STUDY FINDS: AMI Meditation Benefits Physicians and other Healthcare Providers EVEN DURING THE CHALLENGES OF COVID-19

by Beth Netter MD

For decades Leonard and Jenness Perlmutter, the co-founders of and teachers at the American Meditation Institute, have shared the ancient, yet profoundly practical and transformative wisdom and teachings of Yoga Science. The Perlmutters have synthesized this knowledge into the practices of AMI Meditation and other AMI Meditation tools presented and taught in their book, “The Heart and Science of Yoga®” and in the AMI Meditation Foundation Course.

In 2009, with concern for the ever-growing and essentially health-depleting effects of burnout and stress in the healthcare community, AMI applied for and received CME-accreditation for their core curriculum taught in the Foundation Course and, since then, in AMI’s CME-accredited The Heart and Science of Yoga® Physicians Conference for physicians and all healthcare providers.

The Perlmutters have had an ever-deepening dedication to helping alleviate the symptoms and effects of burnout and stress in physicians and other healthcare providers, but also to supporting this caring and increasingly overwhelmed community in feeling better about themselves and their practice of medicine, and to help them improve the quality of their lives.

The question comes: Is it possible that taking The Heart and Science of Yoga® course and doing AMI Meditation practices could actually help me, even during the most stressful of life’s circumstances?

The answer: The encouraging results of the AMI Meditation Study recently published in the November 2022 issue of Lifestyle Medicine provide positive evidence that the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

In 2017 The American Meditation Institute began the Berkshire Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved AMI Mediation Study to examine the effects of AMI Meditation in healthcare providers. Study participants attended AMI’s annual CMEaccredited The Heart and Science of Yoga® Physicians Conference where they learned and practiced AMI Meditation and many other AMI Meditation tools. At the conference participants learned and practiced AMI’s systematic meditation procedure with a mantra they had selected from the list published in the book, The Heart and Science of Yoga®. For the six months following the conference, study participants engaged in a regular/daily AMI Meditation practice using a 20-minute recorded guided AMI Meditation provided for them (as it was for all conference attendees). They also received a monthly motivational letter.

As a baseline measure, before the conference, study enrollees had completed the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) Measure (a survey) and a demographic survey. They then completed the ProQOL Measure and an informational survey at 3-months and 6-months. The ProQOL Compassion Satisfaction and Compassion Fatigue Version 5 was used to assess Compassion Satisfaction and the two components of compassion fatigue: Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress (stress that is experienced from work or environmentally produced challenges such as those healthcare providers experience when listening to their patients’ reports of stressful, often traumatic, life events). The same protocol was repeated over three consecutive years (2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020) with three different groups (one group per year following that year’s conference). All three groups of study participants began the same meditation protocol on the same date (November 1st) in the week following that year’s conference (which was held at the end of October each of those years) and were monitored for six months. Participants kept a log of the number of times they did the AMI Meditation practices and reported these on the 3- and 6-month surveys. The data for each of those three groups was then aggregated into one cohort comprised of those study participants, from each of those years, who completed all six months of the study. Initially 54 healthcare providers enrolled. Of these participants, 21 completed the full six months of the study.

The results were an analysis of the changes in Burnout, Secondary Traumatic Stress and Compassion Satisfaction from baseline (before

Results of the AMI Meditation Study:

the conference) to six months. One could logically assume that life and its challenges might change slightly, but remain fairly consistent over a six-month period. That was true for the participants who attended the 2017 and 2018 conferences. However, the participants who attended the 2019 conference, and who continued their AMI Meditation practices during the study period from November 2019 through April of 2020, faced the unexpected, disturbing, and life-changing challenges of COVID19. This group had just completed their 3-month surveys when the pandemic, and all the resulting changes in their personal and professional environments, began.

How did COVID-19 affect this subgroup of participants who were to complete the last three months of the study through the end of April 2020? Even for this subgroup of participants (n=6; all physicians) in the midst of the early stages of the pandemic and “quarantine,” there were sustained statistically significant improvements from baseline to 6-months in the Secondary Traumatic Stress scale scores and, although not statistically significant, sustained numerical improvements were noted from baseline to 6-months for the Burnout scale and Compassion Satisfaction scale scores. From baseline and 6-months, Secondary Traumatic Stress scores were reduced 25.7%, Burnout scores were reduced 21.5%, and Compassion Satisfaction scores improved 13.2%. Of note, the changes in the three scales for this subgroup were numerically similar to the changes found for the whole study cohort. (For the whole cohort (n=21), there were statistically significant improvements in all three scales from baseline to six months.)

As one physician participant from the 2019-2020 subgroup reported in the 6-month survey: “I’m sleeping better and more. I feel better equipped to deal with the stress of COVID-19.”

So the answer is: YES!, it is quite possible that taking The Heart and Science of Yoga® course (offered on Zoom during the year and at AMI’s October 2023 Physicians Conference), and maintaining daily AMI Meditation practices may indeed reduce Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress and increase Compassion Satisfaction in your life––even during the most stressful of life’s circumstances.

* Data and excerpts from the published Study are included in this story.

During her medical career Dr. Netter served as an anaesthesiologist, holistic physician, and acupuncturist. A graduate of the University at Buffalo’s School of Biomedical Sciences, she completed her residency in anesthesiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Beth is Chair Emeritus of AMI ’s Department of Medical Education

To view the entire AMI Meditation Study in “Lifestyle Medicine,” scan this QR Code

Dr. Pettus is a board certified internist and nephrologist, Director of Medical Education and Population Health at Berkshire Health Systems, a member of the AMI Department of Medical Education, and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at UMass Medical School.