Four Things You Probably Don't Know About Meditation (and a Free Tool for Understanding 100 Meditation techniques )

A lot of people associate meditation with New Age spiritual practices that might seem anathema to the careful, evidence-based thinking we advocate at Clearer Thinking. But the fact is, there's a substantial body of evidence that some kinds of meditation can help with things like stress, anxiety, depression, pain, and perhaps blood pressure (though the strength of evidence varies a lot across different kinds of meditation and types of benefits). 

It's useful to think of meditation as a sort of mental exercise; just as physical exercise can help you hone your body and develop physical skills, the mental exercise of meditation can help you hone your mind and develop mental skills like concentration, disengaging from unhelpful thoughts, and tolerating physical discomfort. You don't need to believe in extravagant metaphysical claims about reincarnation or universal consciousness to improve your life with meditation.

While meditation is, of course, part of some spiritual and religious traditions, the view that meditation is inherently spiritual is just one common misconception about it. In this article, we're going to bust a few more misconceptions by telling you four things you (probably) don't already know about meditation. We hope that this will pique your interest enough to check out our new (totally free!) meditation site, which features a categorization of more than 100 different meditation techniques, along with a walkthrough of how to do them, and skills you can build by meditating (more on the site soon).

Misconception 1:  Meditation is harmless

What could be more harmless than sitting still? Well, although most people who try meditation report being glad to have done so, it is important to note that meditation can also sometimes cause adverse effects, and these can't always be predicted. Meditation's similarity to physical exercise is relevant again: we know that physical exercise is beneficial most of the time, but it can still have downsides such as soreness and injuries. Particularly if you're already injured before you start.

Our new, free meditation site discusses in more detail a number of potential risks associated with meditation:

• Psychosis-related problems: For people vulnerable to psychosis-related disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (i.e., people with family history or episodes in their past), meditation may trigger psychotic or manic symptoms. 

• Difficult memories and thoughts: Meditation can bring difficult feelings, thoughts, and memories to the surface. For example, if you have experienced a trauma in the past and generally avoid thinking about that trauma, meditation might cause it to resurface. 

• Strange and distressing experiences: You might experience things like anxiety, dissociation, depersonalization, heightened sensory and emotional sensitivity, and uncomfortable body sensations (e.g., twitching, spasms), among other things. These are more likely to occur at higher doses of meditation (e.g., on an intensive meditation retreat), but can still occur for some people at low doses.

• Lasting psychological changes: You might find that meditating at high doses produces long-lasting changes in your perception and personality. These changes are commonly experienced as positive, but they can also be jarring and unsettling.

• Unethical teachers: Some meditators gravitate towards traditions that involve following a teacher as a “guru.” This comes with benefits (e.g., motivation and guidance), but creates opportunities for exploitation. Beware of any teacher who appears to desire excessive admiration or obedience, or who crosses financial or sexual boundaries, or who claims to be more enlightened than everyone else. (Note: Such traits are also associated with cults. To learn more about cult-like traits or for help assessing the likelihood that any given group is a cult, you can check out our free Cult Assessment Tool.)

If you are interested in trying meditation, it's worth reflecting on your exposure to these kinds of risks. If you're vulnerable to psychosis-related disorders, consult a mental health professional before beginning meditation. If you have PTSD or a significant history of trauma, seek professional guidance and a gradual, trauma-sensitive approach. And, for any of these concerns, you can consider chatting with an experienced meditation teacher. Organizations like Cheetah House provide relevant dedicated services.

More generally, if you try a meditation technique and you feel it isn't good for you or is having negative effects, simply stop and switch to another technique, or find an experienced and reliable teacher who can guide you in it.

