Differential patterns of subjective experience during daily practice of four types of meditation

An important frontier in the scientific study of meditation is to go beyond studying the global training effects of single practices to explore whether different meditative practices have specific, differentiated effects. Here we compare the day-to-day reports of 180 participants (mean age 41, age range 20 to 55, 61% female) in a 9-month long mental training study, the ReSource Project. Participants were asked to meditate 5 times a week, using guided recordings provided online. Before and after each meditation session, questions assessed affect, warmth, thought contents, meta-cognitive abilities, present-focus, and body awareness. Using multilevel modeling to analyze a total of almost 29,000 daily reports representing over 10,000 hours of meditation, we found that the four core meditations were characterized by specific patterns of experience. All four practices were characterized by increased positive affect and energy, a greater experience of presence and body awareness, and an improved ability to detach from thoughts. Practicing body scan led to the greatest increase in body awareness and the greatest decrease in thought content. Loving-kindness practice increased feelings of warmth and positive thoughts. Observing thoughts increased meta-cognitive awareness of mental activities. These findings suggest that although different types of meditation may share joint experiences, each practice also comes with distinct psychological fingerprint. The observed differences among the practices carry significant implications for the use of meditation as an applied intervention. For example, the body scan seems best suited to cultivate body awareness and may be useful for treatment of body dysmorphic disorders. Loving kindness is better able to improve positive affect and thoughts, and thus may be an appropriate therapy for depression or anxiety. Observing thoughts, in contrast, may be preferred if the focus is to increase awareness of the contents of mind without changing that content, as in some forms of cognitive-based therapy