Across all cultures and traditions, people describe spirituality as a dimension of experience that goes beyond the obvious way of perceiving reality as made up of separate physical objects. Buddhism talks about no-self or emptiness, while the Yogic tradition talks about true self or fullness. Abrahamic religions talk about the Creator or the Ground of Being. “Non-religious but spiritual” people...
Recent studies demonstrate that eyes-closed rest benefits memory consolidation, perhaps due to reduced attention to environmental stimuli. Here, we asked whether focusing attention to internal thoughts and feelings after learning similarly blocks memory consolidation. Verbal memory was tested following an eyes-closed consolidation period filled with either focused attention to breath or quiet...
PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) on depression, quality of life (QoL), and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) in people with diabetes. DESIGN A systematic literature review and meta-analysis was conducted. METHODS Eight databases (PubMed, Embase, the Cumulative Index to...
Meditation and mindfulness are practices that can support healthcare professionals, patients, carers and the general public during times of crisis such as the current global pandemic caused by COVID-19. While there are many forms of meditation and mindfulness, of particular interest to healthcare professionals are those with an evidence base such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)....
This study investigates the intelligent system approach of meditation and yoga.The intelligent systems are useful to monitor meditation and yoga as well as for the analysis of physiologic data gathered during these practices.Various intelligence techniques are applied to analyze the biophysiologic and psycho physiologic changes in humans are discussed in this study.Recent interest in how the...
Although there has been recent interest in how mindfulness meditation can affect episodic memory as well as brain structure and function, no study has examined the behavioral and neural effects of mindfulness meditation on episodic memory. Here we present a protocol that combines mindfulness meditation training, an episodic memory task, and EEG to examine how mindfulness meditation changes...
Brahma Kumaris Rajayoga’s open eyed ‘seed stage meditation’ was studied in 52 meditators. Meditation stages: concentration on peace, realization of being a soul and communion with the Supreme Soul. Frequency domain brain electric source localization was used on multichannel EEG recordings to establish activation differences between meditation and open eyed, task-free resting. Additional...
Since Jon Kabat-Zinn first introduced a contemporary, secularized application of mindfulness for the relief of pain and stress in physical health-care settings, there has been a significant and rapid expansion of the range of mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) designed for various health care, education, workplace, and other settings. As is common with developing programs, these often run ahead...
Abstract: This chapter reviews the evidence for mindfulness-based therapies in the treatment of physical conditions. We reviewed the literature for numerous conditions including pain, cancer, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, sexual function, insomnia, substance use, and immune function. There is moderate evidence that mindfulness-based therapies improve symptoms of pain in...
In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for young people with anxiety symptoms . We used many databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, EMBASE, CINAHL and Cochrane Library (from inception to May 2019). We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing MBSR with various control conditions, including didactic lecture course,...