Eastern Meditation Research Articles

Effects of Static Meditation Practice on Blood Lipid Levels: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

This review aims to delineate the potential impact of static meditation practice on cholesterol and triglyceride levels. PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were systematically screened up until December 2023 to identify pertinent studies. After searching the scientific literature, 16 clinical studies (11 trials and 5 observational experiments) met the criteria for inclusion, involving a total of 1147 participants. In general, Ayurvedic-based meditation techniques were predominantly associated with lower total cholesterol levels, mindfulness-based techniques demonstrated benefits in both total cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and Eastern meditation techniques with spiritual origins were primarily linked to improved serum concentrations of HDL cholesterol. Study participants mostly engaged in meditation on a daily basis, often practicing it once or even twice a day, spanning a duration ranging from a few weeks to several months. The meta-analysis shows an association between meditation practice in healthy or sub-healthy adults and reduced cholesterol levels, with an average decrease of approximately -14 mg/dL (MD = -13.91 [-23.35; -4.47] mg/dL; p = 0.02), alongside favorable and even more pronounced impacts on triglyceride levels (MD = -32.56 [-48.44; -16.68] mg/dL; p < 0.01). In summary, regular engagement in static meditation practices can be associated with lower triglyceride and, to a lesser extent, cholesterol levels. Further studies on the topic are recommended to better investigate the relationship between meditation practice and physiological parameters.

African Wisdom Traditions and Healing Practices: Performing the Embodied, Contemplative, and Group-based Elements of African Cosmology, Orality, and Arts Modalities

This study on African wisdom traditions and their healing practices, as conducted through embodied modalities and in community settings, addresses a gap in mainstream discourse centered on Eastern meditation practices and Western cognitive therapeutic practices. During a research retreat in South Africa, traditional healers, creative arts therapists, and performers were invited to facilitate indigenous contemplative rituals and arts-based healing practices. The study intended to classify selected Southern African practices and question how they contribute to healing trauma, supporting well-being and enabling human flourishing. This article presents a definition, brief history, and the performed elements of five healing practices: Umphahlo, Umgidi Wokulingisa, Isicathamiya, Iintsomi, and Djembe drumming.

Meditation and psychosis. The comparison of the current knowledge in the light of scientific evidence and the experience of an Eastern meditation teacher.

The aim of the study was to compare the current knowledge on the relationship between the use of meditation techniques and the occurrence of psychosis with the experience of an Eastern meditation teacher, Osho Rajneesh. While searching the PubMed database using the keywords "meditation AND psychosis" 72 research articles were obtained, of which only 17 fully corresponded to the assumptions of the work. They included the case reports of the patients, as well as meta-analyses, and review articles related to both the positive and negative influence of meditation practices on mental health. Additionally, the information contained in 3 books was used. The etiology of meditation-induced psychotic episodes is not clear given the frequent presence of many coexisting factors including fasting, sleep deprivation, or a positive psychiatric history, as well as the limitation of the methodology. In the analyzed studies, only patients who did not meditate in clinical conditions were reported. The analysis of these cases indicates that the risk of a psychotic episode was associated with excessively long practice and lack of adequate supervision. The comparison of current scientific knowledge with the experience of the Eastern meditation teacher made it possible to draw attention to rarely described in literature risk factors of the development of psychosis, which include "specific traits" of the practitioner's attitude. One of its fundamental elements is an incorrect understanding of meditation as a task to perform, instead of an open, passive, and accepting attitude of observing the external and internal world.

