Meditation And the State In Research
Prepared for:
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Meditation has been a spiritual and healing practice in some parts of the world for more than 5,000 years. During the last 40 years, the practice of meditation has become increasingly popular in Western countries as a complementary mind-body therapeutic strategy for a variety of health-related problems. Meditation and its therapeutic effects have been characterized in many ways in the scientific literature. The complex nature of meditation and the coexistence of many perspectives adopted to describe the characteristics of the practice have contributed to great variations in the reports of its therapeutic effects across the studies. There is a need to evaluate the evidence that has emerged within the past several decades on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare.