This week, another study confirming the value of mind-training: A study published on ScienceDirect.com and in the medical journal Psychoneuroendocrinology suggests that compassion meditation may impact our response to stress and disease. The study examined the effect of compassion meditation on immune, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to stress.

“While much attention has been paid to meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind, improving focused attention or developing mindfulness, less is known about meditation practices designed to specifically foster compassion,” says Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, who designed and taught the meditation program used in the study.

“Our findings suggest that meditation practices designed to foster compassion may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and are relevant to disease,” said Charles L. Raison, MD, clinical director of the Mind-Body Program, Emory University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of Medicine, and a lead author on the study.

Sixty-one college students participated in the study and engaged in the centuries-old Tibetan Buddhist practice of mind training, or “lojong”. Lojong practices encourage one to look at their unexamined thoughts and emotions toward others and develop a more open and altrustic view and response. Each meditation class session combined teaching, discussion and meditation practice.

Source: The Buddhist Channel and ScienceDirect.com

In the Shambhala Sun we’ve presented these teachings on lojong, one by bestselling author and teacher, Pema Chodron, Lojong: How to Awaken Your Heart and another by  Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, Training the Mind to Tranform Adversity into Awakening.