«Западная психотерапия" и «Восточная медитация» в учении Ошо о духовном совершенстве человека

Abstract. Osho Rajneesh is one of the most controversial neo–Hinduism teachers. Like in a mirror, Osho reflected the main ideas of his time, proclaimed those principles that are desirable and relevant for modern man. Despite Osho’s widespread fame, his significance as a spiritual leader and founder of the original religious and philosophical system, the significance of his teachings and ideas in the focus of spiritual improvement of man, remain underestimated. The issue of systematization of Rajneesh teaching remains unresolved. The aim of Osho’s teaching is human’s spiritual perfection. To achieve this aim, Osho combines diverse ways of spiritual development available to humanity into a single whole. The guru adopts and interprets the key ideas of religious and philosophical theories of the East and the West. The teaching, which includes so many of these peculiar “squeezes”, was not created either before or after Osho. All of the above is the reason for the undying interest in this spiritual leader. This article discusses Osho’s method of man’s spiritual perfection: a combination of “Western psychotherapy” and “Eastern meditation”. The purpose of this article is to analyze the Osho’s method: how “Western psychotherapy” and “Eastern meditation” are combined and interpreted in the guru’s teaching to identify an integral system of Osho’s views on the spiritual perfection of a human. The objectives of the article are: 1. To identify in what key Osho turns to Western philosophical views, 2. to consider the features of Osho’s adoption and interpretation of Western philosophical concepts, 3. to analyze the “Osho’s Method” of man’s spiritual perfection, which includes two stages: “exposing the ego” and “returning to the natural” through “Western psychotherapy” and “Eastern meditation”, 4. To consider the features of Osho’s meditational practices. The research involves religious studies, philosophical-anthropological, and system-structural approaches. This scientific article partially reflects some aspects of the religious analysis of Osho’s anthropological teaching, conducted for the first time. As a result, Osho’s teaching is presented as an integral harmonious structure — the concept of spiritual improvement of a man, which includes two conditional stages: “exposing the ego” and “returning to the natural”. Osho’s meditations are based on two system-forming principles (consciousness and totality), aimed at “sudden enlightenment”, have a syncretic character and can be conditionally divided into cathartic, contemplative and centering, depending on the prevailing method. For the further research of Osho’s teaching it’s necessary to understand its inner logic, distinguish the concepts, considering them relative to Osho’s religious philosophical thought in general. The interest in Osho’s ideas that has not faded over the years, indicates the existence of people’s need for such a search for truth, which was proposed by this Indian mentor.

Disparate Distribution of Time in the Universe: Time and Intercourse with Quantity &amp; Intensity of Energy, Matter and Space.

Disparate Distribution of Time in the Universe: Time and Intercourse with Quantity &amp; Intensity of Energy, Matter and Space.

The intersection of religion and mental well-being amongst African-American women

ABSTRACT A qualitative research study was conducted to understand the meaning of religion in the lives of African-American women and how it connected to their mental well-being. Stories of women in their day-to-day lives are examined using a phenomenological methodology to determine the ways in which women sought help and whether religion was a benefit to their lives. The findings established that there were diverse interpretations and methods of viewing the term religion and mental well-being. Each person had their own appraisal of what these terms meant, and how they affected them. An unexpected finding of the research was the significance of eastern meditation and Buddhist practice with women who were part of conservative Black faith communities that discouraged such practice.