Misconception 2: There are only a few ways to meditate 

Meditation is often spoken about like a monolith, but it actually contains a huge amount of variation, and there are more than 100 different meditation techniques!  It's a frustrating fact that existing meditation resources tend to focus on only one or a few types of meditation, like mindfulness or koans or mantras. But there are actually a huge number of types of meditation out there. The problem is that information about them is scattered across disparate sources, and it's difficult to find a bird's-eye overview of everything in one place. In our new, free meditation site we attempt to remedy that. Here's a list of the 104 meditation techniques we've included on the site so far, organized into four categories:

Attention	Contemplation	Investigation	Perspective
Breath focus	Alternative ending contemplation	Speed of mind investigation	Integration of multiple selves
Breath counting	Expansive self	Intuitive body movement	Reinterpreting unpleasantness
Choiceless focus	Deity meditation	Transition focus	Seeing freshly
Sensorial focus	Positive trait contemplation	Beginnings and endings focus	Curiosity
Intentional distraction	Safe place contemplation	Thoughts vs raw sensations investigation	Profundity attribution
Narrow focus	Compassionate other contemplation	Looking for self	Changing locus of experience
Slow focus	Positive noticing	Awareness-enquiry	Putting in perspective
Broad focus	Idea contemplation	Non-sensory focus	Synesthesia
Simultaneous broad and narrow focus	Intention contemplation	Boundary-enquiry	Negative with positive replacement
Refocussing	Solution contemplation	Fire kasina	Attitude switching
Noticing distraction	Death contemplation	Mindfulness of physical pain	Welcoming negative feelings
Mindfulness of physical sensations	Memory contemplation	Mindfulness of secondary emotions	Non-judgement
Joy	Interconnection contemplation	Mindfulness of thinking	Urge non-reactivity
Thought cessation	Loving-kindness	Mindfulness of sense of self	Acceptance
Music meditation	Self-compassion	Restfulness investigation	Savouring
Sound meditation	Sudden state change	Mental habit investigation	Loving-kindness noting
Mindfulness of walking	Energetic breathing	Emotion investigation	Affectionate breathing
Mantra	Gratitude	Distraction reflection
Eye Gazing	Motivation contemplation	Emotional trigger investigation
Alternate breathing	Memory rescripting	Emptiness investigation
Relaxing body scan	Affirmation	Categories of experience investigation
Mindful progressive muscle relaxation	Positive visualisation	Impermanence investigation
Do nothing	Negative visualisation	Pain vs suffering investigation
Thought defusion	Tonglen	Nonduality investigation
Mindfulness of thought energy	Koan	Intrinsic wellbeing investigation
	Unsatisfactoriness contemplation	Awareness vs contents investigation
	Imagination enhancement	Automaticity investigation
	Who am I?	Primacy of awareness investigation
	Repulsiveness contemplation	Dependency of experiences investigation
	Analytical meditation	Subtle phenomena investigation
		Thought reflection
		Headless way

This list focuses more on the techniques than on specific traditions. So we haven't mentioned traditions by name, except where a tradition is synonymous with a technique (e.g., “kasina”). For example, transcendental meditation's primary technique is the use of mantras, which we've included under the name “Mantra.”

Every single one of these techniques has its own page on our site, which includes:

• a description of the technique / instructions for trying it,

• a difficulty level,

• the mental skills it can help you develop, and

• a link to a simple tool that talks you through the process of trying the technique yourself.

For example, here's what the page for the “Relaxing Body Scan” technique looks like:

Misconception 3: Meditation is easy (e.g., "it's just focusing on your breath") 

In reality, meditation is "hard" in the same sense that going to the gym is "hard." Yes, there are easier meditations you can do, much like there are easy ways to work out at the gym. But meditation (like working out) is a way to practice skills. They are just mental skills instead of physical ones. And much like working out, even exercises that seem easy can be hard if done carefully and precisely. But what sort of skills does meditation develop? Well, there are many you can work on.

Imagine you're lying in bed, ruminating about a conversation you had during the day. You're worrying that you embarrassed yourself, or that people were judging you. In such situations, it would be great to have more control over your attention—to be able to get some distance from those thoughts, or to notice them, appreciate the purpose they serve, and let them go. Meditation gives you space to practice and develop skills like that, so you can then use them more easily when you find yourself actually needing them.

