What happens when people meditate? Are they able to stay present and focused or do they drift away to thoughts of what to cook for dinner?

“Little is scientifically known about what actually happens when people practice meditation. Current literature only shows statistics before mindfulness exercises and after, nothing in between,” said Linda Nguyen, an undergraduate nursing student.

Nguyen is currently serving as co-investigator on a pilot study on mindfulness meditation, a Buddhist practice that centres on the ability to respond to mental events with an attitude of non-judgmental, accepting, present-moment awareness. The practice has gained popularity in western medicine.

“The study aims to find out in a scientific way what happens when people are mindfully meditating and to correlate those findings with their quality of life and their stress levels,” said Tony Toneatto, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and public health sciences who is working with Nguyen on the study.

“In mindfulness and these kind of programs that teach mindfulness, it’s important to remain present, non-judgmental, accepting — whatever happens in your mind, you’re not holding onto it, you’re not rejecting it, you let it come and go. You have an attitude of benign observation. But in reality we don’t know if people are doing that,” Toneatto said. “So the research really can only be valid if we understand more about what happens when people meditate.”

Nguyen and Toneatto recently co-authored an article on the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation that will be published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in the spring. Their work on the article prompted Nguyen to suggest further research involving students in Toneatto’s undergraduate course on Buddhism and psychology.

Participants in this pilot study were asked to practise mindfulness meditation daily for eight weeks and rate their experiences. Once the study is finished the findings will be compared against questionnaires on previous meditation experience, mindfulness ability and overall stress levels and quality of life, completed by participants before and after the study.

“We hope that this study will help explain the variability in the benefits people may get from meditating since not everyone benefits equally,” Nguyen said. “The study will also help identify the kinds of problems that meditators who are not usually practising with an experienced meditation teacher might encounter along the way.”

As a nursing student, Nguyen is relishing the opportunity to conduct research that is directly related to her field of study.

“The most rewarding aspect for me is that, being in nursing and working directly with patients, it’s going to give me an additional method for helping people cope with their lives and/or conditions. It’s just one more way that will allow me to help more people,” she said.