section_path: Definitions/Scholarly definitions
section_name: Scholarly definitions
paragraph_text: Scholarly definitions
  
  In modern psychological research, meditation has been defined and characterized in various ways. Many of these emphasize the role of attention and characterize the practice of meditation as attempts to detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking," not judging the meditation-process itself ("logical relaxation"), to achieve a deeper, more devout, or more relaxed state.
  
  Bond et al. (2009) identified criteria for defining a practice as meditation "for use in a comprehensive systematic review of the therapeutic use of meditation", using "a 5-round Delphi study with a panel of 7 experts in meditation research" who were also trained in diverse but empirically highly studied (Eastern-derived or clinical) forms of meditation:
  
  three main criteria... as essential to any meditation practice: the use of a defined technique, logic relaxation, and a self-induced state/mode.
  
  Other criteria deemed important involve a state of psychophysical relaxation, the use of a self-focus skill or anchor, the presence of a state of suspension of logical thought processes, a religious/spiritual/philosophical context, or a state of mental silence.
  
  ... It is plausible that meditation is best thought of as a natural category of techniques best captured by ' family resemblances '... or by the related 'prototype' model of concepts."
  
  Several other definitions of meditation have been used by influential modern reviews of research on meditation across multiple traditions: