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 People who practice
compassion meditation may benefit by reductions in inflammatory and
behavioral responses to stress that have been linked to depression and
a number of medical illnesses.
While much attention has been paid to meditation practices that
emphasize calming the mind, improving  focused attention or developing
mindfulness, less is known about meditation practices designed to
specifically foster compassion," says Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD,
who designed and taught the meditation program used in the study. Negi
is senior lecturer in the Department of Religion, the co-director of
Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies and president and
spiritual director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc.
This study focused on the effect of compassion meditation on
inflammatory, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to psychosocial
stress, and evaluated the degree to which engagement in meditation
practice influenced stress reactivity.
"Our findings suggest that meditation practices designed to foster
compassion may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by
stress and are relevant to disease," explains Charles L. Raison, MD,
clinical director of the Mind-Body Program, Emory University's
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of
Medicine, and a lead author on the study.
Sixty-one healthy college students between the ages of 17 and19
participated in the study. Half the participants were randomized to
receive six weeks of compassion meditation training and half were
randomized to a health discussion control group.
 Although secular in presentation, the compassion meditation program
was based on a thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist mind-training
practice called "lojong" in Tibetan. Lojong practices utilize a
cognitive, analytic approach to challenge an individual's unexamined
thoughts and emotions toward other people, with the long-term goal of
developing altruistic emotions and behavior towards all people. Each
meditation class session combined teaching, discussion and meditation
practice.
The control group attended classes designed by study investigators
on topics relevant to the mental and physical health of college
students such as stress management, drug abuse and eating disorders. In
addition, a variety of student participation activities were employed
such as mock debates and role-playing.
Both groups were required to participate in 12 hours of classes
across the study period. Meditators were provided with a meditation
compact disc for practice at home. Homework for the control group was a
weekly self-improvement paper.
After the study interventions were finished, the students
participated in a laboratory stress test designed to investigate h
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Practice of Compassion Meditation
Two traditional practices are Metta and Tonglen.
Metta. This usually follows a period of mindfulness meditation to settle the mind. Imagine your mother and feel compassion for her. Feel compassion for yourself. Imagine some friends or other people you feel kindly towards and feel compassion in your heart for them. Gradually work on more difficult people - people you dislike, fear or think of as evil. They need compassion too. Work gradually, a little at a time as your capacity for compassion grows.
Tonglen. This is a Tibetan practice. The idea is to connect to the place where you know everything is OK, whole and complete. We can call this Ultimate Bodhichitta. Imagine light going out to someone who needs compassion as you breath out and imagine something like black smoke returning as you breathe in. The idea is not to take on someone else's pain or suffering but to allow it to be transformed as you breathe in and out. As with Metta begin with people who are relatively easy and don't forget to include yourself. Tonglen is a central practice of Lojong or Tibetan Mind Training.
Dr. Manlove
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the body's inflammatory and neuroendocrine systems respond to
psychosocial stress.
No differences were seen between students randomized to compassion
meditation and the control group, but within the meditation group there
was a strong relationship between the time spent practicing meditation
and reductions in inflammation and emotional distress in response to
the stressor.
Consistent with this, when the meditation group was divided into
high and low practice groups, participants in the high practice group
showed reductions in inflammation and distress in response to the
stressor when compared to the low practice group and the control group.
"It will require conducting stress tests before and after meditation
training in order to conclusively show it was the practice of
compassion meditation that resulted in reduced stress responses," says
study co-author Thaddeus W.W. Pace, PhD, assistant professor,
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory.
"But these initial results are quite exciting," says Pace. "If
practicing compassion meditation does reduce inflammatory responses to
stress it might offer real promise as a means of preventing many
conditions associated with stress and with inflammation including major
depression, heart disease and diabetes."
Raison concurs. "Based on the promising findings from this study we
are planning to offer compassion meditation classes to patients at
Emory Winship Cancer Institute, and have partnered with the Emory
Predictive Health Institute to study potential long term effects of
compassion meditation on health and well-being," says Raison.
The study's findings are published in the medical journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Dr. Raison is on the speaker's bureau for Wyeth, Lilly and Schering
Plough. He has served on advisory boards for Wyeth, Lilly, Schering
Plough and Centocor and is a consultant for eGen-Health.
Other contributors to the Emory study include Daniel D. Adame, PhD,
Steven P. Cole, PhD; Teresa I. Sivili, AB; Timothy D. Brown, MPH; and
Michael J. Issa, BS.
A portion of the funding for the study came from the Emory
University Strategic Initiative for Religion and the Human Spirit.
Funding also was obtained from the Emory College Seed Fund; PHS grants
from the Clinical and Translational Science Award program and the
General Clinical Research Center program, National Institutes of
Health, National Center for Research Resources.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2008; doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen, 2008.08.011
When compssion doesn't come easy try these techniques:
 Stress Release. Stress is implicated in every major degenerative disease. Stress
undermines your immune system, breaks down every tissue in your body,
raises blood sugar levels and increases inflammation everywhere in your
body, making you more susceptible to infections, heart attack, stroke,
cancer and all the major killers of our time. By too much stress we
mean elevated levels of the adrenal hormone, cortisol. Fortunately
there are many effective methods of combating the stress in your life.
 Cytokines and Inflammation "Researchers are linking inflammation to an ever-wider array of chronic illnesses," reports Newsweek's
Anne Underwood. "Suddenly medical puzzles seem to be fitting together,
such as why hypertension puts patients at increased risk of
Alzheimer's, or why rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers have higher rates of
sudden cardiac death. They're all connected on some fundamental level."
 Dr. Manlove
© 2010 George Manlove, DC All rights
reserved.
Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the
opinions of Dr. Manlove, unless otherwise noted. The information on this
website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified
health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended
as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of
Dr. Manlove. Dr. Manlove encourages you to make your own health care decisions
based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care
professional.
These statements have
not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Products discussed in
these articles are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical
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