inevitably been nondual, supporting self and others. Only compassion extended to the whole group, including you and me, makes any sense. If I weaken myself or another group member, the loss to the group is the same. By protecting and caring for myself and other group members, the chance of individual and collective survival is likely to have been much greater.

Although this is an emerging area of scientific interest, there is ample evidence that humans get great benefits through pro-social activity and caring for others. Compassion, in particular, is seen to benefit both the person sharing compassion as well as its recipient. It seems likely then that the compassionate cognitive structures that served humans so well in the distant past are still present within us. This doesn’t mean that humans have to be compassionate but suggests compassion may be linked to our overall health, happiness and wellbeing.

So if it’s that simple, why aren’t scientists recommending compassionate meditation for everybody? Well, many renowned meditation scientists have been promoting compassion for decades. But science only reflects a relatively modern view of the human condition, and complex human traits such as compassion are still poorly understood. In addition, meditation research over the last twenty-five years has been dominated by the mindfulness revolution. And it is only now, when limitations in mindfulness research are being documented, that new, more complete understandings of meditation are being considered more widely.

If you want more details about compassion meditation in Canterbury, visit this page. If you’d like to join a free online Compassion meditation group, send us a message with ‘Compassion’ in the title.

Compassion meditation group in Canterbury – Health wellbeing and happiness

New community compassion meditation group in Canterbury. All welcome, but places limited.

Please note the Compassion Meditation group no longer meets online, for details of the current schedule use our contact form.

The cost of confusing religion and science: the billion-dollar experiment

The scientific study of meditation may have been limited by misunderstandings about the relationship between belief and science, a confusion which endures to this day.

Since the dawn of human civilisation, people have considered the relationship between belief and observed phenomena. This tension was given greater impetus during the Enlightenment when the growing predictive power of the natural sciences often appeared at odds with religious dogma. The development of psychological sciences at the end of the nineteenth century added a new dimension. Psychology attempts to understand the human condition, which of course, includes religious beliefs. One Western approach to making sense of the potential conflict between faith and science was the Religion of Science (RoS). RoS was a philosophical idea developed by Paul Carus around the turn of the twentieth century; it proposed unity between all reliable religious and scientific knowledge.

The idea of symmetry between belief and science endured and found a new audience in the 1960s when Westerners began to embrace Eastern religious practices such as meditation and yoga. These cultural changes created the conditions for an attempted convergence between belief, science and medicine. Scientists with connections to religious traditions began to investigate the health potential of meditation, from which Jon Kabat-Zinn’s version of mindfulness meditation emerged.¹From its very beginnings, mindfulness was believed to be an integration of Buddhist and scientific understandings. Although a systematic or scientific explanation of how ancient religious beliefs were consistent with experimental science was never provided.

Different Buddhist schools of thought are rarely described in scientific papers.

Each Buddhist school has a different worldview based on overarching concepts such as the authority of scripture, the ideas of Nagarjuna or other philosophical or esoteric concepts. But no Buddhist tradition shares their world view with science; each has different ways of knowing ‘mind and matter’. So while science can measure the effects of belief-based practices from any religion, it cannot be one with them; the scientific method cannot be combined with or compromise the essential spiritual message of religious traditions.

Because of this and other misunderstandings, it was not possible to establish a theoretical framework for mindfulness. In essence, there was no full scientific description of mindfulness or how it worked. And although thousands of preliminary studies indicated mindfulness was a promising intervention, there was very little robust proof to evidence these claims.² There is much good research in this field, but most of the thousands of published scientific papers appear to have followed a preliminary trajectory. And despite an estimated research investment of over $1.6 bn, we still don’t really know much about mindfulness.

The main issue is that privileged scientists working at elite institutions in the 1970s made claims about religious knowledge without any real evidence. And many statements made in academic publications were accepted by scientific communities without hesitation. While the psychological sciences can observe the effects of religious practices on people, there is no framework for understanding the nature and significance of those practices. This is not to argue that religion or science is ‘better’, simply that they configure and understand the human experience from different and often incompatible perspectives.

Notes

Morris, Stephen. “The Rise of Medicalised Mindfulness During the 1970s and 1980s: The Attempted Convergence of Religion and Science.” Brief Encounters 6, no. 1 (2022).

Van Dam, Nicholas T., Marieke K. Van Vugt, David R. Vago, Laura Schmalzl, Clifford D. Saron, Andrew Olendzki, Ted Meissner et al. “Mind the hype: A critical evaluation and prescriptive agenda for research on mindfulness and meditation.” Perspectives on psychological science 13, no. 1 (2018): 36-61.

Canterbury Compassion Meditation Group: University of Kent

Compassion meditation practice is designed to support health, happiness and wellbeing. A new compassion meditation group has been created at the University of Kent. Supported by funding from the Postgraduate Community Experience Awards, the group meets on the Canterbury campus every Thursday.

Compassion Meditation for health. happiness and wellbeing

A new meditation group has been formed at the University of Kent to teach students compassion-based methods. Funded by the Postgraduate Community Experience Awards, the group will learn traditional approaches that focus on health, happiness and wellbeing. Stephen Gene Morris, an experienced meditation teacher, researcher and neuropsychologist, will be leading the weekly sessions.

The group’s founder, Stephen, has practised meditation for 25 years and studied its structures and operational components. He will teach a secular compassion practice, rooted in traditional methods, supported by reliable scientific evidence. Care for oneself and the wider community is a foundational concept in many spiritual traditions, and compassionate meditation has been used in Mahayana Buddhism for almost a thousand years. But in recent decades, scientists have been investigating the relationship between compassion and health; several interventions such as Compassion Focused Therapy have demonstrated the importance of kindness towards others in our thoughts and feelings. The group will be using self-other compassion training to think positively about oneself and the wider community, bringing benefits to the meditator and a sense of interconnectivity with the people around us.

‘The goals of this self-other compassion meditation are health, happiness and wellbeing. I use a well known Buddhist form of compassion training, Tonglen, as the basis for this method. But while the original psychological elements have been retained, the imagery and context are adapted for a modern secular audience. In my experience, this is a form of meditation that can bring long-lasting benefits to practitioners, and it’s suitable for beginners and more experienced meditators
Stephen Gene Morris

Compassion meditation classes take place every Thursday at 5 pm in room CNWsr5 on the University of Kent Campus in Canterbury. The meditation is followed by a brief social when people can ask questions and share experiences. Soft drinks and snacks are provided. A second session is held two hours later online using the Zoom platform (7 pm) for those who wish to participate remotely. For more details or to register for the online session, email Stephen at sgm34@kent.ac.uk. To keep in touch with the group’s activities, follow the @KentCompassion Twitter account.

May all have happiness.

What is the nondual view, and why is it important in meditation?

Over 26,000 scientific meditation studies have been published since 1970. I have yet to encounter one that explains the nondual view or the principle of nondual meditation, yet this is the concept at the heart of meditation and mindfulness.

The elusive nature of the nondual

Typically, humans flit between dual and nondual forms of consciousness without ever knowing or detecting the difference. In this brief introduction, the critical thing to bear in mind is that we all have access to dual and nondual consciousness; both are integral to the human experience. However, it is highly problematic to recognise and then cultivate a nondual view without training and direction. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive explanation of dual or nondual consciousness here and now. So I will attempt to use some simplified approximations to begin the conversation

In a typical western materialistic society such as mine, most people spend most of their time in dualistic consciousness. We could characterise the dualistic state in many ways; as a starting point, let us regard it as the point of view where one believes, as truth, the conscious and subconscious impulses generated by a brain. So while we can all find examples of irrational thoughts that we recognise as meaningless, our identity is made up of fabricated constructs that have no reality other than that which we attribute to them. So, for example, to think that others are responsible for your mental states is usually an expression of dualism, as is the belief that our wishes and goals are somehow different or more important than the wishes and goals of others.

By contrast, a nondual view enables us to distinguish between reliable mental phenomena and transient unreliable thoughts and feelings. Thus we can achieve some relative freedom in how to think, speak and act. It is this freedom that is often associated with the happiness and stability observed in nondual practitioners. So from a nondual perspective, we make the presumption that the thoughts and feelings of others may be just as important and meaningful as ours. I will stop the definitions here for now and briefly discuss what these concepts mean for meditation practice.

In traditional meditation, people begin at the beginning; if they have a reliable teacher and methods and are diligent, they can make progress. But until a practitioner realises which of the mental phenomena arising in their consciousness is transient and meaningless, then all meditation can be seen as relative. That means your practice is relative to your mental state and a range of other causes and conditions. A practitioner who has some modest experience of the nondual should be able to transcend belief in mundane phenomena knowing of their relative unimportance. That is not to say that a nondual practitioner may have arrived at a transcendent mental state; it is simply that they know the limitations of their own worldview. That, in a nutshell, is an elementary exploration of why the nondual view is essential to progress in meditation practice. Without it understanding, the inner world of our consciousness remains uncertain. While much Buddhist meditation is not explicitly nondual, it all, by its very nature, increases the ability of the student to understand nonduality.

How to start a successful meditation practice

Up to half of all new meditators stop the practice before they gain any benefits. Here’s the explanation why and some clues to building a great meditation habit.

Need help to get your meditation practice going?