The Christian Meditation Movement: A Critical Perspective

The Christian Meditation Movement: A Critical Perspective Alexandra Slaby Introduction Lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer determines the law of faith.1 In other words, how you pray determines how you believe, and how you pray can modify what you believe. Since the end of the Second Vatican Council, which steered the Catholic Church in the direction of ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, and in the postmodern context of an interiorisation of faith, Catholics have been led to ‘ask themselves what value non-Christian forms of meditation might have for [them]. Above all, the question concerns Eastern methods’.2 Fascination for Eastern forms of prayer among Catholic laity and clergy is not new and predates the 1960s. As early as 1943, German JesuitHugoLassallesawthatthemeditationtaughtbyJapaneseZenBuddhism helped him deepen his Catholic faith, and his work has been carried on by Belfast-born fellow Jesuit William Johnston.3 Benedictine monks also have a long history of interest in bridging Eastern and Western contemplative prayer practices – from John Cassian who inspired the Benedictine Rule to Henri Le Saux (aka swami Abhishiktananda)4 to Jean-Marie Déchanet (aka the father of Christian yoga)5 to John Main, the founder of the Christian Meditation Movement to Laurence Freeman, his disciple. It has never been easier to travel East, physically or culturally. At the same time, however, Christians are less well equipped for this spiritual encounter than in the past, when the contents of their Christian faith were transmitted with a reliable continuity in time and space. Meanwhile, Eastern spiritual traditions are valued in a postmodern, New Age synthesis of cultures and spiritualities where ecclesial authority has been challenged and where elements of different faiths and spiritualities can be combined (‘Buddhist and Catholic’) if they offer a new hope of receiving affirmation and healing. Eastern meditation has gained a growing attraction in the Western Catholic world, to the point where it has become a mainstream practice taking place in spiritual and lay settings. In Ireland, it is not uncommon to find The Christian Meditation Movement: A Critical Perspective Studies • volume 108 • number 431 313 Studies_layout_AUTUMN-2019.indd 81 21/08/2019 09:14 Irish Catholics saying that such a form of meditation helps them in their Catholic practice. The Dominican retreat centre in Tallaght offered a Holy Week session in 2018 called ‘Zen and the self-emptying of Christ’. Louis Hughes OP in Kilkenny writes and preaches about body-mind spirituality, yoga and Christian meditation.6 The Jesuit Centre for Spirituality and Culture in Galway has recently been organising sessions called ‘Dive Deeper: Exploring spirituality and ways of prayer’ in a ‘contemplative approach drawing on Christian spirituality and Eastern practices such as mindfulness’.7 The newsletters of Christian Meditation Ireland, Irish chapter of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) show that the group holds sessions in various parishes throughout the country. These developments unfold at a time when, the Vatican notes, ‘it must unfortunately be admitted that there are too many cases where Catholic centres of spirituality are actively involved in diffusing New Age religiosity in the Church’.8 New Age religiosity is animated by the aspiration to create a global spirituality transcending boundaries between faiths, in search of a common global spiritual core which will unite mankind among itself and with the cosmos. So, when we hear the phrase ‘Christian mantra’, as proposed by WCCM, not only the Tibetan meditation bell, but alarm bells may ring as well. Can such a word and a practice as ‘mantra’be imported into the Christian prayer tradition without modifying the contents of the faith? It is in the light of these questions that I would like to offer an attempt at discernment on Christian Meditation Movement, understood as the prayer practice taught by WCCM. John Main’s Christian Meditation movement The Christian Meditation Movement, led by Anglo-Irish Benedictine monks, is embraced and established in Irish Catholic life, judging by the frequency of visits to the island by Fr Laurence Freeman and by the invitation of Mary McAleese as speaker at the 1997 John Main Seminar which was held in Dublin. Beyond Ireland, the movement is relatively marginal, but has not been condemned, and its members have...

Abramović – Ulay 1980–1988: Desert Storm Survivors

The twelve-year collaborative practice of Marina Abramovic and Ulay (Franck Uwe Laysiepen), started with extreme, rapturous and unflinching explorations of capacities of the body in their early performances (a phase they called The Warriors), that corresponded to the fury of the 1970s. In an environment hostile to the living, phenomenological body (in arts, in theoretical discourse) of the 1980s, the two artists recalibrated their living and artistic strategy. During their extensive journeys into distant lands (deserts of Asia, Africa, Australia), they were introduced to and embraced the practices of Eastern meditation techniques, which secured and procured their escape from the limitations of their own culture and their relationship. They also significantly influenced and modified forms and functions of their joint performances. The refined simplicity and stillness of the form of their many-times (re)enacted performance Nightsea Crossing focussed and spurred their inner forces towards self-perfection and the unfolding of more sophisticated lines of connection with the outside, with otherness. The legacy of this performance has affected the direction and function of their later, individual careers.

Meditation and Hypnosis: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Hypnosis and meditation, as a whole, form a heterogeneous complex of psychosomatic techniques able to control mind and body regulation. Hypnosis has been pragmatically used for limited therapeutic targets, while Eastern meditation has much wider philosophical and existential implications, aiming for a radical liberation from all illusions, attachments, suffering and pain. The available data on the history, phenomenology, and neuropsychology of hypnosis and meditation show several common features, such as the following: (a) induction based on focused attention; (b) capability to reach an intentional control of both biologic-somatic activities and conscious-unconscious processes; (c) activation/deactivation of several brain areas and circuits (e.g., the default modality network and pain neuromatrix) with a relevant overlapping between the two.

