Residential Meditation Retreats: Their Role in Contemplative Practice and Significance for Psychological Research

King, Brandon G.; Conklin, Quinn; Zanesco, Anthony P.; Saron, Clifford D.

doi:10.31231/osf.io/xsd92

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…However, the scenic retreat environment and the acute behavioral and social changes associated with participants' time in solitary meditation may have contributed to a number of nonspecific effects that could have influenced our outcomes. Residential retreat interventions provide a supportive and peaceful environment to help limit distraction and facilitate continued mindful awareness to ongoing experience (King, Conklin, Zanesco, & Saron, 2019). These elements might (indirectly) explain an unknown proportion of certain intervention outcomes, but they also directly support meditation‐related changes by facilitating continued practice, and calm, focused states of mind.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meditation training modulates brain electric microstates and felt states of awareness

Zanesco

Skwara

King

et al. 2021

Human Brain Mapping

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Meditation practice is believed to foster states of mindful awareness and mental quiescence in everyday life. If so, then the cultivation of these qualities with training ought to leave its imprint on the activity of intrinsic functional brain networks. In an intensive longitudinal study, we investigated associations between meditation practitioners' experiences of felt mindful awareness and changes in the spontaneous electrophysiological dynamics of functional brain networks. Experienced meditators were randomly assigned to complete 3 months of full‐time training in focused‐attention meditation (during an initial intervention) or to serve as waiting‐list controls and receive training second (during a later intervention). We collected broadband electroencephalogram (EEG) during rest at the beginning, middle, and end of the two training periods. Using a data‐driven approach, we segmented the EEG into a time series of transient microstate intervals based on clustering of topographic voltage patterns. Participants also provided daily reports of felt mindful awareness and mental quiescence, and reported daily on four experiential qualities of their meditation practice during training. We found that meditation training led to increases in mindful qualities of awareness, which corroborate contemplative accounts of deepening mental calm and attentional focus. We also observed reductions in the strength and duration of EEG microstates across both interventions. Importantly, changes in the dynamic sequencing of microstates were associated with daily increases in felt attentiveness and serenity during training. Our results connect shifts in subjective qualities of meditative experience with the large‐scale dynamics of whole brain functional EEG networks at rest.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meditation training modulates brain electric microstates and felt states of awareness

Zanesco

Skwara

King

et al. 2021

Human Brain Mapping

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“…Second, we aimed to prospectively study the perceived salutary and/or adverse impact of these experiences at two-weeks post-retreat. We chose six-day residential mindfulness meditation retreat interventions due to their format that delivers an intensive, sustained and standardized dose of meditation practice, which, based on theory and initial findings, provides optimal conditions for detection of peak meditation-related experiences and potential adverse effects (Baer et al, 2019;King et al, 2019;Lindahl et al, 2017). Moreover, we chose the prospective matched-controlled intervention design to detect meditation-related peak experiences by comparing peak experiences during meditation retreats relative to daily living among people systematically matched on age and lifetime mediation experience and recruited from the same community of meditators.…”

Section: Overview Of the Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We collected retreat group data over five insight (Vipassana) mindfulness meditation residential retreats run by a meditation retreat society [name and location are masked] (M(SD) = 19.2(8.4) participants per retreat). Retreats had a similar structure and setting to retreats in previous intensive meditation intervention studies (King et al, 2019) and to retreats held in large and 1 We defined as Caliper the minimal standardized difference between any primary control participant and backup control participant which allow us to select at least one backup control participant per primary control participant. The chosen values were age = 0.8, lifetime regular meditation practice hours = 0.6, lifetime meditation retreat days = 0.3. established insight meditation retreat centers (e.g.…”

Section: Mindfulness Meditation Retreatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peak Experiences During Insight Mindfulness Meditation Retreats and Their Salutary and Adverse Impact: A Prospective Matched-Controlled Intervention Study

