State-Enlivening and Practice-Makes-Perfect Approaches to Meditation
Biofeedback 2011 DOI: 10.5298/1081-5937-39.2.07 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Citations | 5 |
| Key points | Argues that Zen koan work and Transcendental Meditation produce effects through state-enlivening mechanisms rather than practice-makes-perfect, citing studies showing TM enhances concentrative activities that are incompatible with its effortless practice. |
Abstract
Meditation procedures can have different types of effects and operate by very different mechanisms. Effects of Mindfulness and Vipassana procedures are often closely akin to what the meditators do in meditation and are understood as emerging via practice-makes-perfect mechanisms. Effects of major procedures from Zen and Transcendental Meditation (TM), by contrast, are often very different from what the meditators do in meditation and are traditionally understood as arising from states enlivened by the meditation techniques, rather than practice-makes-perfect mechanisms. Intensely concentrative γ-electroencephalogram (EEG)–related Zen koan work and effortless ά-related use of mantras in TM are reported to produce the same basic state of pure consciousness/emptiness and types of out-of-meditation effects. These include enhancement of activities incompatible with, rather than expressions of, the activities of the procedures said to produce them. Numerous studies of the TM technique support these observations. They show, for example, enhancement of highly focused, concentrative activities (academic performance, reaction-time, etc.) that are so different from the effortless, explicitly focus-eschewing, ά-associated activity of TM that they are regularly referred to as “ά-blocking.” Such effects do not appear to be explainable as practice-makes-perfect effects. Psychological, gross-physiological, and EEG-related mechanisms have been proposed to explain how state-enlivening procedures might produce their effects.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
- Prevention and Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease in Adolescents and Adults through the Transcendental Meditation® Program: A Research Review Update Current Hypertension Reviews October 1, 2012
- The path to contentless experience in meditation: An evidence synthesis based on expert texts Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences June 2, 2022
Cites 3
- Focused attention, open monitoring and automatic self-transcending: Categories to organize meditations from Vedic, Buddhist and Chinese traditions. Consciousness and Cognition December 2010
- A self-referential default brain state: patterns of coherence, power, and eLORETA sources during eyes-closed rest and Transcendental Meditation practice. Cognitive Processing February 1, 2010
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research July 1, 2004