Objective: The issue of a quantitative and qualitative impoverishment of dream activity in alexithymic subjects was assessed by analysis of the 14-day dream reports of two groups of accurately selected alexithymic and nonalexithymic subjects. Methods: Ten alexithymic and 10 nonalexithymic women were selected from a larger sample of 160 undergraduate students. The transcriptions of their...
OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a clinical program, developed to facilitate adaptation to medical illness, which provides systematic training in mindfulness meditation as a self-regulatory approach to stress reduction and emotion management. There has been widespread and growing use of this approach within medical settings in the last 20 years, and many claims have been...
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess the effects of participation in a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction program on mood disturbance and symptoms of stress in cancer outpatients. METHODS: A randomized, wait-list controlled design was used. A convenience sample of eligible cancer patients enrolled after giving informed consent and were randomly assigned to either an...
OBJECTIVE: Despite the repeated suggestion in the literature of an association between impoverished dream processes and alexithymia, little systematic research has been conducted. METHODS: Eight nonclinical adults scoring in the alexithymia range and eight nonclinical adults scoring in the nonalexithymia range on a measure of alexithymia were awakened for dream reports during their second,...
Increased peripheral vasoconstriction (ie, total peripheral resistance, or TPR) has been implicated as playing an important role in the early development of essential hypertension. Some studies have demonstrated that Transcendental Meditation (TM) reduces high blood pressure, but the hemodynamic adjustments behind these blood pressure reductions have not been elucidated. The aim of this study...
OBJECTIVE: Oxidative stress or free radical activity may contribute to the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and other chronic diseases associated with aging. Because psychosocial stress has been shown to increase oxidative stress, we conducted an exploratory study to investigate the effects of stress reduction with the Transcendental Meditation program on serum lipid peroxide levels in...
This study tests the hypothesis that stress reduction methods based on mindfulness meditation can positively influence the rate at which psoriasis clears in patients undergoing phototherapy or photochemotherapy treatment. Thirty-seven patients with psoriasis about to undergo ultraviolet phototherapy (UVB) or photochemotherapy (PUVA) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a mindfulness...
This field study compared 5 years of medical insurance utilization statistics of approximately 2000 regular participants in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program with a normative data base of approximately 600,000 members of the same insurance carrier. The benefits, deductible, coinsurance terms, and distribution by gender of the TM group were very similar to the norm, yet the TM group had...
The present study reexamined an investigation that found enhanced plasma norepinephrine (NE) levels during isometric handgrip after 30 days of meditation practice. Since hemodynamic activity did not show corresponding increases, it was suggested that meditation had down regulated the cardiovascular response to sympathetic stimulation. The present study assessed response to venipuncture as well...
The Transcendental Meditation (TM) and a more advanced program, the TM-Sidhi program, have been reported to produce a number of acute and long-term metabolic and electrophysiologic changes. To investigate the possibility that the practice of these techniques may be associated with long-term endocrinologic changes, we prospectively evaluated 11 male subjects before and over a 3-year period after...
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...
The prominence of respiratory symptoms in patients with neurotic psychiatric disorders is noted and the literature on the control of respiration is reviewed to attempt to explain this finding. A previous study demonstrated a positive correlation between the ventilatory response to CO2 (S) and neurotic personality traits in a group of normal subjects. This study attempted to follow up this...
Systolic blood pressure was measured in 112 subjects practicing the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi programs. The subjects were between the ages of 35 and 64 years. A significant difference was found between the systolic blood pressures of subjects (matched for sex, race, and general educational background) practicing the TM and TM-Sidhi programs and norms for the general...
We observed, over four independent experiments, 565 criterion-meeting episodes of breath suspension in 40 subjects practicing the Transcendental Mediation technique (TM), a simple mental technique involving no breath control procedures. The frequency and length of these breath suspension episodes were substantially and significantly greater for TM subjects than for control subjects relaxing...
The Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique decreases the distress associated with the experience of acute experimental pain. Fifteen advanced mediators and 15 controls were administered the cold pressor test before and after a 20 minute period of meditation (TM group) or relaxation (control group). Verbal reports of the intensity of pain sensation and pain distress were obtained at intervals...
The effects of transcendental meditation (TM) on plasma renin activity (PRA) and plasma concentrations of aldosterone, cortisol, and lactate were studied by measuring these variables before, during, and after 20--30 min of meditation. Subjects, who rested quietly rather than meditating, served as controls. There were no differences in the basal values for these variables between meditators and...
Davidson and Schwartz (1) have proposed a psychobiological analysis of anxiety that emphasizes the patterning of multiple processes in the generation and self-regulation of this state. The present article specifically reviews recent research on cognitive and somatic components of anxiety. A dual component scale which separately assesses cognitive and somatic trait anxiety is described and...
Ss were monitored for respiratory rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, skin resistance, EEG activity, and muscle activity. They were monitored during the alert state, meditation (TM or simple word type), hypnosis (relaxation and task types), and relaxation. Ss gave a verbal comparative evaluation of each state. The results showed significantly better relaxation responses for the relaxation states...
Physiological indices of stress were found to be lower in people who regularly practiced Transcendental Meditation (N=14) than in nonmeditating control subjects (N=16). During normal waking (eyes open) a noxious loud tone (100 db, 0.5 sec, 3000 Hz) was presented to subjects a mean of once every 53 sec at irregular intervals. The stress reaction to each tone, as indicated by the galvanic skin...
Eleven subjects were awakened from dream periods (defined in terms of Dement and Kleitman's eye-movement criteria) and asked to describe their dream experience. Subjects more often believed that they were awake and/or thinking when the awakening was gradual than when the awakening was abrupt (P <.05). Reports in which the subject believed that he had been awakened from a dreamless sleep were...
The psychotherapy of a man with ulcerative colitis is reported in which a psychological crisis preceded remission of bowel dysfunction. This turning point featured hypnagogic hallucinations and dreams, including phenomena reported by Isakower, Lewin, Rycroft, and others. The deeper psychological meaning of the illness and the crisis is seen as the patient's attempt to incorporate a constant,...
Mescaline, cocaine, sodium amytal and benzedrine were given to 14 schizophrenic patients, and their influence upon personality functions and the electroencephalogram (EEG) was observed. Changes in the EEG were found only when definite psychological changes took place. The effects of the drugs could be classified into two types: 1) Those specific for a given drug. Psychologically these were...
A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that meditation may slow brain aging. The amygdala-a heterogenous brain region known to decrease in volume with increasing age-seems to be involved in meditation and affected by meditation. Thus, we hypothesized that the age-related decline of the amygdala is diminished in meditation practitioners. We investigated whether correlations between age...
Meta-analyses indicate that mindfulness meditation is efficacious for chronic and acute pain, but most available studies lack active control comparisons. This raises the possibility that placebo-related processes may account, at least in part, for mindfulness effects. The objective of this study was to develop a closely matched sham mindfulness condition to establish whether placebo effects...
Meditation interventions promote an array of well-being outcomes. However, the way in which these interventions promote beneficial outcomes is less clear. Here, we expanded on prior work by examining the influence of mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation on a key health behavior: physical activity. To test our hypotheses, we drew upon two randomized intervention studies. In the first...