Hadash¹,

Veksler²,

Dar³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Objective: We sought to address a growing debate regarding the adverse and salutary impact of unusual, extraordinary, or intense subjective experiences during mindfulness interventions. To do so, we empirically characterized such peak experiences during an intensive mindfulness meditation intervention and their impact post-intervention. Method: We conducted a preregistered prospective intervention study among 96 adults who registered to a six-day mindfulness meditation retreat and 47 matched-controls. Controls were selected from a pool of 487 people recruited from the same community of meditators as retreat participants and systematically matched to retreat group on age and lifetime meditation experience. Measures included the Peak Meditative Experience Scale (PMES) and the Impact of PMES (I-PMES). Results: Seventeen peak experiences that were predominantly pleasant (e.g., deep and unusual peace, aha! moment) occurred more frequently among retreat participants than among matched-controls in daily living (ps < .05; mean φ = .33). In contrast, 14 peak experiences that were mostly unpleasant (e.g., flashbacks, overwhelming sadness) occurred at similar rates in both groups (ps > .05). At two-week follow-up, the perceived impact of all pleasant and most unpleasant peak experiences was more salutary than adverse (ps ≤ .015; M Cohen’s d = 1.61). Conclusions: Peak experiences that resulted from intensive mindfulness meditation training were primarily pleasant and had a large salutary impact post-retreat. Inconsistent with conclusions from uncontrolled studies, findings document that intensive mindfulness meditation training may not contribute to unpleasant peak experiences, and even when they occurred their impact was typically more salutary than adverse.

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“…Widely used MBIs include (a) the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program ( Kabat-Zinn, 1982 ), which involves weekly group classes and daily home practice, (b) variants of MBSR developed for specific populations (e.g., Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy [MBCT] for depression ( Teasdale et al., 2000 )), (c) abbreviated MBIs ( Schumer et al., 2018 ), and (d) intensive MBI retreats ( King et al., 2019 ). Common to these MBIs is training in monitoring present-moment sensory experiences (e.g., thoughts, emotions, body sensations, sounds) with an orientation of acceptance and equanimity ( Bishop et al., 2004 ).…”

Section: What Are Mbis?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mindfulness interventions for offsetting health risk following early life stress: Promising directions

Lindsay

2021

Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health

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Early life stress (ELS), common to childhood maltreatment, socioeconomic disadvantage, and racial discrimination, is thought to create a proinflammatory phenotype that increases risk for poor health in adulthood. Systemic change is needed to address the root causes of ELS, but a substantial number of adults are already at increased health risk by virtue of ELS exposure. Interventions that target stress pathways have the potential to interrupt the trajectory from ELS to inflammatory disease risk in adulthood. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), which train acceptance toward present-moment experience, have shown promise for reducing stress and improving a variety of stress-sensitive health outcomes. Although MBIs have primarily been conducted in more advantaged populations, evidence suggests that they may be uniquely effective for improving mental health and health-related quality of life among those with a history of ELS. Whether these effects extend to physical health remains unknown. To shed light on this question, I review evidence that MBIs influence inflammatory markers in at-risk samples, explore the promise of MBIs for improving stress-related health outcomes in diverse at-risk populations, and describe adaptations to MBIs that may increase their acceptability and efficacy in populations exposed to ELS. This prior work sets the stage for well-controlled RCTs to evaluate whether MBIs influence stress and inflammatory pathways among those exposed to ELS and for pragmatic and implementation trials focused on disseminating MBIs to reach these at-risk populations. Overall, the evidence assembled here shows the potential of MBIs for offsetting physical health risk related to ELS.

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Residential Meditation Retreats: Their Role in Contemplative Practice and Significance for Psychological Research

Cited by 4 publications

References 10 publications

Meditation training modulates brain electric microstates and felt states of awareness

Meditation training modulates brain electric microstates and felt states of awareness

Peak Experiences During Insight Mindfulness Meditation Retreats and Their Salutary and Adverse Impact: A Prospective Matched-Controlled Intervention Study

Mindfulness interventions for offsetting health risk following early life stress: Promising directions

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