Exploring the Relationship Between Self-assessment of a Meditation Experience and Physiological Changes to Participants’ Brains

Based on the statistics, it’s easy to imagine that we are facing a tsunami of psychological disorders. About 1 in 5 Americans experience mental illness each year and mental illness costs about $200 billion in lost earnings. Yet, it’s been shown that there is no better way to produce beneficial biological alterations then through the use of meditation (Davidson 2015), In fact meditation has been clinically shown to reduce: Anxiety (Kabat-Zinn et al 1992, Golden 2009, others), Depression (Eisendrath 2008, Segal 2010), Pain (Kabat-Zinn et al 1985, Kingston et al 2007), Addiction (Brewer 2011, Carim-Todd 2013), Boost Immune System Function (Davidson 2003, Pace 2009). But recent studies show only about 8% of Americans meditate