Source: photo by Nickolai Kashirin
March 10, 2015—Here in the Bay Area we may have a distorted picture of how much mindfulness meditation has penetrated the mainstream. It’s hard to imagine that another part of the country can out compete us for meditation centers per capita, or the number of people who seek out spirituality in this way. Instead of telling their kids to be careful, I hear parents asking them to be “mindful.” And it seems almost everyone knows that when you’re stressed, you should tune into your breath.
But it turns out the West Coast isn’t the only part of the country that’s caught up in the mindfulness craze. Scientists all over the country are researching how meditation can help our health and our minds, and if they’re to be believed, the results may have many more people sitting on cushions in the coming years. Over the next week, we’re going to give short summaries from some of the latest research.
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According to a nationwide survey by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, eight percent of adults now meditate. That’s about 18 million people, which if you think about it, is a lot of people watching their breath.
For the survey’s purposes, meditation included many different kinds including the popular mindfulness meditation, meditation with a mantra (this includes Transcendental meditation), spiritual meditation (defined by the survey as centering prayer and contemplative meditation), along with meditation used as a part of other practices like yoga, tai chi, and qi gong.
The survey of the more than 88,000 adults found that even more—9.5 percent—said they do yoga. Does this mean that as a nation we like to exercise more than sit?
-Judy Silber
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The Spiritual Edge is a project of KALW and the Templeton Religion Trust. We’d love to hear your suggestions on what we should be covering. Leave us a comment or email us at [email protected].