We've organized the skills that various meditation traditions claim to help you build into eight categories. Some are more difficult than others, and some are more robustly evidence-based than others (though, note: we've left out the most outlandish claims, such as that meditation can teach you to fly). Here's our categorization:

1. Modifying your attention
Modifying attention to detail	Modifying attentional direction
Modifying attentional range	Sustaining attention
2. Modifying your feelings
Access absorption states	Reduce negative emotion
Reduce physical pain-related suffering	Quiet the mind
Increase positive emotion	Increase loving-kindness
Increase self-compassion	Feel better suddenly
Process memories	Cease thoughts
3. Increasing self-awareness
Notice mental habits	Recognize your emotions
Understand your distractions	Notice emotional triggers
Clarify intentions
4. Changing your perspective
Change attitude	Integrate multiple selves
Put in perspective	Simulate synesthesia
Notice novelty	Change conceptual habits
Increase acceptance/equanimity	Increase preparedness/resilience
Reduce sensuous desire
5. Improving mindfulness
Defuse from thoughts	Be mindful of sensations
Deconstruct experiences
6. Recognizing the nature of your mind
Notice emptiness	Notice categories of experience
Notice impermanence	Distinguish pain vs suffering
Notice nonduality	Notice intrinsic wellbeing
Notice awareness vs contents	Notice automaticity
Notice primacy of awareness	Notice dependency of experiences
Notice new processes	Notice speed of mind
7. Improving your cognitive faculties
Increase creativity	Solve problems
Improve memory	Enhance sensory capacity
8. Change your identity
Expand self	Deconstruct self
Notice absence of solid self	Identify with awareness
Reduce boundary of self	Change locus of experience
Enhance positive self

Some of these skills map cleanly onto constructs with real support from randomized controlled trials – particularly skills relating to:

• attention regulation

• reducing negative emotion

• self-compassion/loving-kindness,

• distinguishing pain vs suffering

That being said, researchers usually test complete meditation programs, rather than isolated skills, so the evidence for the effectiveness of the skills themselves is indirect (but compelling, we think).

Other skills (particularly in the “recognizing the nature of your mind” and “changing your identity” categories) come mainly from contemplative traditions and first-person phenomenological reports, rather than randomized controlled trials. That's not the same as being false; many simply haven't been tested scientifically.

If any of those skills sound appealing to you, you might want to give meditation a try! The skills page on our new site lets you expand each of those categories and pick specific skills within them to work on. Individual skills often have multiple techniques associated with them. You can simply pick a technique to try and begin developing the skill.

Misconception 4: Meditation isn't scientific 

Despite its “woo-woo” associations, a substantial body of empirical evidence supports the claim that some forms of meditation can be useful with modest (but real) effects for a variety of health and wellbeing outcomes. It's not a silver bullet or a cure-all, but it's also not total bullshit. The benefits are most obvious when meditation is compared against what are known as “passive controls” (e.g., receiving no intervention, being on a waitlist, or just receiving your usual care). Meditation typically doesn't outperform credible alternatives (e.g., CBT, exercise, or medication), but some studies (such as this one and this one) suggest modest benefits for people who add meditation to their usual care. Here's what we take from this: meditation likely can't replace other forms of care like therapy, but adding some kinds of meditation to your other strategies for combating (some kinds of) problems in your life may well give you extra benefit.

That being said, other kinds of meditation have only emerging scientific evidence in their favor, while others have no scientific evidence at all. As we've mentioned above, that's not necessarily because they've been studied and found to be ineffective: it's typically because they simply haven't been studied enough or at all.

Let's talk about the evidence for a few different kinds of meditation.

Mindfulness meditation

The most-studied form of meditation, with the most robust evidence in its favor, is mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is often involved in a number of the techniques listed earlier in this article, such as:

• Breath focus

• Choiceless focus

• Noticing distraction

• Mindfulness of physical sensations

• Mindfulness of physical pain

• Mindfulness of thinking

• Mindfulness of walking

• Non-judgement

• Acceptance

• Relaxing body scan

The largest review of relevant literature is a review of 44 meta-analyses of mindfulness-based interventions, which found that mindfulness-based interventions generally produced small-to-moderate benefits for anxiety, depression, stress, pain, and quality of life. There appears to be less evidence that mindfulness helps with things like sleep, substance use, eating habits, and weight. As with meditation research generally, the results for mindfulness meditation are better when compared against no intervention or usual care, rather than against credible alternatives.

