2009/05/01 by Kenneth Bond, Maria B. Ospina, Nicola Hooton +6 · 1 citation
Psychology · #Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Music Therapy and Health
paper · doi:10.1037/a0015736
openalex publication_date 2009/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
The authors used a 5-round Delphi study with a panel of 7 experts in meditation research to achieve agreement on a set of criteria for a working definition of “meditation” for use in a comprehensive systematic review of the therapeutic use of meditation. Participants agreed that essential to a meditation practice is its use of (a) a defined technique, (b) logic relaxation, and (c) a self-induced state. Participants also agreed that a meditation practice may (d) involve a state of psychophysical relaxation somewhere in the process; (e) use a self-focus skill or anchor; (f) involve an altered state/mode of consciousness, mystic experience, enlightenment or suspension of logical thought processes; (g) be embedded in a religious/spiritual/philosophical context; or (h) involve an experience of mental silence. The results of this study provide insight into the challenges faced by researchers who want to demarcate meditative practices from nonmeditative practices, and they describe an approach to this problem that may prove useful for researchers trying to operationalize meditation in the context of comparative research.