There’s a lot of things we can question when it comes to meditation. For example, we can seriously doubt any claim about meditation solving all of our problems, curing mental disorders, or being a means of achieving world peace. But there’s a minimal idea we surely can’t doubt—that meditation is relaxing. In effect, of all the different kinds of meditation out there, we’d agree that if they have one thing in common, it’s the fact that they induce relaxation.
As with many other beliefs we take for granted, it turns out that this is more of an assumption than actual fact. How can meditation not be relaxing, you ask? Well, there’s two answers to that. One is that there are different kinds of meditation, and each is different in nature from the rest. So we should not necessarily be surprised if some are not so relaxing, or at least not so relaxing at the beginning stages. The second answer is that some of these meditations requite a lot of mental effort, and mental effort itself is actually not so relaxing.
The problem is that we usually think of relaxation in terms of how we feel on a conscious level. But that’s not the only way to think about it. In psychology experiments, we can do two different things to see whether someone is relaxed. We can ask a participant if s/he feels relaxed, but we can also look at heart rate and hormones to see whether the body itself is in a state of relaxation or arousal. Oftentimes, these two strategies are pursued simultaneously, because researchers are well aware that our subjective feelings can diverge from our bodily experience.
In a recent study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences looked at the effect of three different kinds of meditation on meditators’ subjective sense of relaxation as well as bodily arousal. The meditators were separated into a (1) breathing, (2) loving-kindness, and (3) observing-thoughts meditation, and engaged in daily meditation for a period of three months. Each week, researchers asked meditators how much effort they experience when meditating, as well as how relaxed it makes them feel. At the same time, they looked at meditators’ heart rate (HR) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV), both measures of bodily arousal (fight-or-flight response).
The results were interesting, because they showed that not all three forms of meditation are actually relaxing, at least not in all situations. To understand why, we need to know what each form of meditation is about. Breathing meditation is the most simple, since all that’s needed is breathing in a certain way as well as focusing on the act of breathing. Loving-kindness meditation is more effortful, since it requires you to focus on mental images and to generate and sustain positive feelings. Finally, observing-thoughts meditation is also more effortful, because it’s based on focusing on and categorizing thoughts so as to detach oneself from them.
It’s no surprise that loving-kindness and observing-thoughts meditations were found not to be so relaxing. And the reason is because of the higher effort involved in these forms of meditation. The authors found that compared to the breathing group, meditators in these two other groups had a higher heart rate and lower heart rate variability, which are both associated with bodily arousal (i.e., non-relaxation). Plus, at the early period of the study, loving-kindness meditation was less liked compared to the two other versions.
Does this mean that loving-kindness and observing-thoughts meditators didn’t enjoy what they were doing, or that they were stressed? Not at all. It turns out that, with more practice, they find meditation less effortful and more enjoyable over time. So their subjective sense of relaxation and enjoyment increases with more practice, though their bodily arousal stays the same.
So what conclusions can we draw from all of this? First, that some forms of meditation are more effortful and not so relaxing. With time, meditators’ the sense of subjective relaxation increases, while their bodies remain aroused. We might not think of this as a problem, but it does become important when we consider certain personality types, or people with mental disorders. As the authors argue, “individuals with related health problems, or anxiety disorders which are known to be related to increased cardiac arousal, might not benefit from loving-kindness meditation and observing-thoughts meditation.”
So people with anxiety, or any health problem related to higher cardiac activity, may well find loving-kindness and observing-thoughts meditation as unsettling, especially at the beginning. They may be better off pursuing the easier, less effortful and less bodily arousing alternative: breathing meditation.
mind.one 