How can I learn how to meditate? The answers are pretty simple and backed by centuries of experience in meditation.

Sometimes even experienced meditators find it difficult to meditate, although the obstacles we encounter later on are different from those that trouble us at the beginning. But please remember that meditation and mindfulness are forms of mind-training; this means we are literally changing brain function and structure over time. So in the first weeks, when you start to meditate, you are likely to be doing something quite unnatural; meditation practice is simply about training yourself in a new way of working with your body, speech and mind. Therefore, it can be difficult to begin with, just like learning how to; run, play a musical instrument, or learn a new language. The first principle of meditation, therefore, is that practice makes perfect.

However, before committing yourself to a particular method or a teacher, you should satisfy yourself that they are suitable for you and consistent with your goals. Only when you feel confident with the technique can you dedicate yourself to regular practice. I think this is the case with secular medicalised meditation and mindfulness as well as traditional methods. Your starting point as a new meditator is to find something that appears to be reliable. However, meditation should never cause pain or suffering, so if your practice leads to physical or psychological difficulties you should stop immediately.

If you have reached the point where you have a method that you’re confident with and a teacher that is reliable, you have the foundations to build a regular meditation practice. If my own new students still find difficulty meditating at this point, I encourage them to commit to three weeks of practice or take a break. Practising four times a week over three weeks is usually sufficient for a new meditation student to get comfortable with sitting still, holding a normal meditation posture and working with the psychological concepts of the practice. In short, they should know how to sit and what they are supposed to be doing with their mind. Typically even at this stage, the major obstacle is controlling one’s thoughts, which is the ultimate goal of meditation.

Meditation and mindfulness are not for everybody, almost everyone has the capacity for some meditation, but they may lack the motivation. If you’ve undertaken three weeks of practice in a reliable method with a competent teacher and are still not making any progress, you may want to rethink your strategy. Your meditation teacher may have some explanations and guidance for you. But eventually, you may need to identify a more suitable teacher or method, or just ‘park’ the idea of meditation for a while and return to it at a later point.

Some meditators experience almost immediate benefits from practising and have visible signs of: improved emotional stability, mental health, and happiness. At this point, meditation practice becomes much easier because we can see the effects. Many people stop meditating or develop bad habits before they reach this point and so never really create the relationship between meditation and its great potential. But if you don’t see immediate benefits, don’t be distracted by the progress of those around you; meditation is a highly personal experience. Your progress as a meditator is dependent on many causes and conditions, sometimes physical, sometimes psychological. My understanding from teaching hundreds of people to meditate is that those with the greatest persistence tend to reap the most significant rewards.

This is an excellent moment to summarise. Firstly find a method that meets your meditation goals and connect with a knowledgeable teacher. If you experience difficulties meditating at the beginning, talk to your teacher and consider committing to three solid weeks of practice to develop a basic meditation capacity. If the meditation leads to physical and mental suffering, stop immediately and seek advice. Once the basic skills have been acquired, it is usually a matter of training. In traditional meditation, it is typical to change meditation teachers and meditation methods as you develop, but the fundamental challenge of working with your mind remains the same.

It is frequently said “the only bad meditation is the one you don’t do”.

Good wishes to you all for your meditation practice and drop us an email to let us know how you are getting on.

Student Mental Health – University Mental Health Day

Always seek help if you need it. But many of us are able to take steps to boost our mental health as part of our daily routines.

Mental Health, it’s an issue for all of us

Today (the 4^th of March) is University Mental Health Day. It’s a valuable moment to think about our own mental health and the wellbeing of the people around us, particularly in universities. Before beginning my PhD research, I spent a year as a higher education mentor, supporting undergraduates and postgraduates diagnosed with poor mental health. I worked with people from several universities across the Southeast of England; they were of different ages and backgrounds. But one of the characteristics shared by all the students was that their mental health problems were linked to many issues.

Because of how the psychological sciences have developed, we often understand and treat mental health as separate from the rest of our lives. However, where we live, how we relate to people, our finances and many other factors are linked to our mental health. And they can get worse over time. Social isolation, a sense of underachievement, relationship problems, and financial worries can all affect our wellbeing long before a diagnosable mental health condition arises.

So while reliable diagnosis and treatment are essential when we become unwell, we should consider our health in the broadest sense. This is not just the responsibility of healthcare practitioners; we all could be creating the best possible conditions for our own mental health. We don’t need to wait for problems to become critical before we make changes. This is particularly true of student populations in higher education, where many people will be remote from their friends and families and face new and daunting challenges.

