Overview

Meditation is both an ancient spiritual practice and a contemporary mind-body technique for relaxing the body and calming the mind. Until recently, the primary purpose of meditation has been religious, although its health benefits have long been recognized in the cultures where these methods originated.

Meditation is the first mind-body intervention to be widely adopted in mainstream health care and is now widely taught and prescribed as a technique for relaxing the body and calming the mind.

History

Most meditative techniques have come to the West from Asian religious practices, particularly India, China, and Japan, but similar techniques can be found in many cultures around the world. Transcendental Meditation (TM), the method which has been most fully researched in scientific settings, was brought to the Western world in the mid-twentieth century by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian spiritual teacher.

In the West, the first view was that meditation induced a type of dissociative state or a type of catatonia. Until thirty years ago, meditation was still considered a religious practice, not appropriate for healthcare settings. In the early 1970s, Dr Herbert Benson was a pioneer in establishing the efficacy of meditation for health through his research at Harvard. Dr. Benson's studies showed that meditation acts as an antidote to stress.

Dr. Benson studied the health impact of a type of meditation involving the repetition of a word or phrase (called mantra meditation). He created a non religious version of the popular Transcendental Meditation technique with the sole goal of achieving the relaxation response that TM is known to trigger. Instead of using sanskrit or other religious words as is done in religious practices, he had patients use "neutral" words like 'one' and even 'Coca Cola'. This approach allows those who are not religious, or whose beliefs may appear to conflict with the teachings connected to a particular meditation system, to nonetheless participate fully in this health-promoting activity.

Benefits

Studies have found that regular meditation is associated with reductions in health care use; increases in longevity and quality of life. In experimental studies, meditation has been found to reduce chronic pain; reduce anxiety; reduce high blood pressure; reduce serum cholesterol level; reduce substance abuse; increase intelligence related measures; reduce post traumatic stress syndrome in Vietnam veterans; and lower blood cortisol levels initially brought on by stress.

Numerous studies have shown a decrease in muscle tension during meditation. In some studies, the decrease in muscle tension as a result of meditation even exceeded the impressive effects of biofeedback training. Meditation has also been shown to aid in the alleviation of pain and there are also studies that meditation improves mind-body coordination, as indicated by enhanced visual sensitivity to light flashes, response to auditory stimuli, and ability to remember and discriminate musical tones.

Procedure

There are two basic forms of meditation:-

• Mindfulness Meditation is an outgrowth of a Buddhist tradition called 'Vipassana', which focuses on the present moment. The meditator focuses his or her attention alertly but non judgmentally on all processes passing through the mind.
• Concentration Meditation is a technique used almost universally in religious and spiritual practices. The meditator focuses his or her attention on an internal or external object (e.g., sound, word, bodily sensations, etc.) while minimizing distractions and bring the wandering mind back to attention on the chosen object. Repetitive prayer is a commonly used form.

Both mindfulness and concentration meditation techniques are being used in clinical settings such as outpatient clinics and hospitals.

Source of information: Internet Guided Learning - Meditation in Clinical Practice