Meditation News and Research

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The term meditation refers to a variety of techniques or practices intended to focus or control attention. Most of them are rooted in Eastern religious or spiritual traditions. These techniques have been used by many different cultures throughout the world for thousands of years.

Today, many people use meditation outside of its traditional religious or cultural settings as a form of mind-body medicine. Many claims have been made about its value in promoting or improving health and wellness.

Machine learning predicts psychosocial resilience among healthcare workers

A team of researchers trained three machine learning models-Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine (SVM)-to classify healthcare workers according to their level of psychosocial resilience, using information collected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

18 Sep 2026

Mindfulness and tai chi practices help cancer survivors manage symptoms

The cancer journey for many patients doesn’t end after treatment. Many live with long-term side effects that affect their ability to sleep and cause pain, impacting daily life.

16 Sep 2026

Study identifies neural signature of pure awareness during meditation

What happens in the brain when thoughts, perceptions and other everyday mental activity become very quiet, while we remain awake and aware?

16 Sep 2026

Laughter therapy eases breathlessness in people with COPD

A clinical trial for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) shows that laughter therapy can reduce breathing difficulties and is as effective as more traditional breathing exercises. The research is presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

6 Sep 2026

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy does not worsen depression symptoms

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Center for Healthy Minds (CHM), along with UW–Madison Department of Educational Psychology and a multi-university team, have found no evidence that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) increased a risk of symptom worsening, in a meta-analysis published in JAMA Network Open.

21 Aug 2026

Digital program reduces anxiety and depression in adults with chronic medical conditions

A digital program combining guided movement, breathing and meditation exercises, and coping-skills training reduced anxiety and depression symptoms in adults with chronic medical conditions, according to a new study published August 20th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine by Puneeta Tandon of the University of Alberta, Canada, and colleagues.

20 Aug 2026

Psilocybin may make the brain more organized than scientists expected

In 62 adults, researchers combined fMRI, EEG and machine learning to examine how psilocybin reshapes brain activity during rest, meditation, music and movie viewing. They found that context-sensitive neural organization tracked the intensity and quality of psychedelic experiences and was associated with next-day mindset change.

20 Aug 2026

World's largest single-site study maps brain changes under psilocybin

A landmark five-year study by Monash University has found psychedelics reorganise brain patterns, giving clinicians powerful new insights into their therapeutic potential.

19 Aug 2026

Silencing prefrontal cortex helps mice adopt better strategies

The prefrontal cortex, a brain region long associated with learning more flexible behaviors, can sometimes block the ability to think outside the box, a new study in mice shows.

7 Aug 2026

Scent-enhanced virtual reality eased negative emotions after use

Integrating scents into virtual reality may reduce negative emotions in isolated environments, but more research is needed for sustained psychological benefits.

3 Jul 2026

New USC clinical trial explores psilocybin for mental health

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the Brain and Creativity Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center have launched the University of Southern California's first study of psychedelic therapy.

16 Jun 2026

Yoga and meditation show promise for gut health

This systematic review found that yoga and Buddhist meditation were associated with favorable gut microbiota and metabolite profiles in four human studies involving healthy adults. However, because participants largely followed vegetarian or vegan diets and no randomized controlled trials were included, the findings cannot prove that meditation alone reshapes the gut microbiome.

24 May 2026

Second-career nursing candidates help solve national staffing shortages

While the usual conversation about our national nursing shortage focuses on how to recruit young people, there is another potential pipeline: people in their 40s and 50s—often pursuing a second career—who are also, in many ways, exactly the nurses that NYU Langone Health needs.

22 May 2026

Regular arts and physical activity linked to slower aging

Research shows that leisure activities, including arts engagement and physical exercise, are linked to slower epigenetic aging and improved health outcomes.

14 May 2026

Can meditation backfire? Study finds brief mindfulness may heighten stereotype bias

Mindful meditation may not only fail to reduce cognitive bias but, based on the study findings, may exacerbate stereotypes.

10 May 2026

Yoga to help manage obesity-related heart and metabolic risks

The impact of yoga on heart health in obesity is modest, suggesting it as a complementary approach for improving metabolic outcomes in high BMI populations.

27 Apr 2026

Sugar intake may reduce effectiveness of relaxation exercises

How does sugar affect relaxation exercises? A new study carried out by researchers from the University of Konstanz provides revealing insights into the connection between blood glucose and the autonomic nervous system: The intake of sugar counteracts relaxation.

7 Apr 2026

Loving-kindness meditation links to lower anxiety through self-compassion

A new study suggests that loving-kindness and compassion meditation may be linked to lower anxiety over time, not just through longer practice, but also by building self-compassion and loosening the grip of distressing thoughts.

31 Mar 2026

How gut imbalance may drive obesity, diabetes, and heart disease

A new review argues that gut dysbiosis is closely linked to metabolic dysfunction through intertwined effects on inflammation, oxidative stress, gut barrier integrity, microbial metabolites, and epigenetic regulation. It also highlights microbiome-targeted strategies such as high-fiber diets, probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, exercise, and fecal microbiota transplantation as promising ways to support metabolic health.

30 Mar 2026

Can your voice reveal stress levels?

This research explores speech prosody as a stress marker, analyzing the effects of relaxation methods on vocal changes and their implications for stress relief.

23 Mar 2026