Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania)
April 3, 2025
David W. Orme-Johnson, Vernon A Barnes, Brian Rees et al.
1 citation
Background and Objectives. Our recent systematic review and meta-analysis of all studies on meditation as treatment for PTSD (61 studies) found a moderate effect size of Hedges's g = -0.67 for post-minus-pre change in symptom scores. Separate tests of the four meditation categories found a large effect size of g = -1.13 for the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique that is significantly...
Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania)
December 12, 2024
David W. Orme-Johnson, Vernon A Barnes, Brian Rees et al.
5 citations
Background and Objectives: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition worldwide. The limited effectiveness of current psychological and pharmacological treatments has motivated studies on meditation techniques. This study is a comprehensive, multiple-treatments meta-analysis comparing the effectiveness of different categories of meditation in treating PTSD. Methods and...
World Journal of Social Science
December 20, 2022
David W. Orme-Johnson, Kenneth L. Cavanaugh, Michael C. Dillbeck et al.
Many conceptions of field-effects of consciousness have been proposed. The most well-developed of these is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s, which holds that every individual in society, whether stressed or coherent, contributes to collective consciousness. Collective consciousness in turn impacts the life of every individual, guiding the trends of life in the nation. Over 600 studies have documented...
Studies in Asian Social Science
July 29, 2022
Kenneth L. Cavanaugh, Michael C. Dillbeck, David W. Orme-Johnson
This study outlines and empirically tests a field-theoretic view of consciousness and positive social change based on the ancient Vedic tradition of knowledge from India (Veda means “knowledge” in Sanskrit) as brought to light by the Vedic scholar and scientist of consciousness, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In contrast to most contemporary theories of mind and consciousness originating in the West,...
The Oxford Handbook of Meditation
December 15, 2020
David W. Orme-Johnson
Abstract The Transcendental Meditation technique (TM) is a process of transcending from the active mind to the silent mind, creating a feeling of well-being that many people describe as blissful. As the mind settles, the body becomes deeply rested, as indicated by reductions of physiological stress markers. The meditator typically experiences expanded inner awareness, which corresponds to...
Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute
November 1, 2016
David W. Orme-Johnson
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has proposed a fundamentally new theory of society, which posits a field of collective consciousness as the causal level of social organization underlying all patterns of relationships between and among individuals and social groups. The purpose of the present study was to use factor analysis to examine the inter-correlation patterns among the dependent variables used in...
Psychological Bulletin
March 1, 2014
David W. Orme-Johnson, Michael C. Dillbeck
We commend Sedlmeier et al. (2012) for their significant undertaking of meta-analysis of all meditation types on all psychological variables, but additional analyses may modify some of their conclusions. Whereas they suggest from visual inspection of funnel diagrams that there may be publication bias of underreporting low-effect studies on the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique,...
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
October 9, 2013
David W. Orme-Johnson, Vernon A Barnes
151 citations
OBJECTIVE: This meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique updates previous meta-analyses and assesses the effects of initial anxiety level, age, duration of practice, regularity of practice, research quality, author affiliation, and type of control group on effect sizes. DESIGN: This systematic review of the literature used the...
Current Hypertension Reviews
October 1, 2012
Vernon A Barnes, David W. Orme-Johnson
87 citations
The pathogenesis and progression of cardiovascular diseases are thought to be exacerbated by stress. Basic research indicates that the Transcendental Meditation(®) technique produces acute and longitudinal reductions in sympathetic tone and stress reactivity. In adolescents at risk for hypertension, the technique has been found to reduce resting and ambulatory blood pressure, left ventricular...
heiDOK (Heidelberg University)
2010
Lynne Mason, David W. Orme-Johnson
14 citations
Researchers present evidence in support of a model of consciousness that includes lucid dreaming, witnessing/transcendental consciousness during dreaming and witnessing/transcendental consciousness during deep sleep. Due to the potential for confusion between subjective reports of lucid dreaming and witnessing dreaming or witnessing sleep the authors suggest researchers screen for them all. The...
Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.)
December 1, 2008
David W. Orme-Johnson
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) report is a major reference point for establishing where the research on meditation stands and where it should go from here. This commentary argues that double blinding, a major component of the report's evaluation criteria, is not an appropriate control for placebo in meditation research. A viable alternative is to make the treatment and...
Neuroreport
August 21, 2006
David W. Orme-Johnson, Robert H Schneider, Young D Son et al.
Some meditation techniques reduce pain, but there have been no studies on how meditation affects the brain's response to pain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the response to thermally induced pain applied outside the meditation period found that long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique showed 40-50% fewer voxels responding to pain in the thalamus and total...
Medical Hypotheses
2006
David W. Orme-Johnson
Although meditation has been practiced worldwide for centuries, there are no reports that it causes epilepsy or increases the predisposition to it. Medical care utilization statistics and clinical studies indicate that individuals who regularly practice the Transcendental Meditation technique have fewer problems of the nervous system and specifically show decreased symptoms of epilepsy. The...
