Awakening to the past: connecting medical meditation to its cultural and historical sources

Meditation has become integral to modern life. NHS doctors prescribe mindfulness to reduce stress and manage pain and illness, while medical and neuroscientific research tests meditation’s effects. We believe that history and social science can also help improve meditation’s health outcomes. 

We will gather experts to compare contemporary medical meditation — in its strengths and weaknesses — with other contemplative traditions. We will draw from Buddhist, Christian and Islamic contemplative traditions and from the history of science, which in key respects emerged out of ascetic traditions. We will compare specific cases, focusing on the community structures, cosmologies and ideals of health associated with specific mind and body techniques. This holistic, comparative perspective may suggest ways to reposition current practice. 

Our larger aim is to engage scholars, practitioner and health professionals to realise a meaningful and medically beneficial understanding of uses of meditation in ways both old and new.