PHOTO Pexels/Engin Akyurt
By Liza Horan
Science is catching up to what our ancient ancestors knew: Meditation offers a variety of benefits individually and collectively. It’s likely the how and why of quieting the mind, cultivating altered states of consciousness, and feeling connected to something beyond this physical plane needed no justification to the cultures and wisdom traditions practicing it for millennia. They knew.
Today there is a large and growing body of scientific research on meditative machinations and their effects, sparked by the now decades-long growth of meditation in mainstream Western society and the recent emphasis on mental wellbeing. In 2022, meditation was the most prevalent complementary and alternative health practice among adults in the U.S. as nearly 61 million people reported practicing; that’s more than yoga (56 million), according to the United States National Health Interview Survey and reported in Nature. And the global meditation market, valued at $7.51 billion in 2025, is anticipated to grow to nearly $18 billion by 2032, according to Coherent Market Insights.
As meditation has gained acceptance in Western medicine, funding for scientific research has grown. Here are some of the more interesting highlights of the latest science on meditation:
- Consistency in meditation practice boosts self-compassion and lowers anxiety, researchers reported about a study about loving kindness meditation that was published in Scientific Reports (March 2026).
- Meditators are more fit for psychedelic experiences and have more positive experiences, according to a study by a team from University College London and Harvard Medical School (February 2026).
- Transcendental Meditation can provide cardiovascular protection by lowering blood pressure and improving cardiometabolic health, as reported in Nature Reviews Cardiology (November 2025).
- Brain cancer cells tamed by meditating monks’ intentions, according to a January 2026 article science and healing journal Explore.
- Mindfulness meditation increases social cooperation, especially those who would be less likely to do so under regular circumstances, according to “Mindfulness Meditation Actives Altruism” in Nature (April 2020).
- Meditation enhances high schoolers’ attention span, memory, language, and arithmetic ability, according to a study of ninth-graders published by International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research. The research upheld previous studies on the benefits of meditation for students.
Beyond objective scientific evidence, there is personal experience. For those who try any one or any number of forms of meditation techniques, the effects will be sensed, felt and known only to them.
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