Sleep
February 1997
L I Mason, C N Alexander, F T Travis et al.
Standard ambulatory night sleep electroencephalograph (EEG) of 11 long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program reporting "higher states of consciousness" during sleep (the experimental group) was compared to that of nine short-term practitioners and 11 non-practitioners. EEG tracings during stages 3 and 4 sleep showed the experimental group to have: 1) theta-alpha...
Psychology Crime and Law
July 1, 1996
Guy D. Hatchard, Ashley J. Deans, Kenneth L. Cavanaugh et al.
18 citations
Time series analysis was used to test the hypothesis that Merseyside crime rate was reduced by a group practising Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programme. Previous research suggests that a phase transition to increased orderliness u evidenced by reduced crime rate should occur when the group size approaches the square root of 1% of the total population. Analysis...
American journal of health promotion : AJHP
1996
R E Herron, S L Hillis, J V Mandarino et al.
This study evaluated whether governmental medical payments in Quebec were affected by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique. This retrospective study used a pre- and postintervention design in which government payments for physicians' services were reviewed for 3 years before and up to 7 years after subjects started the technique. Payment data were adjusted for aging and year-specific...
International Journal of the Addictions
1991
Paul Gelderloos, Kenneth G Walton, David W. Orme-Johnson et al.
81 citations
This article reviews 24 studies on the benefits of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in treating and preventing misuse of chemical substances. Studies cover noninstitutionalized users, participants in treatment programs, and prisoners with histories of heavy use. All the studies showed positive effects of the TM program. Some of the survey-type studies were unable to exclude the possibility of...
Journal of Conflict Resolution
December 1, 1990
David W. Orme-Johnson, Charles N. Alexander, John L. Davies
24 citations
This article replies to a methodological criticism of Orme-Johnson et al., (1988). The original study reported that participants in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi program located in Jerusalem significantly reduced tension in “collective consciousness” and behavior as measured by decreased conflict in Lebanon and improvement on several social indicators in Israel. Specification...
The International journal of neuroscience
September 1990
F T Travis, David W. Orme-Johnson
Frontal, central and parietal power and coherence of ten subjects practicing the TM-Sidhi technique of Yogic Flying (YF) were compared to that of ten controls who jumped from a seated position to approximate hopping during YF. All movement artifacts were removed before signal analyses. The most significant group differences were seen in the 2.12-second period just before lift-off: the YF...
The International journal of neuroscience
December 1989
F T Travis, D W Orme-Johnson
Changes in EEG coherence patterns were used to test a field model that posits a common field of "pure consciousness" linking all individuals. In ten trials, EEG was concurrently measured from pairs of subjects, one practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the TM-Sidhi technique of "Yogic Flying" (YFg)--said to enliven the proposed field of consciousness--and the other performing a computer...
The International journal of neuroscience
May 1989
C Gaylord, D Orme-Johnson, F Travis
Eighty-three black college students, staff and adults were pretested on EEG coherence, skin potential (SP) habituation to a series of loud tones, psychometric measures of mental health (Tennessee Self-Concept Empirical Scales and Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) and IQ. They were then randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups: the Transcendental Meditation technique (TM);...
Journal of Conflict Resolution
December 1, 1988
David W. Orme-Johnson, Charles N. Alexander, John L. Davies et al.
90 citations
This prospective social experiment tests a new theory and technology for alleviating violent conflict through reducing societal stress in an underlying field of “collective consciousness.” It was predicted that group practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field (the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program) during August and September, 1983, in Jerusalem, would reduce stress...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1986
Michael C. Dillbeck, Panayotis D. Assimakis, Dennis Raimondi et al.
50 college students practicing the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program were administered the Culture Fair Intelligence Test and Group Embedded Figures Test. Significant longitudinal increases over a 3- to 5-yr. period were found in performance on both measures. In the context of normative data, these findings indicate that the practices contribute to an increase in the effectiveness...
The International journal of neuroscience
November 1984
R K Wallace, David W. Orme-Johnson, P J Mills et al.
The paired H reflex, considered to be the electrically evoked counterpart of the monosynaptic stretch reflex, provides a measure of motoneuron excitability under a variety of experimental and clinical conditions. It also offers a potentially useful tool in examining the neurophysiologic basis of alterations in reflex response in different states of awareness. This study investigated the...
Psychosomatic Medicine
May 1, 1984
Kheireddine Badawi, Robert K. Wallace, David W. Orme-Johnson et al.
91 citations
In a study designed to identify the electrophysiologic characteristics of the Transcendental Meditation Program, 52 periods of spontaneous respiratory suspension (RS) were observed in 18 subjects during the practice of this program. These periods were correlated with some but not all the subjective experiences of pure consciousness. Nineteen RS periods (belonging to 11 subjects) free from any...