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Ask ten people what meditation is, and you might get ten answers—but they could all be right. It’s a practice that dates back thousands of years and has been part of so many cultures that there are now dozens of ways to do it. Still, they share an underlying similarity: “It’s a practice that cultivates inward investigation,” says Diana Winston, director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center.
What accounts for meditation’s lasting and widespread appeal? The answer may lie in a growing body of research that confirms what many practitioners have claimed for years: Meditation has been shown to be helpful taming stress and anxiety, reducing cardiovascular risk factors, managing chronic pain, and improving sleep