Meditation seems to improve our empathy for strangers

An eight-week meditation programme led women to experience more empathy for strangers, suggesting that meditation can improve our ability to understand and experience other people’s feelings.

“When you practise mindfulness meditation, these feelings of connectivity and empathy and compassion arise naturally. It is like a side effect almost,” says Fadel Zeidan at the University of California, San Diego. This type of meditation is the practice of focusing attention on the present moment by observing sensations like the breath and is believed to reduce people’s sense of self and help them…