29 Apr MORE research providing MORE reasons why you should meditate MORE!
from the wonderful Geater Good website
NB: and if you're in Sydney, you might like to check out our upcoming Mindfulness in Action course (HERE)
You’re in a waiting room, seated next to two other people. There are only three chairs. A woman enters on crutches, a medical boot on one leg. She winces, checks her phone, sighs uncomfortably, and leans against the wall. Neither of the other people responds.
Do you get up and offer her your seat?
You’ll be much more likely to if you meditate, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.
In the study, Paul Condon and Dave DeSteno of Northeastern University and Gaelle Desbordes of Massachusetts General Hospital assigned people with little or no meditation experience to one of two eight-week meditation classes, or put them on a wait list for a class. One class was a mindfulness meditation class geared toward focusing and calming the mind. The other covered similar terrain but also discussed compassion and suffering.
Both meditation classes were taught in a completely secular format. Their weekly one-hour meetings were divided evenly between guided meditation practice and discussion. Students were also given audio of 20-minute guided meditations for daily “home practice.” (Here’s a taste of the kinds of mindfulness exercises used in these classes.)
After eight weeks, the researchers observed how people responded to that waiting room situation. (By the way, the two other people seated and the be-crutched woman were confederates, planted there for the purposes of the study.)
The researchers found that 50 percent of people from either of the meditation classes gave up their seat, whereas only 15 percent of the non-meditators did. It didn’t matter which class they’d taken: People from the mindfulness meditation or the mindfulness-plus-compassion meditation class were equally likely to help. So what this study shows is that meditation, whether or not it explicitly focuses on compassion, significantly increases compassionate behavior…
…keep reading the full and original article HERE
And again, if you're in Sydney and interested in learning more about applied mindfulness meditation, then CLICK HERE to learn about and to register for our upcoming course