In many different polls asking people what they want from life, the most frequent answer seems to be “to be happy” ((see, for example, Snyder, 2010)) . However, this priority is not reflected in the current education we are giving to our children.

Prominent positive psychologist Martin Seligman was surprised at the discrepancy in the answers he received when he gave a quiz to thousands of parents with two simple questions ((Seligman writes about this in Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being)) : 1) in one or two words, what do you most want for your children? and 2) in one or two words, what do schools teach?

In the first question, the answers were like “Happiness,” “Confidence,” “Contentment,” “Fulfillment,” “Balance,” and the like – answers that all fall under the general realm of well-being. However the second question gave answers like “Achievement,” “Thinking skills,” “Success,” “Conformity,” “Literacy,” “Math,”  – all things oriented to succeeding in the workplace. What struck him – and me – was how little overlap between the two lists there were! But there is no reason why schools can’t aim towards teaching both at the same time – after all, personal well being has a well-documented positive effect on performance at work ((e.g Baldassare, Rosenfeld, & Rook, 1984)) .

But what if my idea of happiness is different to what’s being taught?

The notion of happiness education naturally raises fears about some kind of uniform approach to happiness being taught in schools that will override the huge variety of cultural, spiritual or other convictions that different people hold. However there is a wide consensus that there is no one size fits all definition for happiness – indeed, personal perceptions of what constitutes well-being can vary even within small groups of people ((Craig, 2009)) .

It seems that the key to happiness education in schools is not to fixate upon a particular definition of wellbeing, but rather develop a set of skills to help maintain a person’s well-being in the face of the many problems and pressures that children (and adults) face in daily life. It helps that there is an increasing body of research evidence for the health and emotional benefits of simple practises like stilling the mind, and practising conscious gratitude ((e.g Emmons and McCullough 2003, Seligman et al. 2005)) – many of which have been around in some form or another for thousands of years.

So how are happiness tools in education proceeding right now?

This is an area I am very interested in – but right from the start I will admit I don’t have a complete picture, which of course varies from region to region around the world. However looking at one story from my own country of Ireland, I think it does make for interesting reading.

For many years, any kind of happiness education in schools was limited to some alternative schools and individual approaches by educators. For example, one primary school teacher who attended some meditation courses which I taught with some friends on behalf of the Sri Chinmoy Centre, decided to set up some kind of practice for the students she was teaching. At the time she was teaching in an area where the average income was quite low relative to the rest of the country, and which had a good deal of tension between different cultural groups in the community. To start with, she originally set up a 10 minute practice in the morning – she would play some relaxing music, and do some exercises with stilling the mind by focusing on the breath. Of course, there is initially quite a bit of fidgeting by the children as they grew used to the practise, but within a couple of weeks it got to the stage where the children really values the practise, to the point of asking the teacher ‘where’s our quiet time’ if she forgot to start the day with it.

As months passed, she noticed a very tangible increase in ability to focus and stay still as well as an overall increase in harmony, not only in the class room but also when they went home to their families (this included children with troubled home situations). Indeed, some of her teaching colleagues were inspired to also include some ‘quiet time’ as part of their daily programme. (As a small aside – I visited that school in my capacity as one of the organisers of a worldwide peace relay called the Peace Run, and it seemed to me that in the whole school assembly her students seemed the easily the best behaved!)

However, now this teacher there is a more organised push for including some kind of schools, including conferences where she can learn more approaches to use in her classroom. In the year 2013 in Ireland alone, quite a few media articles have come out in the national press, interviewing a cross section of schools in middle class and working class areas and finding that they have a overwhelmingly positive experience with teaching meditation in schools (( e.g. the Irish Independent:  http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/education/mind-over-matter-in-the-classroom-as-pupils-enjoy-benefits-of-meditation-29645366.html  and the Irish Examiner:  http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/irish-students-are-loving-new-positive-ethos-244436.html )) . It seems that tools for wellbeing are still a little bit away from being added to the syllabus, but that the push for doing so is starting from the bottom up.

Often, people show up to the meditation classes I give with no real idea of what meditation actually is. Essentially, they are acting on a sense that it might help with whatever personal requirements they might be have at the time. However, those requirements vary widely from person to person  – ranging from dealing with stress and health issues to pursuing more ‘spiritual’ goals – self-growth and self-discovery. So in the light of all these competing demands, what can we say about meditation’s ability to answer them?

The same practices apply to answer different needs

It turns out that many of the same kinds of meditation practices that have been used for spiritual purposes for generations also have significant health and stress relief benefits. For a look at the literature on the health benefits of meditation, my colleague Bhadra Kleinmann’s article The health benefits of meditation on this site makes for very informative reading. (Very often in the literature the word mindfulness is used instead of meditation.)

