Intensive retreats isolate mindfulness training from rest, support, and other common factors.

Three days of mindfulness training can change brain networks linked to self-regulation.

Meditation often feels effortful; difficulty may drive gains in resilience and well-being.

By David Creswell & Yuval Hadash

It was a gloomy, wintry Friday morning when our study participants began arriving at a residential retreat center just outside Pittsburgh. Some looked excited; others nervous. All were unemployed adults enrolled in a three-day residential stress-management retreat study sponsored by our Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University.

As each participant stepped through the front door, they were given a simple instruction: Power down your cell phone and place it in a basket. No phones were allowed for the long weekend. We then walked them to our study nurses for a pre-retreat blood draw.

Being unemployed is already hard on both mind and body. Decades of research show that unemployed job-seeking adults face elevated risks for depression, anxiety, suicide, and compromised immune function. After the blood draw, participants were split into two groups and sent to different wings of the retreat center. In one wing, they spent three days learning and practicing mindfulness meditation. In the other, they took part in a carefully matched guided relaxation program without mindfulness training.

This matching was intentional. Meditation research often struggles to isolate what is actually producing change. Is it the mindfulness training itself, or factors like the quiet setting, social support, the teacher’s warmth, a break from daily responsibilities, or simply the opportunity to relax?

We designed the retreat study to control for as much as possible. Both groups followed nearly identical schedules, including gentle stretching, guided instruction from a skilled teacher, and the same number of hours in training with a supportive group. The key difference was that the mindfulness group was taught to focus attention in an open, receptive way to present-moment experience, while the relaxation group did the same activities without learning these mindfulness skills.

The three days were long and........

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