Meditation, mindfulness catching on fast in US
By Zhang Ruinan in New York | China Daily Global
Around 35 million adults in the United States practice meditation, rivaling yoga as the most popular type of complementary health practice.
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique, such as focusing the mind on a particular object or thought, to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally stable state. Yoga is an ancient physical and spiritual discipline and branch of philosophy that originated in India reportedly more than 5,000 years ago.
The proportion of meditators in the US increased more than threefold from 4.1 percent to 14.2 percent from 2012 to 2017, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading national public health institute of the US, last year.
"We do know there's increasing popularity of the use of meditation, but we did not collect any information on what drove the increases," Tainya Clarke, an epidemiologist with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the study, told China Daily.
Meditation in the US may be growing because more people are looking for solutions to anxiety and stress from modern life, said Patricia Broderick, a professor at Pennsylvania State University's Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center.
Meditation, mindfulness catching on fast in US
John LaRosa, research director at Marketdata Enterprises, an independent market-research publisher, said meditation is becoming more mainstream in the US, with meditation studios in major cities and meditation classes being offered in the workplace and on college campuses.
He said meditation's popularity is due to people's desire to reduce societal stress levels and raise employee productivity and morale.
There are about 2,450 meditation studios or centers in the US and at least 1,000 meditation smartphone apps now on the market, according to a report by Marketdata Enterprises.
The value of the meditation market in the US increased to an estimated $1.21 billion in 2017 from $959 million in 2015, and will reach an estimated $2.08 billion by 2022, according to Marketdata.
While more people in the US are turning to meditation, at the same time "the uptake of mindfulness as a serious scientific endeavor has also been at the forefront of guiding recent public interest", David Black, founding director of American Mindfulness Research Association, told China Daily.
Black said the scientific methods and intervention research have helped us to understand the various ways in which training in mindfulness is useful to human wellness and performance, and so the public has responded to this information with great interest as it is directly beneficial to our daily lives.
Mindfulness, a mental practice that emerged from 2,500-year-old Buddhist teachings, involves focusing attention on the present moment for a sustained period of time, through meditation or with movement. But recent scientific studies have shown the practice can reduce pressure and train the brain.
A 2014 meta-analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that meditation and, in particular, mindfulness can have a role in treating depression, anxiety, and pain in adults - as much as medications but with no side effects.
There is also some evidence that meditation can help prevent cardiovascular disease, although the American Heart Association noted in a 2017 statement that "the overall quality and, in some cases, quantity of study data is modest".
"Over the past 20 years, meditation and mindfulness-based programs have become increasingly important to Westerners. Doctors are embracing meditation not because they think it's hip or cool but because scientific studies are beginning to show that it works, particularly for stress-related conditions," LaRosa said.
"The central benefit of mindfulness training is to gain an understanding of how our suffering, from various conditions and ailments, can be reduced by working with the psychological components that surround those ailments," said Black, who is also a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California.
Another interesting finding from the recent CDC's study is that not just adults are practicing meditation. Over the same five-year period, the proportion of children who have tried some form of meditation jumped from 0.6 percent to 5.4 percent.
However, as more people see meditation as a business opportunity, some companies are marketing it as a cure for all diseases and one solution for every problem. Experts say this might be misleading and confusing.
"The practice can be very challenging for some and requires time and commitment, plus feedback from a qualified teacher. Mindfulness is a specific way of being and engaging with the world, and if over-generalized and diluted, might not meet certain individuals' expectations of benefit," Black said.
