Evaluating an Instructional Resource Used for Teaching and Learning Meditation: a Pilot Study
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Evaluating an Instructional Resource Used for Teaching and Learning Meditation: a Pilot Study Adam Burke 1
&
Shannon Hassett 2
Received: 13 November 2019 / Accepted: 11 February 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Millions of Americans have learned some form of meditation, including mindfulness, mantra, and spiritual meditation. The majority of them learned on their own, comparatively few consulting a practitioner or attending a meditation class to receive instruction. Despite persistent consumer interest, there is limited research on meditation instruction. As interest in meditation continues to grow, the need for information on instructional best practices becomes increasingly important. For this reason, an instructional resource was developed that provided a simple heuristic for understanding and navigating meditation practice. A consumer-oriented pilot study was conducted to evaluate the resource in terms of perceived benefit, memorability, and satisfaction. The majority of participants reported it to be beneficial for understanding and practicing meditation and were able to recall the four elements of the resource correctly following a 3-week latency period and indicated general satisfaction with the resource. Meditation practice on days using versus not using the resource was also longer. Results suggest that a simple meditation resource can be of benefit in meditation instruction and practice. Keywords Meditation . Instruction . Attention . Default mode . Qualitative . Cognitive training . Consumer behavior . Health promotion . Mental health . Spirituality
Background Meditation Prevalence and Instruction Interest in meditation continues to grow. Current lifetime prevalence rates for meditation among adults in the USA are approximately 14.2%, 35 million people. Common styles include mantra, mindfulness, and spiritual meditation (Barnes et al. 2004; Burke et al. 2017; Clarke et al. 2015, 2018). Despite persistent public interest, and significant research into the mechanisms and effects of meditation (Cramer et al. 2016; Goyal et al. 2014; Lauricella 2016; Tang et al. 2015), there is limited research on how individuals best learn meditation (Crane et al. 2015; Evans et al. 2014; Lloyd et al. 2017; Rose et al. 2017; van Aalderen et al. 2014).
In the book, Teaching Mindfulness, the authors suggested that the why of teaching meditation is increasingly clear, that the who is an open question, but that the how is unanswered (McCown et al. 2011). With significant consumer interest in meditation, and access to diverse sources of information from books, DVDs, apps, and the internet, research on meditation pedagogy is needed. An ideal instructional resource would be simple to understand and easy to use, especially considering that self-instruction is the most common method of introduction to meditation (Cramer et al. 2016). Given consumer interest in a wide variety of meditation practices reflecting diverse cultural and ontological perspectives (Benson et al. 1974; Burke 2012; Bu
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