The Oxford Handbook of Meditation
December 15, 2020
Deane H. Shapiro
Abstract Spiritual, religious, and secular traditions emphasize the importance of control over one’s thoughts, feelings and behavior, and the relevance of meditation in achieving this control. Meditation practices, in particular, can be understood as one strategy amongst others for achieving self-regulation. While the main focus in Western psychology has been on active instrumental control,...
July 12, 2017
Deane H. Shapiro
2 citations
E. Maupin had ordinary subjects focus on breathing for several sessions. These subjects’ meditation experiences were rated on a five-point scale by “blind” judges. A discrete altered state of consciousness is a radically different way of handling information from the physical, intrapersonal, and interpersonal environments, yet the discrete altered state of consciousness may be as arbitrary as...
July 12, 2017
Deane H. Shapiro
1 citation
This chapter provides one perspective: a systems framework, involving several dimensions, which may be helpful in providing further clarity and precision when researching meditation, whether as a self-regulation strategy or as an altered state of consciousness. Most of the empirical research on meditation in Western settings has been concerned with looking at physiological and/or behavioral...
July 12, 2017
Deane H. Shapiro
Meditation, if it is to be considered an empirically effective clinical strategy, needs to be subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as any other psychotherapeutic strategy. One of the primary weaknesses in meditation studies thus far has been the lack of a clear theoretical rationale linking the independent variable and the selection of the dependent variable. Careful consideration should...
July 12, 2017
Deane H. Shapiro
Meditation has been compared on a descriptive level with several different self-regulation strategies—hypnosis; biofeedback; behavioral self-control; autogenic training—as well as generally with other self-regulation strategies. An example of a methodology for comparing meditation with other self-regulation strategies, it is compared with behavioral self-management; then possible ways and...
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
October 1, 1994
Deane H. Shapiro
33 citations
Studies have primarily examined meditation's effects as a self regulation strategy for stress management. Fewer studies have examined its utility as a self exploration strategy for enhancing psychological health in psychotherapy and behavior change. And, few studies have examined meditation's effect regarding its original religious purpose as a self liberation strategy to enhance spiritual...