Dr. Stefan Schmidt

*Stefan Schmidt*, a trained psychologist, received his PhD from the University of Freiburg, Germany in 2002 with a thesis on distant intentionality experiments. He is the head of the Academic Section for Evaluation of Complementary Medicine at the University Medical Center Freiburg and is also leading the Center for Mindfulness, Meditation and Neuroscience Research at the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He is conducting research at the interface of health, spirituality and consciousness with a large set of different methods. Primary research areas are mindfulness and health, meditation research, complementary and alternative medicine and psychological interventions.  Methodological approaches include a neurophysiologic laboratory for EEG research, peripheral psychophysiology including an expertise in ambulatory assessment, randomized controlled clinical trials, questionnaire construction and qualitative approaches. He is currently Principal Investigator of several projects on the neurophysiologic and behavioural effects of mindfulness meditation.

What meditation can do -Mental Health or Exceptional Experiences
Stefan Schmidt, Center for Meditation, Mindfulness and Neuroscience Research, University Medical Center, Freiburg, Germany

Meditation is difficult to define. Within the Eastern traditions no word for meditation exists. Instead Eastern descriptions for what Westerners call a meditative practice use the verb “to familiarize”. For a scientific approach a basic conceptualization of meditation can be conceptualized as intentional attention regulation. However this description is not exhaustive but describes rather basic methods of most meditation techniques. In our approach to conceptualize meditation we differ between the motivation and intention of the meditation practice, which is considered as primary, and the specific techniques to regulate and sustain attention in a specific way.

Meditation practice is often associated with reaching specific and altered mental states. However this is only true for some approaches, e.g. the so called Samadhi practice in Buddhist teachings. Here the meditator tries to calm the mind by sustaining attention on a narrow focus. This often results in states of deep inner calm and peace followed by even more altered experiences if this practice is continued and intensified. In contrast in the Vipassana practice, which is also quite popular in the West, the meditator tries not to reach any altered states but observes the present moment and mental activity without interacting. The basic intention here is to gain insights from these empirical observations. The practice of a present moment observation with an attitude of acceptance and non-judgement is termed mindfulness. Mindfulness combines both a specific practice and a specific attitude towards the own experience which can be applied to every aspect of daily life.

Jon Kabat-Zinn has taken this concept of mindfulness out of its Buddhist background in order to apply it in a medical behavioural intervention program termed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). This is a structured eight-week group program teaching several types of mindfulness meditation techniques as well as yoga. Although of ancient Buddhist origin the program itself is practical, non-religious, and non-esoteric. We performed a meta-analysis on controlled and observational studies applying this program to different conditions such as pain, cancer, heart disease, depression, and anxiety (Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt & Walach, 2004). Overall we found medium size effect sizes of d=0.5 for both physical and mental outcome parameters.

In a large clinical trial we assessed the effectiveness of this program on women suffering from fibromyalgia (Schmidt et al., 2009). Fibromyalgia is a clinical syndrome with chronic pain, fatigue, and sleep disorders as major symptoms. Overall 168 patients were randomized to either (1) MBSR, (2) an active control procedure employed to account for nonspecific effects of MBSR, or (3) a wait list. The main outcome criterion was self-reported general health related quality of life (HRQoL) at four months post-treatment. Secondary outcome variables were fibromyalgia-specific quality of life, depression, pain quality, anxiety, mindfulness, compliance, number of tender-points, and concomitant therapeutic treatments. Results of this trial will be presented.

While in such clinical application meditation is applied to cope with one’s own stress and health issues the question arises if meditation practice, if applied with an according attention may also benefit others. In the so called attention focusing facilitation experiment (AFFE) one meditator tries from a distance to assist another meditator in keeping his or her attention. Twelve such studies with almost identical design were conducted between 1993 - 2006 forming a data basis with 576 single sessions. A meta-analysis over these studies (Schmidt, 2008) revealed a small but highly significant effect of d = 0.11 (p = .009). Since both meditators are separated from each other and since no communication is possible between them, conventional science currently fails to provide an explanation for such an effect.

Grossman, P., Niemann, L., Schmidt, S. & Walach, H. (2004). Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A meta-analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 57, 35-43.

Schmidt, S. (2008). Aristotle's Fly - Remarks on Anomaly Research and a review on the relationship between meditation and Psi. Behind and Beyond the Brain. 7th Symposium of the Bial Foundation 2008. Emotions. Proceedings (pp. 73-95). Porto: Fundaçao Bial.

Schmidt, S., Grossman, P., Schwarzer, B., Jena, S., Naumann, J. & Walach, H. (2009). Treating Fibromyalgia with Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction – Results from a Three-Armed Randomized Controlled Trial. (Unpublished).