For my systematic analysis of meditation studies, because of the relatively small number of studies available for analysis, the many different meditation techniques were grouped into 5 thematically related categories. These were:
- Relaxation Response and studies describing the intervention as based on it.
- The MBSR and studies describing the intervention as based on it.
- TM and studies describing the intervention as based on it.
- Multimodal interventions of which meditation is one part, such as yoga, lifestyle strategies etc.
- Miscellaneous, where only a few studies had been conducted on a particular technique and/or when a technique did not easily fall into one of the previous categories.