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Meditation
Guide Training TMT®
Learn to guide meditation with greater clarity, care and responsibility while developing a deeper understanding of contemplative practice, human experience, ethics, cultural context and the contemporary evidence surrounding meditation.
History · Traditions · Science · Practice
Meditation is not one practice, one tradition or one purpose.
What is now called meditation encompasses a wide family of contemplative practices developed across different historical, philosophical and religious contexts. Their methods range from attention and breath practices to contemplation, recitation, visualization, compassion, self-inquiry and investigation of consciousness and experience.
Understanding Meditation
What Is Meditation?
Meditation is better understood as a family of practices than as a single technique. It can involve attention regulation, contemplation, bodily awareness, recitation, visualization, affect cultivation, self-inquiry and forms of non-discursive awareness.
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Historical Foundations
The Search for the Origins of Meditation
There is no securely documented moment at which meditation was invented. Historical evidence instead suggests a gradual development of contemplative, ritual and ascetic practices across interacting cultures and traditions.
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Vedic & Upaniṣadic Traditions
From Ritual to Interiorization
Later Vedic and Upaniṣadic thought increasingly turned attention toward breath, mind, consciousness, self, knowledge and ultimate reality. External ritual became increasingly accompanied by contemplation and interior inquiry.
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Ancient India
The Wider Renunciant Environment
Meditation did not develop through one simple line of transmission. Buddhist, Jain, Brahmanical and other renunciant communities formed part of a wider environment of ascetic, philosophical and contemplative experimentation.
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Buddhist Foundations
Meditation in Early Buddhism
Early Buddhist contemplative practice belonged to a larger path involving ethics, concentration, wisdom and liberation. Concepts such as bhāvanā, jhāna, samādhi and sati describe related but non-identical forms of mental cultivation.
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Buddhist Traditions
Meditation Across Buddhist Traditions
Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Chan, Zen, Seon, Thiền, Pure Land, Tibetan Buddhism and Vajrayāna contain different practices and philosophical frameworks. Buddhist meditation cannot responsibly be reduced to one universal method.
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Meditation & Thought
Is Meditation About Stopping Thought?
Not necessarily. Some practices quiet discursive thinking, while others deliberately employ analysis, inquiry, language, imagery, recollection or affect. A more useful question is what a particular meditation practice does with thought.
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Contemporary Psychology
How Can Meditation Be Classified?
Researchers have proposed several taxonomies, including attentional, constructive and deconstructive practices and empirical groupings involving mindfulness, body awareness, contemplation, mantra, visualization and movement.
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Meditation Science
What Does Contemporary Science Establish?
Research supports benefits for certain meditation-based interventions and particular outcomes, but results depend strongly on the practice, population, control condition and study design.
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Brain & Behaviour
Neuroscience and the Risk of Overinterpretation
Neuroimaging studies have investigated processes associated with attention, emotion and self-related cognition. Yet meditation techniques and study designs differ considerably, and there is no single established neural signature of meditation.
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Critical Perspective
Meditation Is Not Universally Beneficial
Meditation is an active psychological practice rather than a neutral activity. Many people report benefits, but difficult and adverse experiences have also been documented and should be investigated rather than assumed not to occur.
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Conceptual Clarity
Meditation and Mindfulness Are Not the Same
Meditation describes a broad family of practices. Mindfulness may describe a Buddhist concept, a quality of awareness, a psychological state or trait, a family of practices, or one component of a contemporary clinical intervention.
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Toward a Definition
A Scientifically Cautious Definition of Meditation
Meditation may provisionally be understood as a heterogeneous family of intentionally cultivated practices that regulate, observe, construct, investigate or transform aspects of attention, cognition, emotion, perception, embodiment, awareness or the experienced sense of self.
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A Wider Perspective
Meditation in Context
Meditation has no single demonstrable origin, technique or purpose. Its meaning changes with tradition, philosophy, culture and historical period. Context is therefore central to both understanding and researching meditation.
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Benefits & Evidence
Associated Benefits of Meditation
Research has examined stress, anxiety, depression, cognitive functioning, emotional regulation, pain, sleep, cardiovascular measures, inflammation and immune-related biomarkers. The strength of evidence varies considerably across these outcomes.
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Safety & Responsible Practice
Risks, Adverse Effects and Unwanted Experiences
Difficult experiences associated with meditation may include anxiety, panic-like responses, traumatic memories, alterations in perception or sense of self, sleep disturbance and, more rarely, severe psychiatric experiences. Practice, intensity, person and context all matter.
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Learn meditation with depth, context and responsibility.
Explore contemplative practice not as a single universal technique, but through its histories, traditions, psychological processes, scientific evidence, possibilities and limitations.
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