In Australia, about one in six adults practice meditation, while one out of ten practice yoga. People often turn to yoga or meditation to take time off and deal with the stresses of their daily lives.
Stress is common, and ongoing stress can contribute to the onset of a range of psychological problemslike depression and anxiety.
Meditation and yoga have been shown to reduce people’s self-reported stress levels. This is likely due, at least in part, to the effects of meditation and yoga on the brain’s stress response system.
How the brain reacts to stress
The body’s automatic response to stress is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system plays a key role in stress reactivity via its two main divisions: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
A main function of the sympathetic nervous system is to mobilize the body to fight or flee stressful or threatening situations, through the control of internal muscles, organs and glands. This is called the “fight or flight” response.
The parasympathetic nervous system counteracts the sympathetic nervous system and returns the body to its natural base state after the systematic nervous system is activated.
In many cases, the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system have opposite but complementary functions. For example, the sympathetic nervous system increases heart rate, blood pressure, and the downstream release of stress-related hormones such as cortisol, while the parasympathetic nervous system decreases all of these factors.
So by measuring these we can identify whether people are experiencing a homeostatic state or a more stressful state, physiologically.
We saw again how yoga and different forms of meditation influence the brain’s stress response system by studying physiological markers of stress.
What are the different forms of meditation?
A common method of classifying meditation techniques distinguishes between open monitoring, focused attentionand automatic self-transcending meditation.
Open monitoring or mindfulness-based meditations involve the practice of observing the content of our ongoing experience in a non-reactive way, become mindful in a reflective way cognitive and emotional patterns. Instead of focusing their attention on a particular object, the meditator aims to pay attention and monitor all aspects of the experience as they arise, without judgment or attachment. An example would be feeling the sensation of the seat beneath you as you meditate.
In focused attention meditation, attention is focused and sustained on a particular object and brought back to the object when the mind has wandered. In this way, the meditator controls his own attention. The object the person is focusing on can be the breath, a mantra, a visualization, a body part or an external object. Whenever the meditator notices his attention wandering, he actively brings it back to his object of attention.
Automatic self-transcendence involves the use of a mantra, usually Sanskrit sounds, which the meditator can attend to without effort or concentration. The goal is for the mantra to become secondary and eventually disappear as self-awareness increases. In Self-Transcendent Meditation, the mind must be focus free and mental effort. It is practiced for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day in a seated position with your eyes closed.
What the evidence says
We found that meditation and yoga lower diastolic blood pressure (the lower range) by 3 to 8 millimeters of mercury (mmHg), compared to people who engage in another activity, such as aerobic exercise or relaxation .
Focused attention and automatic self-transcending styles of meditation, along with yoga, reduced systolic blood pressure (the upper range) by 4-5 mmHg, compared to people who did no type of meditation or yoga . This is important because reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure of as little as 2 mmHg can reduce the incidence heart disease and strokes.
Open monitoring and focused attention meditation and yoga reduced heart rate by three to four beats per minute. This is similar to the effects of aerobic exercise, which reduced heart rate five beats per minute in one study.
Focused attention meditations and yoga both decreased cortisol measurements.
Our results indicate that all forms of meditation studied reduce physiological stress markers in some way, and therefore all forms are likely beneficial in stress management.
To decide which form is best for reducing stress, we suggest practicing a form that is enjoyable and so you practice regularly and continuously.
While it is helpful to understand the different types of meditation, classifications of meditation should not be considered be mutually exclusive, either in a single meditation session or in a lifetime of practice. Most Meditation Techniques Lie somewhere on a continuum between open surveillance and focused attention types.