Deliberate breathwork

A meta-analysis of 12 randomized breathwork trials found small-to-medium improvements in stress, anxiety, and depression that were comparable to the effects of other treatments like CBT, physical activity, and mindfulness meditation. From this, the authors of the meta-analysis argue:

“While we are not proposing breathwork as a substitute for other treatments, it could complement other therapeutic interventions, potentially leading to additive effects of such health behaviours.”

However, this evidence for breathwork should be considered far more tentative than the very strong evidence bases for CBT and physical activity.

Interestingly, this meta-analysis also found that differences in styles of breathwork did not seem to affect the results, which suggests it might be possible to achieve these results with a variety of different techniques. The breathwork techniques we have listed on our site include:

• Energetic breathing

• Alternate breathing

• Affectionate breathing

However, the authors of this meta-analysis also caution that their results “should be interpreted in the light of” the fact that all of the trials were found to have at least “some concerns” about risk of methodological bias, and three out of twelve were found to have “high risk” (in terms of risk of not being reliable). This doesn't mean you should disregard the results out of hand. We suggest taking them as some evidence in favor of breathwork, but (like with any belief) remaining open to the possibility of stronger evidence to the contrary.

Loving-kindness meditation

This kind of meditation is characterized by cultivating feelings of goodwill towards yourself and others. It is most directly represented on our site by techniques like Loving-kindness and Loving-kindness noting. It's also closely related to techniques like Compassionate other contemplation, Self-compassion, and Affectionate breathing.

A meta-analysis of 23 randomized controlled trials found that, when compared with control groups who received no intervention, loving-kindness meditation interventions had positive effects on mindfulness, compassion, positive affect, negative affect, anxiety, and depression. That is promising. However, loving-kindness meditation was found to have no benefit over active controls or alternative treatments, so there's a chance that the benefits measured are actually benefits of participating in something that looks and feels like a credible intervention, rather than loving-kindness meditation itself, or that it is useful but not necessarily better than other techniques that are commonly used. Confidence in these findings is also reduced by the fact that the different trials in the meta-analysis had lots of different formats, durations, and measured outcomes (in slightly more technical terms: heterogeneity was high, which increases uncertainty).

Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation (which is actually a trademarked term!) is a standardized form of silent meditation that involves the use of a mantra (typically a deliberately meaningless syllable derived from Sanskrit). On our site, this is most closely related to the 'Mantra' technique (though that technique isn't actually "Transcendental Meditation").

A recent and thorough Cochrane review of the effects of Transcendental Meditation on cardiovascular disease found that this kind of meditation might have some positive effects on one risk marker (i.e., systolic blood pressure) but “little or no effect” on anxiety, depression, or perceived stress when compared to other treatments. When compared to no treatment, there was “low-certainty evidence” of reduction in anxiety and depression.

However, this is a form of meditation with which we advise caution. It may well have some benefits, but the official tradition known as Transcendental Meditation is also associated with a lot of extravagant and credulity-straining claims that have not been substantiated by empirical testing (despite what some practitioners might tell you). For a non-exhaustive summary, here's what the famous scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan had to say about it in 1996:

“The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee they promise through meditation to be able to walk you through walls, to make you invisible, to enable you to fly. By thinking in unison they have, they say, diminished the crime rate in Washington DC and caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, among other secular miracles. Not one smattering of real evidence has been offered for any such claims. TM sells folk medicine, runs trading companies, medical clinics and 'research' universities, and has unsuccessfully entered politics. In its oddly charismatic leader, its promise of community, and the offer of magical powers in exchange for money and fervent belief, it is typical of many pseudosciences marketed for sacerdotal export.”

So, should you try meditation?

The key thing to notice about meditation is that it's not just one thing. And, because it's not just one thing, there's not just one accurate way to think about it. We like to think about it as a collection of mental exercises. Just like physical exercises, different people are likely to enjoy or benefit from each one at least a little differently. This means that the best approach (as far as we're concerned) is to explore what is on offer and see what is most promising based on the evidence and your own situation and goals. 

Our free meditation site is designed to make understanding meditation and trying techniques out much easier. You can easily peruse and sample any of the 104 techniques, or you can pick a mental skill that targets something you care about and give it a go. We'd be delighted if you'd check it out:

Launch Demystifying Meditation!