The researchers concluded that their findings suggest that a retreat for those already trained in meditation could provide benefits to cellular health beyond those
of normal vacation, and that the easing of stress on the body could lead to healthier aging.
They recruited healthy women non-meditators to live at a resort for 6 days and randomly assigned them to either meditation retreat or relaxing on-site, with both groups compared with ‘regular meditators’ already enrolled in the retreat.
After 1 week at a resort, participants felt greater vitality and decreased distress, regardless of whether they were in the resort group or in an intensive meditation/yoga retreat. The randomized group immersed in meditation and yoga for the first time exhibited more sustained well-being up to 1 month later, compared with the resort group on mindfulness. Ten months later; the novices maintained a clinically meaningful improvement in depressive symptoms compared with
the vacation group.
"It's intuitive that taking a vacation reduces biological processes related to stress, but it was still impressive to see the large changes in gene expression from being away from the busy pace of life, in a relaxing environment, in such a short period of time." said Elissa S. Epel, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco and first author of the
study.
"Based on our results, the benefit we experience from meditation isn't strictly psychological; there is a clear and quantifiable change in how our bodies function," said Rudolph Tanzi, PhD, the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.
