Does Meditating More Have a Greater Impact?
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Loving Kindness meditation cultivates four sublime attitudes called “four immeasurables”: (1) loving-kindness, which refers to unselfish friendliness; (2) compassion, which refers to a willingness to cease the suffering of the distressed one; (3) appreciative joy, which refers to feeling happiness for other’s success or fortune; and (4) equanimity, which refers to calm toward the fate of others based on wisdom. “ – Xianglong Zeng
Meditation training has been shown to improve health and well-being. It has also been found to be effective for a large array of medical and psychiatric conditions, either stand-alone or in combination with more traditional therapies. As a result, meditation training has been called the third wave of therapies. The seemingly simple behavior of meditation is actually quite complex. Adding to the complexity is that there are a variety of different meditation techniques. To begin to understand exactly how meditation works to produce its benefit, it is important to determine the requirements for effectiveness. One of the simplest is dose response; how much meditation is needed for maximal effectiveness.
In today’s Research News article “A Systematic Review of Associations between Amount of Meditation Practice and Outcomes in Interventions Using the Four Immeasurables Meditations.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at:
Zeng and colleagues review and summarize the published research literature which uses different amounts of meditation practice while keeping constant the type of meditation. They looked at studies that employed “Four Immeasurables Meditations” more commonly known as Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM). This meditation technique is designed to develop kindness and compassion to oneself and others. The individual systematically pictures different individuals from self, to close friends, to enemies and wishes them happiness, well-being, safety, peace, and ease of well-being. They identified 20 studies that investigated the effectiveness of different amounts of Loving Kindness Meditation practice. These were studies of the effectiveness of Loving Kindness Meditation practice on a wide range of different outcome variables including physical and mental health of the practitioners and responses on behavioral tasks. No attempt was made to separate different dependent variables. Rather, simply the association of the amount of meditation with the strength of outcome was evaluated.
They found that the published studies reported only a few small differences in outcomes between different amounts of meditation practice. The amounts of meditation reported, however, were relatively low as the largest was only 8 weekly meditation sessions. It is possible that much greater amounts of practice are needed to show additional benefits. In many studies, it was found that in these relatively brief studies, the greater the amount of meditation practice, the greater the amount of benefit. Hence, there was evidence of short-term effects of amount of practice, but the studies were not long enough themselves to determine if amount of meditation practice is related to outcomes in the long run.
The summary of the published research revealed that there is a need for systematic studies investigating the effects of amount of meditation over much larger time periods. It would also be useful to look at the length of each practice and the frequency of practice to determine if the pattern of practice made any difference in the outcomes. So, there appears to be a great need for further research to determine the dose response effects of meditation practice. Such studies would be important for understanding how to maximize the effectiveness of meditation for the health and well-being of patients.
“The incredible thing about Loving Kindness meditation is that a single short session of about 10 minutes, can kick-start a positive ripple effect, leading to increased feelings of social connection and positivity towards strangers. Loving Kindness Meditation also has continued benefits for those that practice more frequently. In fact, science suggests that the benefits can be surprisingly far reaching.” – Lisa Abramson
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Zeng X, Chio FHN, Oei TPS, Leung FYK and Liu X (2017) A Systematic Review of Associations between Amount of Meditation Practice and Outcomes in Interventions Using the Four Immeasurables Meditations. Front. Psychol. 8:141. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00141
Interventions using the “Four Immeasurables Meditations” (FIM) are effective for various outcomes; however, whether increased meditation practice in these interventions leads to better results has not been well investigated. This systematic review included 22 FIM interventions that reported associations between the amount of meditation practice and its outcomes. Despite the heterogeneity in intervention components and outcome variables, there were generally few significant associations between amount of meditation practice and its outcomes. Specifically, only five studies reported that more than half of the calculated results were significant. In comparison with correlations between total amount of practice and overall outcomes, the short-term influence of meditation practice was evaluated in fewer studies; however, it had a better association with outcomes. More studies are required that address the underlying mechanisms that elucidate how meditation practice leads to outcome changes in daily life. In this study, two promising mechanisms with initial evidence were discussed. This review also summarized common methodological issues including a lack of experimental manipulation and inaccurate measuring of meditation practice.