Charles Raison, MD
Charles Raison, MD, and his colleagues are studying how stress and the immune system interact to make people depressed when they’re sick and sick when they’re depressed. Yet, data show that people who practice compassion meditation may reduce their inflammatory and behavioral responses to stress, which are linked to serious illnesses. Raison is clinical director of the Emory Mind-Body Program. He also is the mental health expert on CNN’s health website, CNN Health.com.
One type of meditation, called focused meditation, aims to refine and enhance attention and calm the mind by focusing on one object such as the breath. Compassion meditation, as its name suggests, is designed to cultivate compassion—that is, enhancing one’s ability to empathize with the anguish, distress, and suffering of others.
We’re interested in how the stress system and the immune system interact to make people depressed when they’re sick and sick when they’re depressed, says Raison. There’s a circle where stress activates inflammation and inflammation activates stress pathways, Raison explains.
Secular, compassion meditation is based on a thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice called “lojong.” Lojong uses a cognitive, analytic approach to challenge a person’s unexamined thoughts and emotions towards other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic emotions and behavior towards all people.
To hear Raison’s own words about compassion meditation, go to “Sound Science.”