Boundary crossers

While the practice by Jews of Eastern meditation was sharply criticized in the Jewish world in the sixties, today, Buddhist-inspired new forms of “Jewish meditation” are being taught in most mainstream Jewish institutions in America and the Western world. What has led to such a turnaround? Using Barth’s concept of “agents of change,” the case studies of six American Jews teaching meditation shows how individual strategies can end up impacting the topography of a religious field, how the margins can impact the “center” of a religious group. As it reshapes Judaism’s symbolic boundaries, both external and internal, the phenomenon of the Buddhist Jews invites us to rethink religion as a process constantly in the making, continuously shaped by individual choices and cultural interactions.

Does mindfulness meditation improve attention in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) manifests by high levels of inattention, impulsiveness and hyperactivity. ADHD starts in childhood and results in impairments that continue into adulthood. While hyperactivity declines over time, inattention and executive function difficulties persist, leading to functional deficits. Adolescents and adults with ADHD have pervasive impairment in interpersonal and family relationships. They may develop addiction, delinquent behavior and comorbid psychiatric disorders. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, persistent residual symptoms are common, highlighting the need for novel treatment strategies. Mindfulness training, derived from Eastern meditation practices, may improve self-regulation of attention. It may also be a useful strategy to augment standard ADHD treatments and may be used as a potential tool to reduce impairments in patients with residual symptoms of ADHD. Clinically, this would manifest by an increased ability to suppress task-unrelated thoughts and distractions resulting in improved attention, completion of tasks and potential improvement in occupational and social function.

In the “Light Out of the East”: Emerson on Self, Subjectivity, and Creativity

In “Experience” Emerson announces his readiness “to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West” (CW 3:41). Whatever personal manifest destiny the passage expresses, it arises from Emerson’s deep affinity for Eastern philosophy. The inscription in Emerson’s notebook “Orientalist” is “Ex oriente lux,” or “Light out of the east” (1993, 39), and, as Ronald Bosco notes in his introduction to the notebook, Emerson believed that the light of the East “has the power both to nourish otherwise impoverished individuals and nations and to transmute . . . the crime of materialism into wisdom” (1993, 14). His west is far to the east in “the sunbright Mecca of the desert,” not Huckleberry Finn’s territory, the pioneer’s prairie, or the miner’s rocky west, and unlike miners, settlers, land speculators, governments, and most Western philosophers, he does “not make” or stake a claim; he “arrive[s] there, and behold[s] what was there already” (CW 3:41). Emerson’s approach to the west entails the death or disappearance of “all mean egotism” (CW 1:10) and the open flexibility of a Zen practitioner’s mind. The grand sense of entitlement and the mission of proliferation that sent most European Americans west are quite foreign to Emerson’s acknowledgment and receptivity. All a miner knows is by penetration into the earth; all

Interpersonal Mindfulness Training for Well-Being: A Pilot Study with Psychology Graduate Students

Background/Context Although mindfulness originated in Eastern meditation traditions, notably Buddhism, researchers, clinicians, and, more recently, educators suggest that the cultivation of mindfulness may be beneficial to Westerners uninterested in adopting Buddhist or other Eastern spiritual traditions. Mindfulness is understood as sets of skills that can be developed with practice and taught independently of spiritual origins as a way of being or relating to present-moment experience. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This pilot study adds to this literature on mindfulness training for nascent mental health professionals, who may be at risk for occupational stress and burnout. This study aims to (1) expand on preliminary research supporting the helpfulness of mindfulness interventions for graduate students in psychology and (2) investigate the feasibility and helpfulness of a novel adaptation of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) that emphasizes relational awareness. Population/Participants/Subjects This sample consisted of clinicians-in-training (N = 21) within a graduate department of counseling and clinical psychology at an urban university. All students were in their first or second year of graduate school; 20 participants were enrolled in a psychology master's program, and 1 participant was a doctoral student in clinical psychology. Intervention/Program/Practice The authors investigated a novel 6-week interpersonal mindfulness training (IMT) program modeled after the manualized MBSR intervention, with an added emphasis placed on relational awareness. IMT aims to reduce perceived stress and enhance interpersonal well-being and, as such, may be particularly well-suited for psychotherapy trainees. IMT was integrated into a semester-long graduate course in psychology. Research Design A pre-post design was used to examine outcomes associated with participation in IMT. Findings/Results Results suggest that IMT with psychology graduate students is a feasible intervention that positively affects mindfulness, perceived stress, social connectedness, emotional intelligence, and anxiety. Of special interest are changes in interpersonal well-being that suggest potential benefits for future mental health professionals. Conclusions/Recommendations High attendance rate and positive program evaluations suggest that IMT can be successfully taught within a graduate psychology curriculum. We suggest that mindfulness training may be a useful complement to the standard training of future clinicians.

