HEALTHY NEWS
Study shows that Loving Kindness Meditation enables you to become more satisfied with your life and experience fewer symptoms of depression! Time investment—only an hour or so a week?! I’m in!
I featured my own personal Loving Kindness Meditation above in the “Meditation to Go” section above.
This study shows that “Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) enables you to become more satisfied with your life and experience fewer symptoms of depression. As a result, greater positive emotions help build resources for living successfully. Simply put, by elevating daily experiences of positive emotions, the practice of LKM led to long-term gains that made genuine differences in people’s lives.
The practice of LKM led to shifts in people’s daily experiences of a wide range of positive emotions, including love, joy, gratitude, contentment, hope, pride, interest, amusement, and awe. This linked to increases in a variety of personal resources, including mindful attention, self-acceptance, positive relations with others, and good physical health.
Participants who invested an hour or so each week practicing this form of meditation enhanced a wide range of positive emotions in a wide range of situations, especially when interacting with others.
People judge their lives to be more satisfying and fulfilling, not because they feel more positive emotions per se, but because their greater positive emotions help them build resources for living successfully.
We find these data especially promising. LKM appears to be one positive emotion induction that keeps on giving, long after the identifiable “event” of meditation practice. Positive emotions feel good, and feelings like love, joy, and contentment can be valuable in and of themselves. Yet the broaden theory suggests that natural selection sculpted our ancestors’ positive emotions to be useful in more far-reaching ways as well. These desirable states built resources that gave our ancestors’ an edge in circumstances that impinged on their survival.”
To read more about this click here.
