This growing section introduces and offers guidance for key mindfulness meditation exercises. Most of them are part and parcel of standard mindfulness programmes but can also be used on their own.

Key points to explain before getting started with meditation

This first video conveys key information that is useful to consider before starting to engage with mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness and Positive Psychology

Positive psychology enriches the range of mindfulness-based programmes with an approach that does not limit itself to deficits that need to be alleviated. Mindfulness-based strengths practice (MBSP), established around 10 years ago, combines the best from secular mindfulness practice with the best from positive psychology, allowing the powers of mindfulness and of character strengths to unfold in a mutually enriching way. It addresses positive functioning as well as offering tools to confront and work with adversity.

When mindfulness and character strengths are practiced in conjunction a virtuous circle emerges:

Strong mindfulness: when character strengths underpin our mindfulness practice

Mindful strengths use: when mindfulness enriches our strengths use with more richness, balance, and nuance

Do online mindfulness-based interventions work? The most recent meta-analysis aggregates evidence from 97 randomised controlled trials. It concludes that mindfulness interventions can make a positive difference: Online programmes can be beneficial for improving mental health outcomes, yielding small to moderate effect sizes for symptoms of depression and anxiety, for stress, for wellbeing, and for mindfulness.

A significant number of people in the UK practice mindfulness and most of them learn it online (see Pathways to Learning Mindfulness in our Research Roundup 2021-01 ; and Simonsson, Fisher, & Martin, 2021).

Equanimity plays an important role in Buddhist psychology and in the last few years also gained traction in psychological research, particularly in relation to meditation and mindfulness. Although equanimity research is still limited, first results indicate that it may be an important driver for some of the positive effects mindfulness-based approaches yield.

This article reviews the state-of-the-art of psychological research on equanimity, discusses different conceptualisations and provides an overview of the main approaches that are being used to measure levels of equanimities in people.

Here we summarise a long list of proposed mechanisms of meditation that outline how positive change resulting from mindfulness meditation and other meditation practices comes about. In addition to a list of these mechanisms, we also consider different models that offer integrated views on how the mechanisms work and interact, including Buddhist and therapeutic perspectives.

Mechanisms of meditation

The question how meditation brings about positive effects has been asked since the first wave of meditation research in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Arguably the first widely accepted contribution was put forward by Benson and co-workers (e.g. Benson, 1993; Hoffman et al., 1982), who proposed that meditation induces a relaxation response, characterised by a rebalancing of the autonomous nervous system (ANS), with a decrease in sympathetic and an increase in parasympathetic activity – in simplified terms: the calming of the fight-or-flight response and an activation of the rest-and-digest or feed-and-breed response.

Mindfulness- based programmes enhance attentional and cognitive functions, improve the self-regulation of emotions and behaviour and positively influence our physiology. Given the growing evidence for such benefits, mindfulness is increasingly applied in the workplace to reap benefits in terms of employee performance, health and wellbeing as well as improve work relationships.

The science surrounding workplace mindfulness is – however – lagging behind its implementation. Despite relatively limited evidence, big companies and institutions routinely offer mindfulness, meditation or yoga, for example Apple, SAP, Google, LinkedIn, Beiersdorf, Bosch, Nike, IKEA, the US military, and the UK Parliament, to name just a few.

Systematic reviews aggregate the available evidence regarding one research question, while meta-analyses provide a statistical estimate that tells if there is a significant effect and how large this effect is. For anyone who offers treatments, interventions, coaching or training programmes, systematic reviews and meta-analyses offer invaluable insights for ensuring robust, evidence-based work.

Some background

When discussing the latest scientific findings, we often focus on the results of one specific study, usually some headline-grabbing exciting results. Although doing so is understandable, if we want to get a sense of the real evidence, we need to be more cautious.

But why? Didn’t this study just prove the point?

To answer this question, I need to explain a key principle of scientific research. Although this principle is similar in most (if not all) branches of science, I will apply it to research with humans, in psychology, neuroscience, medicine and similar disciplines that all use comparable methodologies.

Compassion- focused meditations are central to most forms of Buddhism and are of central importance in Mahāyāna Buddhism. In particular simpler forms, such as Loving Kindness Meditations or Self-Compassion meditations are increasingly being used in psychological / therapeutic contexts. Up to now, Loving Kindness and Self-Compassion Meditations are also the most widely researched forms of compassion-focused meditations. Here a brief overview of the most prominent compassion-focused meditations.

Loving Kindness Meditation – Mettā Meditation

Using the Pali term for loving kindness, this widespread meditation is often referred to as Mettā meditation. It aims to cultivate a deep feeling of love and compassion and to expand this feeling more and more. In the exercise, one repeats wishes for the well-being of other people, which are expressed, for example, as follows (where “[XYZ]” stands as a placeholder for the person or group of people you are targeting):

While mindfulness-based and compassion-focused meditation practices are well-known in psychological and scientific circles, trust-based approaches have not yet received much consideration. One reason might be that they are not so readily extracted from their spiritual, Buddhist context. Usually practiced within different Vajrayāna traditions, they also tend to be less accessible. Nevertheless, I decided to include them here, because of their importance for one of the largest branches of Buddhism and also because the principle of trust is relevant for meditation more generally. In my 2010 book “Flourishing” (sorry this was only published in German), I outline how the interplay between mindfulness, compassion and trust leads to an upward spiral of development.

Within Vajrayāna or Diamond Way Buddhist traditions, the cultivation of trust in one’s Buddha nature is crucial. The meaning of Buddha nature is too profound for me to explain, but I think it is fair to say that these trust-based approaches aim to strengthen a deeply rooted certainty that awareness itself – the ability to experience, regardless of the specific content of an experience – is by its very nature fulfilling and harbours deep inner wealth in itself. Although this incredibly profound approach to meditation is hardly accessible without a direct “taste” of the experience indicated above, it shall be briefly mentioned here.

A good understanding how mindfulness meditation unfolds its beneficial effects is pivotal, whether scientist or mindfulness practitioner. Here, models of the mindfulness mechanisms are a true blessing.

Such models direct scientists when specifying their hypotheses and when designing their studies. In turn, the results of these studies either lend further support to a model or challenge module assumptions, thus allowing researchers to either modify or fully reject a model.