The goals of this work were to assess the effects of participation in a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction program on mood disturbance and symptoms of stress in cancer outpatients immediately after and 6 months after program completion. A convenience sample of eligible cancer patients were enrolled after they had given informed consent. All patients completed the Profile of Mood...
Abstract Meditation-above all, seated meditation-:-has always been one of the foundational practices of Buddhism. Sakyamuni Buddha realized supreme enlightenment while seated in meditation beneath the bodhi tree. When he set out to establish the teachings and convey this enlightenment to others, he organized the Buddhist path according to the three basic disciplines of purity in the observance...
With the aim of evaluating the sympathetic-adrenal medulla system in subjects practicing transcendental meditation (TM), their plasma catecholamine levels were determined at two different times of day. The study group consisted of 19 subjects who regularly practice either TM or Sidhi-TM technique, with a control group made up of 16 healthy subjects who had not previously used any relaxation...
It is 10:00 Friday morning at the Yale School of Nursing in New Haven, Connecticut. I greet students as they arrive for the fifth session of an elective course entitled "The Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program." This eight week program provides intensive training in mindfulness meditation, and introduces meditation as a therapeutic intervention in the health care system. There are 20...
To determine if participation in a Wellness-Based Mindfulness Stress Reduction intervention decreases the effect of daily hassles, psychological distress, and medical symptoms. A randomized controlled trial of a stress reduction intervention with a 3-month follow-up. A university setting in West Virginia. A total of 103 adults, with 59 in the intervention group and 44 in the control group....
This study investigated effects of transcendent experiences on contingent negative variation (CNV) amplitude, CNV rebound, and distraction effects. Three groups of age-matched subjects with few (<1 per year), more frequent (10-20 per year), or daily self-reported transcendent experiences received 31 simple RT trials (flash (S(1))/tone (S(2))/button press) followed by 31 divided-attention trials...
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...
To determine whether a period of meditation could influence melatonin levels, two groups of meditators were tested in a repeated measures design for changes in plasma melatonin levels at midnight. Experienced meditators practising either TM-Sidhi or another internationally well known form of yoga showed significantly higher plasma melatonin levels in the period immediately following meditation...
Meditation is a conscious mental process that induces a set of integrated physiologic changes termed the relaxation response. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify and characterize the brain regions that are active during a simple form of meditation. Significant (p <10−7) signal increases were observed in the group-averaged data in the dorsolateral prefrontal and...
Transcendental meditation (TM) is a stylized form of physical and mental relaxation which is associated with changes in the secretion and release of several pituitary hormones. The hormonal changes induced by TM mimic the effects of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA). It is hypothesized that TM produces changes in pituitary hormone secretion by enhancing hypothalamic...