There are tons and tons of meditations out there. And for all your hard core meditators out there, I’m sure you know what I mean.

But are all meditations the same? And I’m talking about the actual results here. Not just the length, words, or feelings used in meditations. This gets a little scientific but it’s worth a look at. The brain is an amazing and uncanny thing.

So if you want to know what happens to your brain and body as you go through different types of meditations, check out this presentation given by Dr. Fred Travis at the Science of Consciousness Conference in 2006.

“Are All Meditations the Same?”

Comparing the Neural Patterns of Mindfulness Meditation, Tibetan Buddhism practice “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion,” and the Transcendental Meditation Technique.

By Dr. Fred Travis

The idea for this talk came when I was reviewing a grant to fund the application of Mindfulness Meditation to deal with pain in terminally ill cancer patients. In the rationale section, the author had 60 citations to support the use of mindfulness meditation in this grant. However, 60% of these references were for studies that used the Transcendental Meditation technique as the meditation intervention.

Was the author being scientifically dishonest?

I don’t think so.

Many individuals think that all meditations are the same. Thus, many people feel that scientific research using one meditation tradition can generalize to effects from any meditation practice.

Are all meditations the same?

Short Answer Is “No”.

The short answer is: No. As we will see, meditations differ in procedure, neural imaging patterns, EEG patterns and benefits.

For a full answer.…

I direct you to a book that Jonathon Shear has written discussing in detail the procedures, contents, objects, beliefs, and goals of 10 meditation practices. He asked the abbots of monasteries and the leader of ashrams to write their own story.

For diagrams, presentation slides, and the rest of the presentation, click here »