When it comes to the success of mindfulness-based meditation programs, the instructor and the group are often more significant than the type or amount of meditation practiced.

For people who feel stressed, anxious, or depressed, meditation can offer a way to find some emotional peace. Structured mindfulness-based meditation programs, in which a trained instructor leads regular group sessions featuring meditation, have proved effective in improving psychological well-being.

But the precise factors for why these programs can help are less clear. The new study teases apart the different therapeutic factors to find out.

Mindfulness-based meditation programs often operate with the assumption that meditation is the active ingredient, but less attention is paid to social factors inherent in these programs, like the group and the instructor, says lead author Willoughby Britton, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University.

“It’s important to determine how much of a role is played by social factors, because that knowledge informs the implementation of treatments, training of instructors, and much more,” Britton says. “If the benefits of mindfulness meditation programs are mostly due to relationships of the people in the programs, we should pay much more attention to developing that factor.”

This is one of the first studies to look at the significance of interpersonal relationships in meditation programs.

Types of meditation and their benefits

Interestingly, social factors weren’t what Britton and her team, including study author Brendan Cullen, set out to explore; their initial research focus was the effectiveness of different types of practices for treating conditions like stress, anxiety, and depression.

Britton directs the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, which investigates the psychophysiological and neurocognitive effects of cognitive training and mindfulness-based interventions for mood and anxiety disorders. She uses empirical methods to explore accepted yet untested claims about mindfulness—and expand the scientific understanding of the effects of meditation.

Britton led a clinical trial that compared the effects of focused attention meditation, open monitoring meditation, and a combination of the two (“mindfulness-based cognitive therapy”) on stress, anxiety, and depression.

“The goal of the study was to look at these two practices that are integrated within mindfulness-based programs, each of which has different neural underpinnings and different cognitive, affective and behavioral consequences, to see how they influence outcomes,” Britton says.

The answer to the original research question, published in PLOS ONE, was that the type of practice does matter—but less than expected.

“Some practices—on average—seem to be better for some conditions than others,” Britton says. “It depends on the state of a person’s nervous system. Focused attention, which is also known as a tranquility practice, was helpful for anxiety and stress and less helpful for depression; open monitoring, which is a more active and arousing practice, seemed to be better for depression, but worse for anxiety.”

But importantly, the differences were small, and the combination of focused attention and open monitoring didn’t show a clear advantage over either practice alone. All programs, regardless of the meditation type, had large benefits. This could mean that the different types of mediation were largely equivalent, or alternatively, that there was something else driving the benefits of mindfulness program.

Britton was aware that in medical and psychotherapy research, social factors like the quality of the relationship between patient and provider could be a stronger predictor of outcome than the treatment modality. Could this also be true of mindfulness-based programs?

Mindfulness and relationships

To test this possibility, Britton and colleagues compared the effects of meditation practice amount to social factors like those related to instructors and group participants. Their analysis assessed the contributions of each towards the improvements the participants experienced as a result of the programs.

“There is a wealth of psychological research showing that community, relationships and the alliance between therapist and client are responsible for most of the outcomes in many different types of therapy,” says Nicholas Canby, a senior research assistant and a fifth-year PhD student in clinical psychology at Clark University. “It made sense that these factors would play a significant role in therapeutic mindfulness programs as well.”

Working with the data collected as part of the trial, which came from surveys administered before, during, and after the intervention as well as qualitative interviews with participants, the researchers correlated variables such as the extent to which a person felt supported by the group with improvements in symptoms of anxiety, stress, or depression. The results appear in Frontiers in Psychology.

The findings showed that instructor ratings predicted changes in depression and stress, group ratings predicted changes in stress and self-reported mindfulness, and formal meditation amount (for example, setting aside time to meditate with a guided recording) predicted changes in anxiety and stress—while informal mindfulness practice amount (“such as paying attention to one’s present moment experience throughout the day,” Canby says) did not predict improvements in emotional health.

The social factors proved stronger predictors of improvement in depression, stress, and self-reported mindfulness than the amount of mindfulness practice itself. In the interviews, participants frequently talked about how their relationships with the instructor and the group allowed for bonding with other people, the expression of feelings, and the instillation of hope, the researchers say.

“Our findings dispel the myth that mindfulness-based intervention outcomes are exclusively the result of mindfulness meditation practice,” the researchers write in the paper, “and suggest that social common factors may account for much of the effects of these interventions.”

In a surprise finding, the team also learned that amount of mindfulness practice did not actually contribute to increasing mindfulness, or nonjudgmental and accepting present moment awareness of thoughts and emotions. However, bonding with other meditators in the group through sharing experiences did seem to make a difference.

“We don’t know exactly why,” Canby says, “but my sense is that being part of a group that involves learning, talking, and thinking about mindfulness on a regular basis may make people more mindful because mindfulness is on their mind—and that’s a reminder to be present and nonjudgmental, especially since they’ve made a commitment to cultivating it in their lives by signing up for the course.”

The findings have important implications for the design of therapeutic mindfulness programs, especially those offered via smartphone apps, which have become increasingly popular, Britton says.

“The data show that relationships may matter more than technique and suggest that meditating as part of a community or group would increase well-being. So to increase effectiveness, meditation or mindfulness apps could consider expanding ways that members or users can interact with each other.”

Another implication of the study, Canby says, “is that some people might find greater benefit, especially during the isolation that many people are experiencing due to COVID, with a therapeutic support group of any kind rather than trying to solve their mental health needs by meditating alone.”

The results from these studies, while unexpected, have provided Britton with new ideas about how to maximize the benefits of mindfulness programs.

“What I’ve learned from working on both of these papers is that it’s not about the practice as much as it is about the practice-person match,” Britton says. Of course, individual preferences vary widely, and different practices affect people in different ways.

“In the end, it’s up to the meditator to explore and then choose what practice, group and teacher combination works best for them.” Meditation programs could support that exploration, Britton adds, by offering a wider range of options.

“As part of the trend of personalized medicine, this is a move towards personalized mindfulness,” she says. “We’re learning more about how to help individuals co-create the treatment package that matches their needs.”

The National Institutes of Health, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, the Mind and Life Institute, and the Brown University Contemplative Studies Initiative supported the work. Original Study

Recommended book:

Love For No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love
by Marci Shimoff.

A breakthrough approach to experiencing a lasting state of unconditional love—the kind of love that doesn’t depend on another person, situation, or romantic partner, and that you can access at any time and in any circumstance. This is the key to lasting joy and fulfillment in life. Love for No Reason provides a revolutionary 7-step program that will open your heart, make you a magnet for love, and transform your life.

For more information or to order this book.