I generally think of mental illness as an effect that grows out of causes and conditions. It rarely arrives out of the blue without warning. If we can recognise those negative changes early enough, we have the opportunity to halt deterioration in our mental health. However, if we allow problems to grow unchecked and accumulate, we are more vulnerable to illness. If we become unwell, we should seek help as soon as possible. But the University Mental Health Day is also a reminder that support is available even before we reach a crisis or a low point.So I would urge everybody to consider their mental health as a work in progress; we have the potential in every moment to increase our happiness and wellbeing. Reliable meditation methods are just one of the tools available to us. The most import ideas are that we recognise the need to treat our mental health seriously and actively build resilience, and never be afraid to ask for help when we need it.

Free online compassion meditation

How to practice compassion meditation, an explanation of how it works and a description of its benefits.

Some of the greatest health benefits come from compassion.

If you are looking for an introduction to compassion meditation but don’t know where to start, you might benefit from this brief guide. I recorded the video during the first lockdown in 2020. I created it for people who are newcomers to compassionate meditation or who want a primer to nondual methods. Although this practice is based on Buddhist mind-training, I have adapted it as a modern secular practice. In common with all the meditation methods I teach, it is consistent with reliable teachings and supported by the latest evidence from neuropsychology.

This is an introductory training video as well as a guided meditation. Here I offer explanations of what the practice is, how to start and what to expect. If this is your first time, listen to the whole explanation, when you are confident with the method, you can simply follow the meditation and cut out the preamble. Please note; for brevity, I have edited out long sections of my meditation. If you want to use this resource as a guided meditation, you can go straight to the meditation and pause the clip when the practice begins; restarting when you come to a natural break in your own meditation. To get the full health and wellbeing benefits of the method, you will need to develop a clear insight into how the mind training works.

From my personal experience and the accounts of my students, this can be a life-changing practice. But its full effects take time to emerge, three times a week, over three months is a productive medium-term meditation goal. However, you should get immediate short term wellbeing benefits from just one focussed twenty-minute session. Expect to feel uplifted, happier and calmer from the first practice.

As a nondual meditation, this is a preliminary practice; once the results are obtained you may wish to seek, more complex methods to develop further. Always use reliable methods and the guidance of an accomplished teacher.

Early benefits that my students or I have experienced as a result of this practice are:

Significantly reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure and a general feeling of increased well being.
Lower levels of stress and anxiety
Boosted energy levels, movement away from passive activities and lifestyle.
Perception of positive relationships and interconnectivity with others
Improved sleep
Increased self-efficacy, less uncertainty in professional and personal matters
Improved concentration and focus
Greater tolerance
A stronger sense of happiness and a more fulfilling experience of life

The key to compassionate meditation is to remember mind training is all about your mind. How you sit and breathe, where you meditation and who with are all secondary. The practice is about creating new and improve compassionate function and structure in your brain; you can’t fake it. A good teacher and/or method are essential. As always email us if you have any concerns. You are welcome to post your thoughts and experiences below.

Nonduality and the health benefits of meditation: an introduction

Despite 7,000 scientific studies over 80 years, psychology still hasn’t understood the health benefits importance of duality.

Binary code over a human face. — Duality or non-duality, that is the question

For over two decades I have been meditating, initially to support my day to day life, improve mental and physical health and build resilience. But later, as a Buddhist, my goals evolved, and my understanding of health and wellbeing changed. Having tried secular meditation first, coming to Buddhist practice later, I developed an early, comparative experience of the strengths and weaknesses of the different systems. An understanding of the similarities and differences between secular and spiritual methods has taught me much about the curative potential of meditation and mindfulness.

My development as a meditator owes much to the teachers and teachings I encounter in those early years. But my progress has also been constructed on an experiential understanding of nonduality, something a teacher can only suggest to a student. Even though most conscious human experience is built on fluctuations between the dual and nondual, it is a challenging idea to get to grips with. Let me be more precise; it is easy to recognise duality in others, each of us does this every day; to see it in ourselves is the problem. You will find many spiritual and philosophical teachers willing to describe the nature of non-duality, but few can talk about it from the level of experience. However, from my research as a meditator and neuropsychologist, I am confident that nonduality is the key to unlocking the full health potential of meditation.

Meditation is a human technology, a brain training tool that can be used for multiple purposes. No one has a monopoly on what meditation is. But, most medicalised meditation that is used by psychology has its roots in traditional spiritual practices, typically Buddhism and Hinduism. Science has been conducting experiments on meditators for at least eighty years. In that time the full health potential of traditional forms of meditation has rarely been seen in replicated medicalised equivalents. There are many reasons why spiritual practices do not easily locate to the psychological sciences; one of the most important and least discussed is the role of nonduality.

To be continued…

As always email us if you have any concerns. And please post your thoughts and experiences below.

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