How might meditation provide positive benifits?

The mechanisms by which sahaja yoga meditation (SYM), or in fact any meditation technique, exerts its claimed effects are unclear. One very popular view, which has become more or less the default explanation of meditation effects is in terms of the physiological changes that characterise the Relaxation Response — that…

Meditation: The search for a specific effect

Dr Ramesh Manocha summarises the findings of his thesis with respect to mental silence. “Despite the fact that scientific assessment of the mental silence approach is much less common than non-mental silence, approaches in the Western scientific literature the data in this thesis provide some compelling evidence to suggest that…

Study Summary: Stress Management versus Lifestyle Modification on Systolic Hypertension and Medication

The following is a summary of a study by Dusek et al. published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2008. Summary: compares the relaxation response method of meditation against educational classes on a sample with hypertension gathered from the community. The sole outcome measure was physiological blood…

The relaxation paradigm

In this excerpt from his thesis, Dr Ramesh Manocha discusses the problem of differentiating meditation from relaxation. “Early uncontrolled or own-control studies of meditation suggested that psycho-physiological parameters such as heart rate could change quite dramatically in a single meditation session and this led to initial enthusiasm for meditation as…

Meditation for menopausal symptoms

14 subjects experiencing menopausal symptoms, who were not on any other treatments were enrolled into a twice weekly, 8 week meditation programme. Pre, post and 8 week follow-up assessments included Hot Flush Diary, Greene’s. MENQOL, Kupperman, POMS, STAI self report questionnaires.  Significant improvements in all measures occurred at post treatment.…

Mental Silence Meditation Versus Stress Management for Asthma- A RCT

Objective: To investigate whether a meditation technique which focuses on the experience of mental silence has a beneficial effect in improving ADHD behaviour of children. Materials and Methods: Sahaja Yoga Meditation (SYM) was used in an exploratory clinic for 48 children with ADHD and their parents in a 6–week programme…