In order to contrast the traditional Eastern ideas of meditation with ideas that are currently prevalent in Western culture, it is useful to examine popular, broadly consensual definitions of meditation as an insight into how the modern Western consumer has come to conceptualise it. Both basic and advanced Google searches…
Practitioners of sahaja yoga meditaiton (SYM) consistently report that the state of mental silence is characteristically associated with other subjective phenomena such as a natural focusing of attention and a sense of wellbeing which somehow leads to improved physical health. A number of SYM practitioners do describe occasional transcendent experiences,…
Shapiro (1992) observed the effects of vipassana meditation on a small group of meditators and found that while most participants experienced positive results, a small number of meditators experienced distinctly negative states. Glueck (1984) studied 110 participants and reported that the practice of transcendental meditation (TM) appeared to release repressed…
Lazarus (1976, 1984) described several cases in which psychiatric problems such as depression, agitation and schizophrenic de-compensation were observed. These included a 34 year old woman who became suicidal and a 24 year old woman who experienced severe de-personalisation, apparently as a result of transcendental meditation (TM). He also suggested…
The design of RCTs for meditation (or any behaviour-based therapy for that matter) involves a number of unique challenges compared with pharmacological trials. While both categories of trial use an inactive placebo, the pharmaceutical trial uses an inert “sugar tablet” which appears similar to the medication being administered. The participant…
Sham meditation involves designing control strategies that overtly resemble the intervention, but which do not actually trigger the effects purported to be specifically associated with meditation. Sham techniques are used in research when the researcher wishes to examine the specific effects a meditation technique may elicit, while controlling for the…
Traditional meditation texts often warn of the potential negative effects of meditation. These can arise as a result of incorrect preparation, instruction, practice or supervision. Traditionally speaking, misconceptions about the ultimate goals of meditation have often led to unfortunate consequences. Dr Ramesh Manocha further discusses the historical descriptions of the…
Aftanas et al. (2001) conducted a well designed study of EEG on novice and advanced sahaja yoga meditation practitioners. During meditation substantial changes in midline alpha-theta power, rather than gamma power, distributed more or less symmetrically in the fronto-parietal parts of the brain, occurred in a pattern that was significantly…
Findings suggest that the mental silence experience may be associated with a specific pattern of activity in both the central nervous system and autonomic nervous system which is more complex than simple reduction of arousal and yet different from the cognitive changes seen in association with mindfulness meditaton. Thus, although…
The mechanism of action provoked by meditation is thought primarily to involve its ability to reduce stress. There are two main theories about how this happens. First, that it reduces somatic-arousal thereby reducing the reactivity of the individual to environmental stressors and, second, that it alters the individual’s cognitive appraisal…
