Meditation eases stress modestly, but two of its biggest promises didn’t hold up

Key takeaways

• A 2022 review of 44 meta-analyses, covering 336 trials and more than 30,000 people, found that mindfulness programs beat doing nothing and roughly matched other active treatments.
• In a trial of 201 adults with raised blood pressure, an eight-week mindfulness course lowered systolic pressure 4.5 points more than improved usual care did after six months.
• A 2022 brain-scan trial of 218 adults found no structural brain changes from eight weeks of mindfulness training compared with control groups, unlike an earlier study of 33 people.
• In a trial of 8,376 students in 84 secondary schools, mindfulness lessons did no better than usual teaching for mental health a year later.
• Start with five minutes a day and build to 20 over four weeks; if low mood lasts two weeks or more, see a professional, and call or text 988 in a crisis.

In May 2022, a team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison published a result that cut against one of meditation’s most popular claims⁸. The study came from Richard Davidson’s group at the university’s Center for Healthy Minds, which has long studied meditation.

His team had scanned the brains of 218 adults who had never meditated⁹. Then they assigned people by chance to one of three groups. One took an eight-week mindfulness course. One took a health program of exercise, music therapy and nutrition. One waited.

After eight weeks, the mindfulness group’s brains had changed no more than either comparison group’s, even in regions earlier studies had flagged⁸⁹.

That finding doesn’t mean meditation is useless. It means some of its biggest promises grew faster than the evidence did.

This guide sorts what holds up from what doesn’t. Then it gives you a four-week plan to start, built from the practices researchers have studied.

Meditation helps stress and anxiety, about as much as other good options

Meditation is now common. The share of U.S. adults who meditated rose from 7.5% in 2002 to 17.3% in 2022, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)¹.

Most of the research tests mindfulness, which means paying attention to the present moment without judging it¹. The best tests are randomized controlled trials, where people are assigned by chance to meditation or to a comparison group.

A 2022 review in Perspectives on Psychological Science pulled together 44 meta-analyses, which are studies that pool many trials². Together they covered 336 trials and 30,483 people. Mindfulness programs beat “passive” comparisons, such as waiting lists, for most of the problems studied.

Against “active” comparisons, such as other therapies, the edge shrank and was less often statistically clear². Compared with established treatments, mindfulness generally held its own.

A 2021 University of Cambridge review in PLOS Medicine reached a similar verdict³. It covered 136 trials of community mindfulness courses with 11,605 adults in 29 countries.

Compared with doing nothing, courses usually eased anxiety, depression and stress³. Compared with other feel-good activities such as exercise, they were neither better nor worse. When the team kept only the higher-quality trials, the benefit held for stress alone.

The lead author, Julieta Galante, warned against assuming it works “for everyone, everywhere”³. The work was funded mainly by the National Institute for Health Research.

NCCIH’s summary adds two findings that pull in different directions¹. A 2018 analysis of more than 12,000 people found mindfulness worked about as well as cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants for anxiety and depression. But a 2021 analysis of adults with anxiety disorders found no long-term effect in the few studies that followed people past two months.

Our article on meditation groups covers two landmark trials: one comparing a mindfulness course with an anxiety drug, and one on preventing depression relapse.

A blood pressure trial found a drop worth noticing

Blood pressure is a newer, promising target. In 2023, researchers led by Eric Loucks, director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University, reported the MB-BP trial⁴⁵.

They assigned 201 adults with blood pressure of at least 120/80 to an adapted mindfulness course or to improved usual care⁴. Both groups got a home blood pressure monitor⁵. The course met for eight weekly 2.5-hour sessions, plus a day-long retreat, and asked for 45 minutes of home practice six days a week.

After six months, systolic pressure (the top number) fell 5.9 points in the mindfulness group, the team reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association⁴. That was 4.5 points more than in the comparison group. Participants also cut their weekly sitting time. A second paper, in JAMA Network Open, found the course also improved self-awareness and adherence to a heart-healthy diet⁵.

The limits matter. Follow-up lasted only six months⁴, and 81% of participants were white⁶. Most had college degrees, and Loucks himself noted that this limits how widely the results apply⁶. Michelle Albert, then president of the American Heart Association, told TCTMD, a cardiology news site, that she worried the volunteers had self-selected and were primed for the program to work⁶.

