Meditation as an intervention in stress reactivity

Although records and phenomenologic accounts of meditation date back to the Vedic period of India, only in very recent years have there been empirical studies of meditation. The changes in psychophysiological state accompanying passive forms of meditation (see Davidson & Schwartz, in press) constitute a configuration opposite to that of a hyperarousal reaction to stress (Gellhorn & Kiely, 1972; Wallace & Benson, 1972). The implications of meditation as an "antidote" for stress reactions (Goleman, 1971) have been tested inferentially in terms of habituation rate (Orme-Johnson, 1973), but thus far there has been no direct assessment of the interaction of the etiects of meditation in a stress situation using complex emotional stimuli. This study sought to determine the efficacy of meditation as an intervention in stress, using a laboratory film as stressor in an analogue of emotional arousal to complex stimuli (Lazarus, 1966), in a design systematically varying both experience as a meditator and meditation itself with appropriate control treatments.