What you want is what you get

The intention with which you come to meditation with has a significant influence on what benefits you obtain from it (Shapiro, Carlson, Astin & Freedman, 2006). In other words, what you want from meditation influences what you get out of it – be it some momentary stress relief, or deeper insights into your own being.

…and sometimes what you want changes.

An early study suggests that for some people, their aim changes as they pursue their meditation practice further, from more health-related to more self-reflective or spiritual topics (Shapiro, 1992). This is something I have noticed myself when teaching introductory classes free of charge for the general public on behalf of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. As a meditation group, our own approach at is one of spiritual awareness and self-discovery – however, being aware that there are a lot of people at the class who don’t identify as being spiritual, I’ll start in the first class by first discussing the wide spectrum of reasons people look at meditation (like I do above). I’ll explain that later classes will focus more and more on the spiritual side of things, but at least from the first couple of classes those who are only interested in the health and stress benefits will still gain a lot of practical meditation techniques as well as valuable information on setting up their own practice which will be useful no matter what. Over the years, I have noticed that in each class there are always a few people who were self-declared non spiritual types, that stick around and become interested in the self-discovery and self-growth aspects of meditation.

I have had the good fortune to live, for nearly a quarter of a century, in a community of meditators. We live in a large city, in our own apartments, but we are not isolated; some 200 of us live within a two-mile radius of the Centre where we meditate together. My life has reaped many benefits from my frequent contacts with other meditators, but this is the subject for another day. My focus for today is more mundane — health, both physical and mental.

One of the first things that struck me when I moved into the neighborhood was the youthful appearance of many of my fellow meditators. I assumed, at first, that they were simply what they seemed – young. As I began to have conversations with my new neighbors, though, I discovered that a lot of them were a decade or two older than they looked.

In part, this can be chalked up to the philosophy of our spiritual Teacher, Sri Chinmoy. He spoke often about the importance of keeping our body, as the “temple” of our soul, in good condition. He requested that his students run or do equivalent exercise for at least half an hour every day in addition to their meditation practise.  He founded the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, which, in each of the 25 or so countries in which there is a branch, to this day encourages people to participate in races, ranging from weekly two-mile races all the way to the incredible (but very real) 3,100-mile race, held in Queens, New York every summer.

What does the literature say?

Recently I began to wonder whether, in addition to the contribution of Sri Chinmoy’s unique emphasis on self-transcendence, meditation itself might make an important contribution to health. I decided to take a look at the scientific literature, and found that there are, indeed, a number of ways in which meditation has beneficial effects on both physical and mental health.

Regular meditation results in lowered blood pressure, according to a meta-analysis (a statistical technique that combines results from multiple studies) of nine randomized, controlled trials (one of the most powerful types of research design). ((Anderson, J.W., Liu C., Kryscio, R.J., Blood pressure response to Transcendental Meditation: A meta-analysis, American Journal of Hypertension, 2008, 12 (3), 310-316.))  Insomniacs will be interested to learn that there are quite a few studies showing that regular meditation leads to better sleep. ((Nagendra, R. P., Maruthai, N., & Kutty, B.M., Meditation and its regulatory role on sleep, Frontiers in Neurology, 18 April 2012, 3 (54). – This is a literature review of other studies on the subject. ))

Since the cold and flu season is starting in the Northern hemisphere, it is timely to learn that one study shows that regular meditators have fewer winter colds than others; and a second finds that meditators produce more antibodies in response to the flu vaccine than others. ((Barrett, B., Hayney, M.S., Muller, D. et al., Meditation or exercise for preventing acute respiratory infections: A randomized controlled trial, Annals of Family Medicine, 2012, 10 (4), 337-346.

Davidson, R.J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J. et al., Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation, Psychosomatic Medicine, 2003, 65, 654-570.))

In line with my original observation of the youthful appearance of many of Sri Chinmoy’s students, there has even been some biomedical research showing that meditation may slow the rate of cellular ageing. ((

Epel, E., Daubenmier, J., Moskowitz, J.T. et al., Can meditation slow rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and telomeres, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009, 1172, 34-53.))

A fascinating piece of research used the MRI technique to examine the brains of 16 meditators and 17 non-meditators. ((Hölzel, B.K. et al., Differential engagement of anterior cingulate and adjacent medical frontal cortex in adept meditators and non-meditators, Neuroscience Letters, 2007, 421: 16-21.)) This study, conducted jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. and the Bender Institute of Neuroimaging in Germany, found that meditators, compared to non-meditators who had been matched on demographic characteristics, had increased gray matter in the left hippocampus, which controls learning, memory and emotional control.  Although the study size is small, and it is possible that factors other than meditation are what really made the difference for the meditators, the findings are at least highly suggestive, and we can probably look forward to future attempts to explore them further.

