Explore (New York, N.Y.)
2013
Yung-Jong Shiah, Dean Radin
This study explored whether drinking tea "treated" with good intentions would enhance mood more than drinking ordinary tea, under double-blind, randomized conditions. Each evening, for seven days in a row, volunteers recorded their mood using the Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaire. On days three, four, and five of the test, each participant drank 600 mL of oolong tea in the morning and...
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2013
Rupert Sheldrake
Contemporary science is based on the claim that all reality is material or physical. There is no reality but material reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter is unconscious. Evolution is purposeless. This view is now undergoing a credibility crunch. The biggest problem of all for materialism is the existence of consciousness. Panpsychism provides a...
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2012
Adam Burke
A significant number of studies have been published examining the mind-body effects of meditation and its clinical efficacy. There are very few studies, however, which directly compare different meditation methods with each other to explore potentially distinct mechanisms and effects, and no studies comparing individual preferences for different methods. As preference is seen as an important...
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2012
Kenneth Kushner
The old Zen saying, "You cannot wash off blood with blood," refers to the conviction that it is difficult to control thoughts with other thoughts. This saying implies that the way to control the mind is through the body. In Zen meditation (zazen), this is accomplished through the regulation of breathing and posture. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between breathing,...
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2011
Jeff Levin
47 citations
This paper surveys the landscape of energy healing, offering a taxonomy and conceptual overview of the work of practitioners. First, systems of energy healing are classified under four categories: an East Asian tradition, a Western professional tradition, a bioenergy tradition, and a contemporary metaphysical tradition. Examples of each are provided. Second, the possibility of core concepts in...
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2011
Cynthia R Gross, Mary Jo Kreitzer, Maryanne Reilly-Spong et al.
The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) as a treatment for chronic primary insomnia. A randomized controlled trial was conducted. The study was conducted at a university health center. Thirty adults with primary chronic insomnia based on criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Text Revision, 4th Edition...
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2011
Gary E Schwartz
Research investigating the potential of detecting the purported presence of spirit (POS) has been hampered by the necessity of employing a human being to collect the data. To infer the presence of alleged spirit, it is essential to remove the simultaneous presence of an experimenter (POE), thereby eliminating his or her physical energy as well as accompanying conscious intentions and...
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2011
Susanne M Cutshall, Laura J Wentworth, Dietlind L Wahner-Roedler et al.
To assess whether a self-directed, computer-guided meditation training program is useful for stress reduction in hospital nurses. We prospectively evaluated participants before and after a month-long meditation program. The meditation program consisted of 15 computer sessions that used biofeedback to reinforce training. Participants were instructed to practice the intervention for 30 minutes...
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2011
Dean I Radin, Cassandra Vieten, Leena Michel et al.
Advanced meditators occasionally report experiences of timelessness, or states of awareness that seem to transcend the usual boundaries of the subjective present. This type of experience was investigated in eight experienced meditators and eight matched controls by measuring 32 channels of EEG before, during, and after exposure to unpredictable light and sound stimuli. The experiment postulated...
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2011
Kyung-Eun Choi, Thomas Rampp, Felix J Saha et al.
Although acupuncture and meditation are widely utilized in the clinical treatment of pain, trials to evaluate their efficacy and modes of action under experimental conditions have yielded equivocal results. This feasibility study investigated whether electroacupuncture (EA) and meditation effectively relieve pain within a well-established ischemic pain paradigm (submaximum effort tourniquet...
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2010
Nancy H Vuckovic, Jennifer Schneider, Louise A Williams et al.
9 citations
To evaluate participants' perceptions of illness, healing process, and experience of effects from shamanic treatment as reported from in-depth interviews. Consistent with a whole systems research model, qualitative methods were used to evaluate the outcomes and experiences of clinical trial participants. Quantitative results are reported elsewhere. Twenty participants completed five visits with...
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2010
Stephan A. Schwartz
Two hundred years of reductive materialism has failed to explain the extraordinary experiences we know as moments of genius, religious epiphany, and psychic insight. This paper proposes that these three experiences are in essence the same experience, differentiated only by intention and context. It reaches this conclusion based on well-conducted experimental research across the continuum of...
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2009
Mary Deyo, Kimberly A Wilson, Jason Ong et al.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn, 1982, 1990) training on a self-selected adult community sample in the areas of mindfulness, rumination, depressive symptomatology and overall well-being. Targeting rumination was considered particularly important because a tendency toward rumination in nondepressed populations has...
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2009
Eric Garland, Susan Gaylord, Jongbae Park
Mindfulness meditation is increasingly well known for therapeutic efficacy in a variety of illnesses and conditions, but its mechanism of action is still under debate in scientific circles. In this paper, we propose a hypothetical causal model that argues for the role of mindfulness in positive reappraisal coping. Positive reappraisal is a critical component of meaning-based coping that enables...
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2009
Jason C Ong, Shauna L Shapiro, Rachel Manber
A unique intervention combining mindfulness meditation with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has been shown to have acute benefits at posttreatment in an open label study. The aim of the present study was to examine the long-term effects of this integrated intervention on measures of sleep and sleep-related distress in an attempt to characterize the natural course of insomnia...
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2008
Jeff Levin
38 citations
This paper presents, for the first time, a comprehensive scholarly examination of the history and principles of major traditions of esoteric healing. After a brief conceptual overview of esoteric religion and healing, summaries are provided of eight major esoteric traditions, including descriptions of beliefs and practices related to health, healing, and medicine. These include what are termed...
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2007
Nicole Y Winbush, Cynthia R Gross, Mary Jo Kreitzer
Sleep disturbance is common and associated with compromised health status. Cognitive processes characterized by stress and worry can cause, or contribute to, sleep complaints. This study systematically evaluated the evidence that sleep can be improved by mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a formalized psychoeducational intervention that helps individuals self-manage and reframe...
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2007
R G Jahn
The concept of complementarity, originally proposed by Bohr in a microphysical context, and subsequently extended by himself, Heisenberg and Pauli to encompass subjective as well as objective dimensions of human experience, can be further expanded to apply to many common attitudes of human consciousness. At issue is the replacement of strict polar opposition of superficially antithetical...
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May 2006
James Giordano, Joan Engebretson
The role of patient spirituality and spiritual/liminal experience(s; SE) in the clinical setting has generated considerable equivocality within the medical community. Spiritual experience(s), characterized by circumstance, manifestation, and interpretation, reflect patients' explanatory models. We seek to demonstrate the importance of SE to clinical medicine by illustrating biological,...
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2006
Cara Rosaen, Rita Benn
Transcendental Meditation (TM), a sitting meditation technique designed to quiet the mind and induce physical and mental relaxation, has been widely studied in adults. Our objective was to explore systematically the first-person experience of young adolescents who practice TM. A descriptive, qualitative study using semistructured interviews. Middle school setting. Participants included 10...
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2006
Gary E Schwartz, Ernest P Schloss
It has been proposed that to understand (1) the evolution of science and medicine, and (2) the integration of conventional, complementary and alternative medicine, it is essential to consider at least eight universal implicit meta-cognitive hypotheses. It has been suggested that these implicit "world" hypotheses can be applied in every discipline of science. The present paper reviews the eight...
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July 2005
Stephan A Schwartz
This paper describes the development of the blind protocol, and its place in this history of consciousness research. It was first devised by Croesus, King of the Lydians (BCE 560-547) and reported by Herodotus ( approximately BCE 484 - approximately 424), and was created to protect against fraud in assessing an Anomalous Perception (AP) event; a Remote Viewing (RV) experiment little different...