Analytical psychology and Daoist inner alchemy: a response to C.G. Jung's ‘Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower’

This paper provides a historical, religious-philosophical context for the study of the Daoist text known as The Secret of the Golden Flower. An updated study is conducted into the controversy over the source of the text including the editions translated by Richard Wilhelm and Thomas Cleary. The main teachings of the text and the basics of two major denominations of Daoism are introduced to ground later critiques of Jung's commentary. The psychodynamics of analytical psychology, especially those concerned with integration of unconscious contents and the realization of the self (individuation) are compared with the psycho-spiritual dynamics of integration in Eastern spirituality based on the Golden Flower text. The paper concludes that it was amiss for Jung to have equated the Western 'unconscious' with states of higher consciousness in Eastern meditation practices, although his claim that Eastern higher consciousness is characterized by a nebulous state of non-intentionality does raise questions about the appropriateness of calling Eastern meditative states 'consciousness'. A new concept is required to characterize the special qualities of this psychic state shared generally by Eastern spiritual traditions and a more meaningful comparison may be found in Jung's concept of the self.

Trager®: at the table—Part 3

Abstract This paper is the third in a series on the Trager ® approach from the perspective of an experienced practitioner. To the author's knowledge this is the first time the tablework performed in Trager has been described in-depth, in a forum outside the proprietary materials that each student of Trager receives. Milton Trager's work at the table changed over the years, from more vigorous and less specific, to less vigorous and more specific. The work of Trager practitioners vary, depending upon when and how they were influenced by his work. Trager guided his proteges from the principles of physical culture, to a growing emphasis on the power of presence. He guided his clients from passively receiving new movements on the table, to actively creating those movements, as Mentastics ® , off the table (Mentastics to be detailed in a future issue of JBMT). Trager developed varieties of ways to hold and move the body that were usually gentle and painless. Clients could sense their bodies moving but could not exactly feel how. Many of these ways of interacting with clients, and their bodies, are strikingly similar in principle to Eastern meditation and martial arts. To Trager tablework represents a dialogue between the mind of the practitioner and the mind of the client—a dialogue aimed at achieving wholeness as the practitioner takes the client on an inner journey. The Trager approach to the client has more in common to new somatic concepts of working with the body, than older approaches that try to fix what is wrong with the body. All the while the practitioner is hooked-up, so that very subtle information can be worked with, while never pushing through the client's resistance. 1 1See other JBMT articles in this series for explanation of this process. Part of Trager's genius was that he was able to think and create outside the box of professional socialization. Many of the principles he taught and lived by are polar opposites of traditional methods in manual therapy and bodywork. Soft hands, no pain, less is more, change the mind-set, do not fix, and reinforcement, are just a few of his guidelines. In all these ways Trager's legacy challenges manual therapists to consider offering therapeutic relief from a different perspective.

Personality and Spirituality: Christian Prayer and Eastern Meditation Are Not the Same

A random sample of 1,033 adults in an Australian community survey completed a form containing the abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with questions about the practice of prayer and Eastern meditation. While prayer was associated with low psychoticism scores, Eastern meditation was associated with high psychoticism scores.