Meditation and mental health

Let us now turn to the effects of meditation on mental health. I approach this area with some trepidation for several reasons. First of all, there are many definitions of mental health and I do not want to begin to get into that. Second, some would argue that spiritual progress and mental health are closely allied. But, third, we probably all know experienced meditators for whose mental health we would not want to vouch (of course, we didn’t know these people before they started to meditate). Nevertheless, I find that there is a large body of evidence showing that meditation has positive effects on several different aspects of mental health.

Regular meditation is related to having “positive emotions,” in other words, feeling good, happy or cheerful, according to at least two striking findings. One of these studies focused on feelings of well-being; the second, a randomized controlled study, measured changes in brain electrical activity before, immediately after, and then four months after an eight-week course in the practice of meditation, and found significant increases in left-sided anterior brain activation, a pattern previously associated with positive affect, among the meditators. ⁽⁽Brown, K.W. & Ryan, R.M., The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, 84( 4) 822-848.

Davidson, R.J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J. et al., Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation, Psychosomatic Medicine, 2003, 65, 654-570.⁾⁾

The reverse is also true: meditators feel less anxiety and depression than non-meditators. This is a particularly strong finding because it is supported by three different meta-analyses. ((Hofmann, S.G., Sawyer, A.T., Witt, A.A. & Oh, D., The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2010, 78 (2), 169-183. Note that mindfulness-based therapy is not psychotherapy, but rather, an eight-week course teaching and practicing the basics of the mindfulness approach to meditation.

Chiesa, A. & Serretti, A., Mindfulness-based stress reduction for stress management in healthy people: A review and meta-analysis, Journal of alternative and complementary medicine, 2009, at (5), 593-600.

Vollestad, J., Nielsen, M.B. & Nielsen, G.H., Mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions for anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2012, 51 (3), 239-60. This meta-analysis included only studies of clinical samples of persons diagnosed with anxiety disorders.))

Meditators have also been shown by several studies to be more satisfied than others with their relationships. ((Wachs, K. & Cordova, J. V., Mindful relating: Exploring mindfulness and emotion repertoires in intimate relationships, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2007, 33 (4), 464-481.

Barnes, S., Brown, K.W., Krusemark, E. et al., The role of mindfulness in romantic relationship satisfaction and responses to relationship stress, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2007, 33 (4), 482-500.

Dekeyser, M., Raes, F., Leijssen, M., et al., Mindfulness skills and interpersonal behavior, Personality and Individual Differences, 2008, 44 (5), 1235-1245. ))

Attention regulation, or the ability to focus, has also been shown to be strengthened by meditation. ((Lutz, A., Slagter, H.A., Dunne, J., & Davidson, R.J., Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2008, 12: 163-169))

In conclusion, there is a considerable body of evidence showing that regular meditation will yield physical and mental health benefits that most people would agree justify the time and energy required to learn and practice it.

Something from my own personal experience…

However, just to gild the lily, I would like to close with a quotation on meditation by the person who taught me more about meditation than anyone else – Sri Chinmoy, author of The Jewels of Happiness. Sri Chinmoy was a master meditator, who taught meditation to thousands of students during his 43 years of life in the West. His accomplishments, to mention only a few, include: over 1,600 books published; over 22 marathons and five ultra-marathons run; over 140,000 works of art painted; and over 21,000 songs composed. He attributed his ability to achieve these almost unbelievable accomplishments to his meditation. This is what he had to say about meditation:

“Meditation means conscious self-expansion. Meditation means one’s conscious awareness of the Transcendental reality. Meditation means the recognition or the discovery of one’s own true self. It is through meditation that we transcend limitation, bondage and imperfection…Meditation is dynamism on the inner planes of consciousness. If we want to achieve anything, either in our inner life or our outer life, then the help of meditation is of paramount importance.” ((Sri Chinmoy, Meditation: God’s Duty and Man’s Beauty, New York: Agni Press, 1974, pp. 1-2.))

Some small disclaimers:

I would like to add to my review of the literature a few disclaimers, required by my conscience as a trained and well-published research scientist:

1) Although all of the studies cited were published in peer-reviewed journals (that means that they were vetted – carefully read, subjected to critical scrutiny, and found worthy by knowledgeable scientists in their fields), I did not personally attempt to analyze the validity of any study cited, nor to do an exhaustive review of any of the findings discussed. Thus, I cannot claim that this is a totally scientific literature review.

2) There are many, many, many different approaches to meditation.  However, all of the meditation approaches that I am aware of aim at quieting the mind or consciously focusing attention on the mind. In this review I have included all studies of ‘meditation’, without regard to the particular approach that was used in each individual study. It would have been more cautious to conclude that each finding presented applies only to the meditation approach used in that study, but in my opinion, that line of analysis is too limiting.