Meditation for PhD Students

Why Should PhD Students Meditate?

Meditation, You Are What You Think!

The question of why PhD students should meditate is worthy of a PhD project in its own right. Different people require different solutions to reach their potential. Meditation can bring significant benefits to many students, but it may not suit everyone; besides, not all techniques are universally useful. Meditation methods can be thought of as Mindtraining. Mindtraining provides knowledge and human technologies to help people achieve their goals more effectively. So while the Trainer’s skill and the method’s reliability matter, the more engaged you are with the process, the more likely it is to be successful. Nonetheless, we’re not aware of any behaviour that brings more benefit to more people than nondual meditation:

Meditation, based on my research, is the behaviour able to bring the greatest benefit to most PhDs with the smallest investment of time and energy. Just three weekly sessions of at least 20 minutes are likely to lead to transformations in levels of happiness, wellbeing and success. That’s one or two hours a week to start the transition from surviving to thriving.

Dr Stephen Gene Morris

Although the psychological sciences have failed to meaningfully engage with most traditional forms of meditation, particularly nondual methods, there is still enough empirical evidence to be confident that regular meditation is beneficial for most people most of the time.¹ Nondual practices can support: mental health and physical health, by developing and sustaining emotional regulation, concentration, positivity, gratitude, compassion and much more. The stability, control, and increased mental energy delivered through the practice can ultimately lead to greater happiness, wellbeing, and success, but… Meditation and mindfulness are not panaceas; without the correct method and guidance, they may bring little benefit, and in a minority of cases can lead to psychological harm. Let’s look at the evidence.

There are an estimated 30,000 published studies on meditation and mindfulness, most of which indicate some modest benefit from regular meditation. On that basis, it is reasonable to argue that most PhD candidates would benefit from some ‘sitting’ practice. However, the most credible reviews of the vast body of meditation research criticise the quality of experiments, poor scientific practice, the fluidity of concepts, low participant numbers, and exaggerated claims. One meditation scientist has argued that claiming meditation is good for you is like claiming physical exercise is good for you; it’s all about the context. Too much exercise can cause physical harm, and too little may bring negligible benefits. So too with meditation, without a skilled teacher, a reliable method and attention to a student’s capacity and motivation, positive outcomes are far from guaranteed.

Dr Morris explains: “Based on decades of personal practice, over twenty years of teaching experience and a PhD in the Science of Mindfulness and Meditation, I am able to integrate meditation into The Mindtraining Method. I use nondual compassionate practices as a cornerstone of mindtraining. When used regularly and wisely, meditation typically brings great psychological and physiological benefits, reducing stress and anxiety. The nondual component helps regulate emotional balance and intrinsic and extrinsic brain network functions, supporting mental health and likely increasing happiness. The addition of compassion helps develop the pro-social behaviours essential to positive self-image and social interaction. Simply meditating is not enough; we describe meditation as ‘practice’. With enough practice, the positive mental states and behavioural changes they deliver support the transformation from surviving to thriving.

Having practised in several different Buddhist and secular schools, today I am a Dzogchen practitioner, but almost all of my mindtraining offers secular methods based on applied neuropsychology.”

Reference:

1. For a complete exposition of the engagement between science and meditation, see The Scientific History of Meditation and Mindfulness: Morris, Stephen Gene (2024). The Scientific History of Mindfulness: 1938 to 2020. University of Kent. (doi:10.22024/UniKent/01.02.106240) (KAR id:106240). https://kar.kent.ac.uk/106240/