[KirinDave]

> But you also claim that taking a period of time in a day to train oneself to resist distractions does not lead to a more focused mindset throughout the day. I think most of us who have practiced meditation (and actually put real effort in, rather than reflecting on other thoughts during the practice) would disagree.

Not to put too fine a point on this, because I'm not trying t pick a fight here, but... Homeopaths would disagree when you say that Avagadros Limit rules out any possibility of their cures working save by pure magic.

> At the moment I don't have any actual studies on hand to back that up (I'm on my phone) but I would be very surprised if they don't exist, and even more surprised if there were studies disproving positive effects of meditation.

I'm not arguing that meditation has no positive effects. I'm arguing other things may have similar positive effects and meditation is not unique in this. For example, how is meditation any different from strenuous exercise in forcing your mind to focus?

The article in question suggests that there is science behind the link between meditation and willpower. I don't see that. I also don't see unique properties of meditation in this. Meditation devotees spring up out of the woodwork in response saying, "If you did it you'd understand..." like that's somehow a response to this contention.

By all means, continue to meditate. By all means, feel that it helps make you a better person. By all means, recommend it to your friends. But please do not suggest there is concrete evidence that there is a causal link unless you have _something_ to back that up.

[shock-value]

Here's a study... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22363278/?i=10&from...

It may have been mentioned already, I just did a simple pubmed search.

I would guess that exercise would have some of the same benefits, especially if it's exercise that one forces oneself to do, rather than just a fun activity. I don't have a study for that hypothesis though.

[KirinDave]

So that's a good start. Is that all we have? I see some credible studies on pubmed (and plenty of studies with all the markers of being useless, some outright mentioning "CAM"-friendly goals in the abstract), but most of them involve things like mindfulness meditation as a method of improving performance on X, where X is some sort of motor-coordination task.

What the study you cited suggests interesting research could be done. My big question is that is any sort of hard focus activity of the same quality as meditation?

[shmageggy]

Here's one study that I'm familiar with- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19773563

They correlated mindfulness study with improvements in several aspects of mental well-being.

[clbrook]

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a scientific research group studying this area. The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds: http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/cihmWhat.html

"The Center is embarking on a series of research programs in both long-term meditation practitioners as well as more novice practitioners to examine how such training affects the brain and body, and also to provide critical information on how to structure interventions to make them more successful."

This is a 2010 New York Times article describing that: "The center’s mission was inspired by a meeting between Dr. Davidson and the Dalai Lama in 1992 in the Himalayas." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27happy.html?_r=4&t...;