In order to effectively tease out the effects of mental silence as opposed to the effects of other aspects of Sahaja Yoga meditation it was obviously necessary to use randomised controlled trial methodology. Having refined the practical approach in previous clinics it became possible to develop a standardised, instructional strategy whose structure could also be mirrored in control strategies in order to optimise the exclusion of non-specific effects.
The first attempt at this was a well-designed RCT involving 59 participants in which SYM was compared to a standard stress management programme for sufferers of moderate to severe asthma (on pre-stabilised, optimised treatment but who remained symptomatic). This trial was designed to compare two similarly active and credible interventions in which the main critical difference was the use of mental silence in the SYM group. While both groups experienced similar improvements in a number of outcome measures, the SYM group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in clinically important subjective measures such as aspects of asthma specific quality of life, mood state and, notably, an objective measure of disease severity known as airway hyper-responsiveness. The outcomes suggest: first, that mental silence does appear to have a specific effect on mood as well as some aspects of quality of life; second, that mental silence also has some effect on pathophysiology itself. Although well designed the sample size was small and drop out rates were somewhat higher than expected thereby raising the possibility that important effects were not detectable because of type 2 errors in the statistical analysis. A larger sample size was needed to overcome this possibility. Moreover, although mental silence had been compared to stress management, it would be more informative to determine its effect in comparison to an intervention that more closely resembled a non-mental silence approach to meditation.
Taking these considerations into account, a second, larger RCT of mental silence orientated meditation is reported. SYM, as an example of the mental silence approach, was compared to a “non-mental silence” approach to meditation. SYM was, on average, twice as effective as the comparator in reducing work related stress, general depressive symptoms and anxiety.
Thus in two well-designed RCTs in which the mental silence approach to meditation was compared to highly credible and active controls, substantial differences in therapeutic effects were observed, clearly suggesting that a specific effect is associated with mental silence orientated meditation techniques.