Meditation training can help improve overall wellbeing of older people

An 18month meditation programme can increase the wellbeing of older persons according to a new randomised controlled trial led by an international team codirected by UCL The findings published in PLOS ONE show that meditation can improve peoples awareness connection to others and insightWhile the meditation training did not confer significant benefits on two commonly used measures of psychological wellbeing and quality of life the researchers say their findings may reveal limitations in existing methods of tracking wellbeing Lead author Marco Schlosser UCL Psychiatry and University of Geneva said As the global population ages it is increasingly crucial to understand how we can support older adults in maintaining and deepening their psychological wellbeingIn our study we tested whether longterm meditation training can enhance important dimensions of wellbeing Our findings suggest that meditation is a promising nonpharmacological approach to support human flourishing in late life The study is the longest randomised meditation training trial conducted to date and explored the impact of an 18month meditation programme on the psychological wellbeing of more than 130 healthy Frenchspeaking people aged 65 to 84 The study led by Principal Investigator Professor Gael Chetelat took place in Caen France It was conducted by the European Unions Horizon 2020funded MeditAgeing Silver Sante Study research group which involves UCL Inserm University of Geneva Universite de Caen Normandy Lyon Neuroscience Research Center University of Liege Technische Universitat Dresden and Friedrich Schiller University JenaThe researchers compared a meditation programme which included a ninemonth mindfulness module followed by a ninemonth loving kindness and compassion module delivered by weekly group sessions two hours long daily home practice at least 20 minutes and one retreat day with a group that did English language training as a comparison group and a nointervention control groupThe team found that meditation training significantly impacted a global score that measures the wellbeing dimensions of awareness connection and insight Awareness describes an undistracted and intimate attentiveness to ones thoughts feelings and surroundings which can support a sense of calm and deep satisfaction Connection captures feelings such as respect gratitude and kinship that can support more positive relationships with others Insight refers to selfknowledge and understanding of how thoughts and feelings participate in shaping our perception and how to transform unhelpful patterns of thought relating to ourselves and the worldThe benefits of meditation training to an established measure of psychological quality of life were not superior to English language training while neither intervention significantly impacted another widely used measure of psychological wellbeing The researchers suggest this may be because these two established measures do not cover the qualities and depth of human flourishing that can potentially be cultivated by longerterm meditation training so benefits to awareness connection and insight are missedThe programme did not benefit everyone equally as participants who reported lower levels of psychological wellbeing at the start of the trial showed greater improvements compared to those who already had higher levels of wellbeing Coauthor Dr Natalie Marchant UCL Psychiatry said We hope that further research will clarify which people are most likely to benefit from meditation training as it may confer stronger benefits on some specific groups Now that we have evidence that meditation training can help older adults we hope that further refinements in partnership with colleagues from other research disciplines could make meditation programmes even more beneficial Senior author Dr Antoine Lutz Lyon Neuroscience Research Center Inserm France said By showing the potential of meditation programmes our findings pave the way for more targeted and effective programmes that can help older adults flourish as we seek to go beyond simply preventing disease or illhealth and instead take a holistic approach to helping people across the full spectrum of human wellbeingThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever