>>10948261It helps if you narrow the specific meditation method. There are few different approaches/function to meditation.
First and the most commonly cited is the "mindfulness meditation." That's basically the secularized version of the Buddhist vippasana(also known as insight) meditation. The method here is basically paying attention to your breath/sensations and not your thoughts. Whenever thoughts come to your mind, you try to remember the initial focus, breathing, and revert your attention back to it. It may sound simple, but the practice is super hard due to how unnatural it is to not give attention to thoughts. The difference with Buddhist v secular version is the secular mindfulness is just a stress relief/attention focuser. For the buddhist, its "insight", basically its to understand that "thoughts" are just thoughts and you are to attach yourself to them. Its sort of a detached analysis of events in the mind. There's also the paying attention to how thoughts form, die, and influence new thoughts, etc.
There is also TM/Transcendental Meditation, which is mired with controversy because its a "pay to meditate" program and people are wary of such research. There are many research on this topic that are quite mixed with promotion/advertisement/research. If you're a beginner, I'd avoid the "pay to meditate" sort of program for your research.
Thirdly, there are various other research done on limited other activities like yoga/compassion meditation/etc.
>actual scientific consensusMindfulness meditation helps with some stress/depression, but it still needs more research and adoption to see more results.
