Meditation’s Benefits Stretch Beyond the Person Who Meditates
Often framed as a boon for personal wellness, meditation helps us connect with and support others, too
Richard Drury/Getty Images
Listening to the daily news, with stories of war and conflict, can be disheartening. Unsurprisingly, data suggest that a majority of Americans feel exhausted and hopeless when they think about politics. Some psychologists have argued that Americans suffer from a sort of learned helplessness—the sense that nothing we do will make a difference—from hearing about violence such as mass shootings. We feel the pain of events in the news cycle but see ourselves as powerless to stop them.
In terms of coping with these events, meditation could help in more ways than one. The power of meditation for cultivating personal well-being is hardly a secret. For more than 20 years, neuroscientists have been documenting how mindfulness meditation can help people cultivate calm and improve their mood, among other benefits. Some recent research suggests it can also help people experience deeper psychological transformation, allowing regular practitioners to reach important insights about themselves and their world.
But there’s another consequence of meditation that people do not always anticipate. Despite the ways in which wellness movements have emphasized a highly individualistic way of thinking about meditation and self-care, meditation can also help care for and support others.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
When one person takes the time to regularly be still and attend to a specific cue, such as their breath or a mantra, their practice can have spillover benefits for the people around them. It’s an idea…
Read the full article here