Effects of Different Types of Meditation on Diastolic Blood Pressure

Abstract

Background: The study was intended to find out the effects of different types of meditations namely transcendental meditation and heart rhythm meditation on diastolic blood pressure among male college students. Methodology: Sixty male students studying bachelor’s degree in colleges in and around Tiruvannamalai District, Tamil Nadu, India were randomly selected as subjects to achieve the purpose of this study. The age of subjects ranged between 18 and 24 years, height and weight ranged from 158 to 171 cm and 56 to 69 kg respectively. The selected sixty subjects were divided into three groups of twenty subjects each at random. Group I (transcendental meditation), Group II (heart rhythm meditation) and Group III (control). Prior to and immediately after the training programme, all the subjects of three groups were tested on the selected dependent variable. ANCOVA (analysis of covariance) was used to analyse the collected data to find out the effects of different types of meditations on diastolic blood pressure. Whenever the obtained ‘F’ ratio for the adjusted post-test mean was found to be significant, Scheffe’s test was applied as post hoc test to determine the paired mean differences, if any. The 0.05 level of confidence was fixed to test the level of significance which was considered as an appropriate. Results & Conclusion: There was a significant differences exist among transcendental meditation group, heart rhythm meditation group and control group on selected physiological variable namely diastolic blood pressure. There was significant change on selected physiological variable namely diastolic blood pressure due to transcendental meditation and heart rhythm meditation after twelve weeks of training period. Significant differences were found between transcendental meditation group and heart rhythm meditation group on selected physiological variable namely diastolic blood pressure after twelve weeks of training period.