What is meditation? Most forms of meditation help practitioners focus their attention and become more aware of their thoughts, feelings and sensations by observing things without judging them. Many meditation practitioners and teachers recommend starting with three to five minutes a day and building up to at least 20 minutes.

Regular practice of most types of meditation usually requires a quiet location; a specific, comfortable posture (lying, sitting, standing or walking); a focus of attention, such as the sensation of breathing or a word or phrase; and an open attitude, allowing thoughts to come and go naturally.

Meditation has been studied for 20 years, but in the past five to 10 years the focus of that research has gone beyond the idea that meditation makes a person feel better to scientific measurement of physiological changes, says Susan Bauer-Wu, RN, PhD, FAAN, a cancer researcher and associate professor of nursing at Emory University in Atlanta.

Bauer-Wu is finishing a large multi-site study of the effects of meditation on stress levels and coping skills of people receiving stem-cell bone marrow transplants in Massachusetts and Georgia. Data for the large study are still being analyzed, Bauer-Wu says. But results from a pilot showed significant benefits for patients who received meditation training, including lowered heart and respiratory rates, lower levels of stress hormones, decreased need for antibiotics and pain medications, shorter length of stay in the hospital, and self-reported decreases in pain, nausea, depression and anxiety.

Part of the beauty of mindfulness meditation is it can be used from a secular approach, across the cultural, religious and spiritual spectrum.