Understanding Meditation

The two main forms of meditation: Focused Attention FA & Open Monitoring OM.In FA one focuses on the breath and when your mind wanders you bring it back to the breath again. So the practice isn’t actually sitting with a blank mind—it’s bringing the focus back repeatedly. In the other form OM, you watch your thoughts non-judgmentally, acknowledge them, and then (theoretically) let them go. Rather than reacting to a thought, you just observe it curiously. In the new study, OM was more effective at helping reduce the number of negative thoughts people had, but FA helped a great deal, too.