In results presented at the association’s 2022 meeting, an analysis that accounted for follow-up visits missed during COVID-19 found a smaller effect that was no longer statistically clear⁶. The bottom number, diastolic pressure, didn’t differ between groups. An NIH Common Fund award, administered by NCCIH, paid for the trial⁵.

In 2017, the American Heart Association called meditation a possible help for blood pressure, with effects not yet pinned down¹. If you take blood pressure medicine, keep taking it. Meditation is an add-on to discuss with your clinician, not a swap.

The brain-change headlines came from small studies

For years, articles said meditation could reshape your brain in weeks. One early study behind that idea came from Britta Hölzel, Sara Lazar and colleagues in 2011⁷.

They scanned 16 people before and after an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course, and 17 people on a waiting list⁷. The meditators showed more gray matter in the hippocampus, a region tied to learning and memory, and in several other areas.

The 2022 Wisconsin study was built to test that idea at a larger scale⁹. It enrolled 218 adults: 75 in MBSR, 73 in the health program and 70 on a waiting list. It measured gray matter volume, gray matter density and cortical thickness. It found no changes from MBSR compared with either group, across the whole brain or in the regions earlier studies had named.

Why the difference? Lead author Tammi Kral suggested that choosing to enroll in a course may itself go along with more benefit⁸. The earlier volunteers had sought out stress reduction and may have had more room to improve than the healthy Wisconsin volunteers.

One detail stands out. People in both the MBSR course and the health program reported feeling more mindful afterward than the waitlist group⁸. NCCIH puts it plainly: brain studies of meditation are hard to interpret, and their practical meaning is unclear¹.

A disclosure: Davidson, the study’s senior author, founded and serves as president of Healthy Minds Innovations, a nonprofit, according to the study’s preprint¹³. The center says its research inspires products and services at that group, now called Humin⁸. Davidson also co-wrote the 2022 review of 44 meta-analyses described above². That makes the null brain result more striking, not less: it came from a lab with close ties to the meditation world.

You don’t need a changed brain scan for meditation to help you. The benefits that hold up are in how people feel and cope, not in pictures of gray matter.

Mindfulness lessons didn’t protect schoolchildren in a huge trial

Many schools teach mindfulness to whole classes. The MYRIAD trial, led by Willem Kuyken, tested whether that protects young teens¹⁰.

The team randomly assigned 85 secondary schools to mindfulness training or to their usual social-emotional teaching¹⁰. The final analysis covered 8,376 students aged 11 to 14 in 84 schools. A year later, the two groups were nearly identical on depression risk, behavior and well-being.

A follow-up analysis found something more worrying¹¹. Students already at risk of mental health problems scored slightly worse on depression risk and well-being after the mindfulness lessons. The authors called the gap small and not clinically important.

Even so, they concluded that the program, as taught, isn’t suited to every student¹¹. They added that it may be inadvisable for students who already have or are developing symptoms. The Wellcome Trust funded the trial and had no role in its design¹⁰.

That doesn’t settle whether a motivated teen can benefit from choosing to meditate. It does mean a class-wide mindfulness program isn’t a substitute for real help for a struggling child.

How much practice? Nobody has found the minimum

People in eight-week courses don’t do all their homework. A 2017 review in Behaviour Research and Therapy pooled 43 studies with 1,427 participants in MBSR and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy¹².

On average, people did about 64% of the practice assigned¹². That worked out to roughly 30 minutes a day, six days a week.

More practice was linked to better results, but only slightly¹². And people reported their own minutes, which can be off. We found no study that pins down a daily amount where benefits begin.

So start where you can keep going. A short daily habit you keep will likely do more than a long one you drop. The plan below builds toward 20 minutes, less than the roughly 30 minutes course participants averaged.

How to start: three basic styles and a few honest obstacles

Most methods fall into three families. In focused attention, you hold your mind on one thing, such as the breath or a repeated word, and return when it drifts¹¹⁵. In open monitoring, you notice whatever shows up, sounds, thoughts, feelings, without chasing any of it¹⁵. In loving-kindness practice, you silently repeat kind wishes for yourself and others.

