Meditation Improves Insomnia & Depression

Meditation may be an effective remedy in treating insomnia, according to new research.

Dr. Ramadevi Gourineni, principal study investigator and director of the insomnia programme at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Illinois, says insomnia is thought to be a 24-hour problem of hyper-arousal. As such, elevated measures of arousal are seen throughout the day. By teaching people how to relax and clear their minds during the day, they sleep better at night.

"Results of the study show that teaching deep relaxation techniques during the daytime can help improve sleep at night," said Dr. Gourineni.

The study collected data from 11 healthy subjects between the ages of 25 and 45 years who suffered from chronic primary insomnia. Participants were divided into two intervention groups for two months.

The first group was taught Kriya Yoga, a form of meditation that is used to focus internalized attention and has been shown to reduce measures of arousal. The second group received health education.

Both groups received sleep hygiene education; members of the health education group also received information about health-related topics and how to improve health through exercise, nutrition, weight loss and stress management.

The results certainly suggested that participants had improvements in subjective sleep quality. The meditation group experienced improvements in sleep quality and quantity, according to their sleep diaries. They also took less time to fall asleep, slept longer, woke fewer times, over all had better sleep quality and had fewer symptoms of depression.

Findings of this study were presented at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Another new report gives further evidence to support that Meditation may reduce depression

For people struggling with severe depression, practicing meditation may offer mood-lifting benefits. In a recent pilot study, researchers randomly assigned 28 people dealing with depression (all of whom had previous depression episodes and thoughts of suicide) to two groups: One group continued their usual treatment, while the other paired standard care with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (or MBCT, a healing approach that combines mindfulness meditation with cognitive behavior therapy). Results showed that symptoms of depression decreased from severe to mild levels in the MBCT group, but remained the same in the group of participants receiving conventional care only.

Even in the most severe cases, depression is a highly treatable disorder. While it’s critical to work with a physician in treating depression, certain self-care strategies—such as exercising regularly, practicing yoga, and using nutritional therapy—may produce mood-improving effects and ease depression symptoms. 

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