Drawing the experience dynamics of meditation
Barbara Jachs, Manuel Camino Garcia, Andrés Canales-Johnson, Tristan A. Bekinschtein
bioRxiv Preprint Server March 4, 2022 preprint DOI: 10.1101/2022.03.04.482237 via bioRxiv
Summary
Temporal Experience Tracing is a method that quantitatively captures subjective experiences over time. An analysis of 852 meditations from novice (20) and experienced (12) meditators revealed four recurring experience states, each lasting an average of 6:46 minutes. Participants spent more time in a task-related state during Loving Kindness meditation compared to other styles and were less likely to transition to an 'off-task' state during this practice. This method allows for a measurable understanding of conscious experiences.
Study at a glance
| Sample size | 32 |
|---|---|
| Population | novice and experienced meditators practicing different meditation styles |
| Key finding | Participants spent more time in the task-related experience state during Loving Kindness meditation than during Breathing meditation. |
Abstract
Subjective experiences are hard to capture quantitatively without losing depth and nuance, and subjective report analyses are time-consuming, their interpretation contested. We describe Temporal Experience Tracing, a method that captures relevant aspects of the unified conscious experience over a continuous period of time. The continuous multidimensional description of an experience allows us to computationally reconstruct common experience states. Applied to data from 852 meditations – from novice (n=20) and an experienced (n=12) meditators practising Breathing, Loving-Kindness and Open-Monitoring meditation – we reconstructed four recurring experience states with an average duration of 6:46 min (SD = 5:50 min) and their transition dynamics. Three of the experience states assimilated the three meditation styles practiced, and a fourth experience state represented a common low-motivational, ‘off-task’ state for both groups. We found that participants in both groups spent more time in the task-related experience state during Loving Kindness meditation than other meditation styles and were less likely to transition into an ‘off-task’ experience state during Loving Kindness meditation than during Breathing meditation. We demonstrate that drawing the dynamics of experience enables the quantitative analysis of subjective experiences, transforming the time dimension of the stream of consciousness from narrative to measurable.