{
  "id": 18354419,
  "title": "Loving-kindness meditation fails to beat muscle relaxation for pain or social well-being in online trial",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/05/loving-kindness-meditation-fails-to-beat-muscle-relaxation-for-pain",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-11-05T19:00:51.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PsyPost",
    "slug": "psypost",
    "url": "https://www.psypost.org/loving-kindness-meditation-fails-to-beat-muscle-relaxation-for-pain-or-social-well-being-in-online-trial/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A study comparing loving-kindness meditation to muscle relaxation for pain relief and social well-being found no significant difference between the two practices. The randomized controlled trial, conducted online during the COVID-19 pandemic, involved 69 healthy adults who were randomly assigned to either a four-week loving-kindness meditation group or a progressive muscle relaxation group. Surprisingly, the muscle relaxation group reported a slight increase in perceived social support (from 28.4 to 29.2 on a 36-point scale) compared to the loving-kindness group (from 28.5 to 27.4). Despite this difference, neither practice led to improved pain tolerance or reduced subjective pain. The findings suggest that while social support may play a role in pain management, loving-kindness meditation may not be more effective than muscle relaxation for this purpose.",
  "summary": "Loving-kindness meditation is meant to foster warmth toward others, but in a four-week online trial, it did not boost social support or ease pain any more than a simple muscle relaxation routine.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}