Many meditation techniques began in Eastern traditions¹, and our article on meditation traditions maps where each style comes from. You don’t have to adopt a belief to try them.

Sit in a chair with your feet flat, or on a cushion, with your back upright but not stiff. Close your eyes, or rest your gaze on the floor a few feet ahead. Set a gentle timer so you aren’t checking the clock.

Expect these common snags:

• “My mind won’t stop.” It isn’t supposed to. Noticing that you drifted, then coming back, is the exercise itself¹⁵.
• Sleepiness. Sit taller, open your eyes, or practice earlier in the day.
• Restlessness or pain. Shorten the session, shift position, or try walking meditation.
• Strong feelings. Open your eyes and feel your feet on the floor. Stop if it becomes too much.

Meditation fits what many natural-health readers already value. It costs nothing, needs no product, and relies on your own attention. It also deserves honest expectations: like a daily walk, it helps steadily and modestly, not miraculously.

A four-week beginner plan

This plan is our own design, drawn from the practices studied above. It hasn’t been tested as a package. Practice once a day, at about the same time. Before each session, rate your stress from 0 to 10 and jot it down.

Week	Daily time	What to do	When your mind wanders
1	5 minutes	Count breaths from 1 to 10, then start over at 1.	You’ll lose count. Start again at 1, with no scolding.
2	10 minutes	Drop the counting. Feel each breath at your nose or belly.	Silently say “thinking,” then return to the next breath.
3	15 minutes	10 minutes on the breath, then 5 minutes simply listening to sounds as they come and go.	Notice what pulled you away. Rest again in breath or sound.
4	20 minutes	15 minutes of breath and listening, then 5 minutes repeating kind wishes, such as “May I be well,” for yourself and someone you love.	Come back to the phrase or the breath. Each return counts.

Missed a day? Pick up where you left off. Need to hold a week longer? That’s fine.

Week-four self-check. Answer yes or no:

1. Did I practice at least five days in most weeks?
2. Are my before-session stress ratings lower in week four than in week one?
3. Do I catch my mind wandering sooner than I did at first?
4. In daily life, do I bounce back from a stressful moment a little faster?
5. Did any session leave me shaken, panicky, detached or low for hours afterward?

What your answers mean. Mostly yes to questions 2 through 4? Keep going, and consider a structured course. No to question 1? Change the time of day or shorten sessions before judging the practice. Little change at all? Try another style, a group, or regular exercise, which matched mindfulness in the Cambridge review³. Yes to question 5? Pause, and see the next section.

What the evidence says, rated

Claim	Evidence level	What the research shows
Mindfulness programs ease stress, anxiety and depression symptoms in the short term, compared with no treatment	Strong evidence	Beat passive comparisons across hundreds of trials; effects are modest, and higher-quality community trials confirmed it most clearly for stress123
Mindfulness courses beat exercise and similar feel-good activities	Evidence says no	Neither better nor worse in 136 community trials3
Benefits last long after a course ends	Not enough evidence	Few studies follow people for long; one anxiety analysis found no effect past two months1
Mindfulness training lowers blood pressure	Promising but early	One 201-person trial, six months, mostly white and college-educated46
Eight weeks of training reshapes brain structure	Evidence says no	A 218-person controlled trial found no change in healthy adults9; an earlier 33-person study did7
Class-wide mindfulness lessons protect teens’ mental health	Evidence says no	No benefit in 8,376 students after one year10
More daily practice brings more benefit	Promising but early	A small link, based on self-reported minutes12

When meditation isn’t enough, or makes things worse

NCCIH calls meditation generally low risk but notes that few studies have looked carefully for harm¹. In a 2020 review of 83 studies, about 8% of participants had a negative effect, similar to the rate reported for talk therapy. Anxiety and depression were the most common¹. Our article on meditation groups covers side effects in more depth, including around retreats.

Don’t use meditation to replace care or to put off seeing a provider about a health problem, NCCIH advises¹. Never stop or change a medicine without your prescriber.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) says to seek professional help if severe symptoms like these last two weeks or more¹⁴:

• feeling sad, tearful or hopeless;
• feeling irritable, worthless or guilty;
• no longer enjoying things you used to like;
• low energy, or trouble concentrating or making decisions;
• changes in appetite, weight or sleep.

