Drawing the experience dynamics of meditation

A new method called Temporal Experience Tracing captures aspects of conscious experience continuously over time, allowing computational reconstruction of common experience states. Analyzing 852 meditations from 20 novice and 12 experienced meditators practicing Breathing, Loving-Kindness, and Open-Monitoring meditation, four recurring experience states were identified, averaging 6 minutes 46 seconds each. Three states matched the three meditation styles, and a fourth represented a low-motivational off-task state. Both groups spent more time in the task-related state during Loving-Kindness meditation and were less likely to transition to the off-task state compared to Breathing meditation. The method transforms the time dimension of subjective experience from narrative to measurable.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Subjective experiences are hard to capture quantitatively without losing depth and nuance, and subjective report analyses are time-consuming, their interpretation contested. We describe Temporal Experience Tracing, a method that captures relevant aspects of the unified conscious experience over a continuous period of time. The continuous multidimensional description of an experience allows us to computationally reconstruct common experience states. Applied to data from 852 meditations – from novice (n=20) and an experienced (n=12) meditators practising Breathing, Loving-Kindness and Open-Monitoring meditation – we reconstructed four recurring experience states with an average duration of 6:46 min (SD = 5:50 min) and their transition dynamics. Three of the experience states assimilated the three meditation styles practiced, and a fourth experience state represented a common low-motivational, ‘off-task’ state for both groups. We found that participants in both groups spent more time in the task-related experience state during Loving Kindness meditation than other meditation styles and were less likely to transition into an ‘off-task’ experience state during Loving Kindness meditation than during Breathing meditation. We demonstrate that drawing the dynamics of experience enables the quantitative analysis of subjective experiences, transforming the time dimension of the stream of consciousness from narrative to measurable.