Just be: Skilful doing nothing is calming, pleasant, and easy — not aversive
Toby J. Woods, Andrew W. Corcoran, Olivia Carter, Shian‐Ling Keng, Jennifer Windt
September 30, 2025 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/8fp6e_v1 via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractA 15-minute session of Stillness Meditation, which involves skillfully doing nothing, is calming, pleasant, and easy for meditation-naive adults, not aversive as earlier research suggested. In a randomized trial with 165 participants, those practicing Stillness Meditation reported the session as calm, pleasant, and easy, and showed increases in heart rate variability and interbeat interval from baseline. While focused attention led to higher self-reported calm than Stillness Meditation or an audiobook, there were no differences in easiness, pleasantness, or cardiac measures between groups. The findings validate Stillness Meditation as a tool for studying pure consciousness.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Randomized controlled trial |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 165 |
| Population | Meditation-naive adults |
| Interventions | Stillness Meditation Focused Attention Audiobook |
| Duration | 15-minute session |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Nothing Session web analytics Context archaeology Hypnosis |
| Key finding | Stillness Meditation is calming, pleasant, and easy for naive participants, not aversive. |
Abstract
The most well known study on doing nothing concluded that being alone for 15 mins with nothing to do but think is aversive. Here we examine skilful doing nothing in the form of Stillness Meditation. Meditation-naive adult participants (N = 165) were randomly allocated to 15 mins of Stillness Meditation or one of two active controls (Focused Attention and Audiobook). Stillness Meditation participants were found to have acquired the basic skill of doing nothing in the 15 min session. They typically reported the session was calm, pleasant, and easy, and their mean interbeat interval and heart-rate variability significantly increased relative to pre-session baseline. Scores for our primary measure of self-reported calm were significantly higher in the Focused Attention condition than for Stillness Meditation and Audiobook, but there were no significant differences for easiness, pleasantness, or the cardiac measures. The findings validate our Stillness Meditation protocol and provide evidence that skilful doing nothing is calming, pleasant, and easy — not aversive. The protocol constitutes a novel experimental tool that can be used in future studies to enable highly controlled investigations of pure consciousness, the state aimed for in the practice.