NIMH also says that if self-care, including meditation, doesn’t help or symptoms get worse, talk with a health care provider¹⁴. That includes a practice that regularly leaves you more anxious or low, the most common negative effects NCCIH lists¹¹⁴.

If you are thinking about suicide or harming yourself, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or chat at 988lifeline.org¹⁴. In a life-threatening emergency, call 911¹⁴.

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

Meditation does real but modest good. It eases stress, anxiety and low mood about as much as exercise or other proven options, and one trial suggests it may trim blood pressure, too. Two famous promises didn’t survive bigger tests: brains didn’t visibly reshape in eight weeks, and class-wide school lessons didn’t protect teens.

That makes meditation one useful tool, not a cure-all. Start small, practice most days, judge it on how you feel after a month, and get help if your mood stays low or the practice leaves you worse.

Related reading

• Meditation traditions aim at different things, and research has tested only a few
• What meditation groups can do, and what they can stir up
• Wellness apps help a little if you keep using them, and most people don’t
• Mindfulness beat sleep-hygiene classes in a trial, but CBT-I still leads for insomnia
• Mindful walking eased stress in small trials, and the walking itself deserves some credit

Sources

1. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. “Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety.” NIH, updated June 2022. nccih.nih.gov
2. Goldberg SB, Riordan KM, Sun S, Davidson RJ. “The Empirical Status of Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Systematic Review of 44 Meta-Analyses of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2022;17(1):108-130. psychologicalscience.org
3. University of Cambridge. “Mindfulness can improve mental health and wellbeing – but unlikely to work for everyone” (news release on Galante J, et al., PLOS Medicine, 2021). January 11, 2021. cam.ac.uk
4. Loucks EB, Schuman-Olivier Z, Saadeh FB, et al. “Effect of Adapted Mindfulness Training in Participants With Elevated Office Blood Pressure: The MB-BP Study: A Randomized Clinical Trial.” Journal of the American Heart Association, 2023;12(11):e028712 (abstract, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai). scholars.mssm.edu
5. Brown University. “Mindfulness hypertension” news release (on Loucks EB, et al., JAMA Network Open, 2023). November 2, 2023. brown.edu
6. TCTMD. “Mindfulness Could Combat Uncontrolled Hypertension: MB-BP.” Cardiovascular Research Foundation, November 14, 2022. tctmd.com
7. Hölzel BK, Carmody J, Vangel M, Congleton C, Yerramsetti SM, Gard T, Lazar SW. “Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2011;191(1):36-43 (record, Martinos Center, Massachusetts General Hospital). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
8. Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin–Madison. “New research shows no evidence of structural brain change with short-term mindfulness training.” May 20, 2022. centerhealthyminds.org
9. Kral TRA, Davis K, Korponay C, et al. “Absence of structural brain changes from mindfulness-based stress reduction: Two combined randomized controlled trials.” Science Advances, 2022;8(20):eabk3316 (report and abstract, Neuroscience News, May 2022). neurosciencenews.com
10. Kuyken W, Ball S, Crane C, et al. “Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial.” Evidence-Based Mental Health, 2022;25(3):99-109. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
11. Montero-Marin J, Allwood M, Ball S, et al. “School-based mindfulness training in early adolescence: what works, for whom and how in the MYRIAD trial?” Evidence-Based Mental Health, 2022;25:117-124 (record, University of Oxford). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
12. Parsons CE, Crane C, Parsons LJ, Fjorback LO, Kuyken W. “Home practice in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: A systematic review and meta-analysis of participants’ mindfulness practice and its association with outcomes.” Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2017;95:29-41 (record, University of Oxford). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
13. Kral TRA, Davis K, Korponay C, et al. “Non-replication of structural brain changes from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: Two combined randomized controlled trials.” medRxiv preprint, 2021 (competing-interests and funding statements). medrxiv.org
14. National Institute of Mental Health. “My Mental Health: Do I Need Help?” NIH, revised 2025. nimh.nih.gov
15. Lutz A, Slagter HA, Dunne JD, Davidson RJ. “Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2008;12(4):163-169 (author copy, Center for Healthy Minds). centerhealthyminds.org