A new study shows that loving-kindness and compassion meditation may be linked to lower stress over time, not only through long-term practice, but also by building self-compassion and loosening the grip of disturbing thoughts.
Study: Frequent loving-kindness meditation is associated with lower stress in long-term practitioners through higher self-compassion and cognitive flexibility. Image credit: chayanuphol / Shutterstock
In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reportsresearchers examined how long-term loving-kindness meditation (LKCM) practice affects anxiety through self-compassion and cognitive fusion, considering the role of practice frequency.
LKCM History and Long Term Benefits
What if practicing kindness to yourself could reduce stress? Several studies show that mindfulness improves mental well-being, but its long-term benefits remain unclear. Second-generation mindfulness approaches, such as LKCM, expand beyond observation to cultivate warmth, caring, and emotional resilience.
Although short-term benefits are found, the evidence for sustained practice is inconsistent, particularly with respect to how duration and frequency shape outcomes. Some people meditate for years without clear psychological benefits, raising questions about what leads to effectiveness.
Understanding how meditation works can help optimize its use, although further research is needed to determine how different practice routines affect long-term outcomes.
LKCM Study Design and Measures
The study used a cross-sectional correlational design involving 60 long-term LKCM practitioners recruited from a meditation center in Spain. Participants had 2 to 15 years of experience and exercised 1 to 7 times per week for 15 to 120 minutes per day.
Data were collected via an online survey between November and December 2022, following ethical approval.
Anxiety was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale-Anxiety Subscale (HADS-A), while self-compassion was assessed using the self-compassion scale (SCS). Cognitive fusion was measured using the Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ).
Statistical analyzes used the PROCESS macro to test for moderation and mediation effects. Weekly practice frequency was assessed as a moderator and age was included as a covariate. Bootstrapping with 10,000 samples was applied to improve robustness.
Self-Compassion, Cognitive Attachment, and Anxiety
The study found a complex relationship between meditation and stress. Years of meditating alone were not directly associated with lower anxiety, suggesting that the way people practice may be more important than the duration.
Weekly practice frequency was associated with increases in self-compassion. People who exercised 2 or 4 days per week showed increases in self-compassion over time, whereas this relationship was not seen among near-daily exercisers.
This pattern suggests that people who exercise more frequently may reach higher levels of self-compassion sooner, while those who exercise less frequently may experience more gradual improvements.
Higher self-compassion was associated with lower cognitive fusion, meaning people were less likely to treat thoughts as literal truths. Lower cognitive fusion, in turn, was associated with lower anxiety.
Mediation analyzes indicated that self-compassion and cognitive fusion jointly explained the relationship between meditation and anxiety through a serial pathway rather than independently.
Frequency of practice and clinical implications
The indirect association between meditation and anxiety depended on frequency of practice, with significant effects observed among subjects who practiced two or four days per week.
Descriptive results showed relatively high self-compassion (71% of maximum score), low cognitive fusion (40%), and low levels of anxiety (27.5%), suggesting potential ceiling and floor effects.
Overall, long-term LKCM practice was associated with lower stress indirectly through increased self-compassion and reduced cognitive fusion, rather than through duration alone. Practice frequency appeared to shape how these relationships developed over time.
These findings do not support the idea that more frequent practice is always better. Instead, they emphasize the importance of psychological mechanisms such as self-compassion and cognitive flexibility.
However, the cross-sectional design and selected sample limit causal inference and the findings should be interpreted with caution.
