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What is meditation?
 Meditation is a focused state of attention, often used to calm the mind and reduce stress.
How can it help you?
Meditation often helps with stress, emotional balance, and improved focus. It can offer you a calm space to develop inner resources. There are many forms of meditation.
Meditation and hypnosis: What's the difference?
There is no fundamental difference. Both meditation and hypnosis seek to create the same state of focused attention. The name depends on the context and your goals.
What are the benefits of meditation and self-hypnosis?
Research (Tang et al., 2015) suggests that meditation can foster changes in the brain, improving emotional regulation and focus. Both meditation and self-hypnosis may offer you practical ways to manage stress and build inner resources.
Preliminary findings, such as Epel et al. (2009), suggest a possible link between meditation and telomere length, though research is ongoing. Longer telomeres are generally associated with slower cellular ageing, which may increase lifespan.
Studies, such as Holdevici (2012), indicate self-hypnosis may help with stress management and goal achievement.
Meditation related research and reading
| Benson H. Frankel FH. Apfel R. Daniels MD. Schniewind HE. Nemiah JC. Sifneos PE. Crassweller KD. Greenwood MM. Kotch JB. Arns PA. Rosner B. Treatment of anxiety: a comparison of the usefulness of self-hypnosis, a meditational relaxation technique. An... |
| Epel, E.S., Blackburn, E.H., Lin, J., Dhabhar, F.S., Adler, N.E., Morrow, J.D and Cawthon, R. M. (2009) 'Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(33), pp. 13624-13629. |
| Holdevici, I. (2012) 'Cognitive-behavioral hypnotherapy in the management of stress', Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 33, pp. 866-870. |
| Morse DR In vivo densitization using meditation - hypnosis in the treatment of rubber dam claustrophobia: Aust J Clin Hypnother Hypn (1984) Sep;4(2): 75-8. |
| Morse DR. Martin JS. Furst ML. Dubin LL. A physiological, subjective evaluation of meditation, hypnosis and relaxation. Journal Psychosomatic Medicine. 39(5):304-24 (1977) Sep-Oct. |
| Puente AE. Beiman I. The effects of behavior therapy, self- relaxation and transcendental meditation on cardiovascular stress response. Journal of Clinical Psychology (1980) 36(1): 291-5 Compared Behavior Therapy (BT), self-relaxation (SR), transcendental... |
| Ramonth, S. M. (1985) Multilevel consciousness in meditation, hypnosis, and directed daydreaming. Upsalla, Sweden. Univ. of UMEA. |
| Spanos NP. Gottlieb J. Rivers SM. The effects of short-term meditation practice on hypnotic responsivity. Psychological Record (1980) 30(3): 343-8. 81 male undergraduates were pretested on absorption and 3 measures of hypnotic responsiveness and were... |
| Tang, Y.Y., Hölzel, B.K and Posner, M. I. (2015) 'The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation', Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(4), pp. 213-225. |
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