Meditation, Restoration, and the Management of Mental Fatigue

An analysis of the underlying similarities between the Eastern meditation tradition and attention restoration theory (ART) provides a basis for an expanded framework for studying directed attention. The focus of the analysis is the active role the individual can play in the preservation and recovery of the directed attention capacity. Two complementary strategies are presented that can help individuals more effectively manage their attentional resource. One strategy involves avoiding unnecessary costs in terms of expenditure of directed attention. The other involves enhancing the effect of restorative opportunities. Both strategies are hypothesized to be more effective if one gains generic knowledge, self-knowledge, and specific skills. The interplay between a more active form of mental involvement and the more passive approach of meditation appears to have far-reaching ramifications for managing directed attention.

The Effect of Meditation on the Academic Performance of African American College Students

With the dawn of the next millennium at arm's length, many individuals are starting to engage in practices that lead to altered states of consciousness. Altered states of consciousness refer to states other than the normal waking state, including sleep, meditation, the hypnotic trance, and the distorted perceptions that may be caused by the use of certain drugs (Rathus, 1997, p. G1). Meditation is one such process that alters one's consciousness. Meditation is a systematic narrowing of attention that slows the metabolism and helps produce feelings of relaxation (Rathus, 1997, p. G13). There are numerous forms of meditation, with two of the most used being transcendental and Egyptian. The goal is the same, yet the process is somewhat different. Transcendental meditation is a simplified form of Far Eastern meditation that was brought to the United States by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1959 (Rathus, 1997). During the process, an individual repeats and concentrates on a mantra. Mantras are words or sounds that are claimed to have the capacity to help one achieve an altered state of consciousness. Egyptian meditation involves focusing on and visualizing an Egyptian symbol that represents a certain quality or characteristic. The purpose of focusing on the symbol is to obtain a particular goal (e.g., ward off enemies, to bring wealth or happiness). It also involves chanting words of power that correspond to the goal (Amen, 1990). Although these forms of

The Inner Journey: Reflections on the Awakening of Mind and Heart in Buddhism and Christianity

December 1989 a letter from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was sent to all the Roman Catholic Bishops in the world. Some Catholic experts on Eastern meditation concluded that it was far more measured than early press notices indicated. Eastern approaches to prayer, the seven thousandword letter said, should not be rejected out of hand simply because they are not Christian, but it insisted that there be some fit between the nature of prayer and Christian beliefs about ultimate reality. Such beliefs include the distinction between Creator and human creature. For Christians, though united in Jesus, the otherness of each is not lost. Recall Paul's passionate outcry: live now not I but Christ lives in me. Creation, too, was mentioned; the world is God's creation, in need of redemption rather than escape. And union with God is a grace, not something that can be mastered by any spiritual technique. Euphoric states must not be confused with prayer or assumed to be signs of the presence of God, a state that should always result in loving service to others. Without these truths, the Vatican said, meditation, which should be a flight from the self, can degenerate into a form of self-absorption. Father Thomas Keating said of the document: In my experience of talking with Eastern spiritual masters, they are just as cautious as this document is about mistaking psychological states that can be induced by meditation for some great enlightenment. The document did, however, fail to address the absence of any intense experience of God's power that today is sending many Christians to Eastern religions.1 I myself looked to the East for this very reason in 1976, not for God's power so much as for consciousness of his presence, for deeper levels of consciousness of divine love, and in view of what I found I am happy now to share with you some of these treasures of both East and West.

Eastern Meditation Groups: Why Join?

This paper examines membership in a certain type of New Religious group-viz. those whose members leave the larger society of their own volition in order to participate in meditation and other practices from the East. The data include field observations, responses from a structured interview, and semi-structured, tape-recorded interviews. A model of membership is proposed: individuals with IA) a psychotherapeutic orientation who are IB) structurally available for II) in depth drug experimentation III) seek an alternative to the drug highs without the lows. In the great majority of societies, there is some built-in way of entering a meditative state, some release from the hereand-now other than drugs or alcohol. This society is one of the few exceptions. Members of New Religious groups such as the ashram may be seen as those who have found, in a corner of this society, a way of entering a meditative state.