Understanding Of Meditation Research Articles

Investigating the impact of mindful breathing meditation on brain waves: a study on young adults

Extensive evidence affirms meditation’s impact on both physical and mental well-being, consistently highlighting increased alpha power during meditation. This study investigates how mindful breathing meditation affects brain waves in young adults, using EEG data from 15 participants. Focusing on boosting alpha wave power, the study shows a significant postmeditation increase. Data was processed with Finite Impulse Filters, Independent Component Analysis, Short-term Fourier analysis, and power spectral density analysis. The results highlight substantial alpha wave changes pre- and post-meditation. Additionally, data was preprocessed for machine learning-based classifiers (Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression, Decision Forest, and Naïve Bayes) to categorize brain waves into Delta, Theta, Low Alpha, High Alpha, Low Beta, and High Beta. Comparative analysis reveals the strong impact of mindful breathing meditation and binaural beats on brain wave patterns. This research enhances our understanding of meditation’s physiological effects on brain function, emphasizing its potential for improving mental well-being.

MEMBACA: SEBAGAI MEDITASI PIKIRAN DAN BAHASA

The concept of metacognitive learning with a spiritual approach is to focus on the role of mind and language and how to apply it in reading to improve emotional of intelligence in understanding the universal meaning of the text. This essay uses the approach Centered Attention of Meditation (FA). That is to focus the mind on objects, images, or words in sentences that are understood to add insight to the context of what the author explained, to connect the reader to understand the mind and language. This essay is here to open the freezing of the universal meaning of the text from what covers the mind and the meaning of language with the reading formula (B+B), namely “Stop and Think”. Human language is a linguistic structure that must be understood through understanding of meditation.

Measuring a Journey without Goal: Meditation, Spirituality, and Physiology.

The secular practice of meditation is associated with a range of physiological and cognitive effects, including lower blood pressure, lower cortisol, cortical thickening, and activation of areas of the brain associated with attention and emotion regulation. However, in the context of spiritual practice, these benefits are secondary gains, as the primary aim is spiritual transformation. Despite obvious difficulties in trying to measure a journey without goal, spiritual aspects involved in the practice of meditation should also be addressed by experimental study. This review starts by considering meditation in the form of the relaxation response (a counterpart to the stress response), before contrasting mindfulness research that emphasizes the role of attention and alertness in meditation. This contrast demonstrates how reference to traditional spiritual texts (in this case Buddhist) can be used to guide research questions involving meditation. Further considerations are detailed, along with the proposal that research should triangulate spiritual textual sources, first person accounts (i.e., neurophenomenology), and physiological/cognitive measures in order to aid our understanding of meditation, not only in the secular context of health benefits, but also in the context of spiritual practice.

Mindfulness and Awareness: Constructivist, Psychodynamic and Eastern Perspectives

In this paper I develop my contention that reality is experienced polymorphically at different levels along a concrete-abstract continuum. At the more abstract and psychic level the internal representations of primary reality are, to varying degrees, verbally labelled. However, for various reasons, this verbal symbolisation is rarely adequate or complete—even in adulthood, and hence the persistent recourse to somatisation, acting out, projection and other psychological strategies and defences. This paper also examines, using both constructivist and psychodynamic models, how verbalisation can be helpful in clinical practice with somatoform disorders as both models are concerned with the “talking cure”. Drawing on our understanding of meditation and mindfulness, the role of our psychological defences in limiting our consciousness is examined, in contrast to the practice of non-verbal mindfulness which aims at expanding our awareness. Potential problems with meditation are discussed, as well as limitations to the “talking cure”—as verbalisation can also be used as a higher order defence. However, it is concluded that all awareness expanding practices, such as mindfulness and psychotherapy, reduce the need to resort to somatisation and other primitive awareness distorting strategies. In this paper constructivist (Kellian) and psychodynamic (both Freudian and post-Freudian) perspectives are employed to develop my contention that reality is experienced polymorphically at different levels of cognitive awareness along a concrete-abstract continuum. At a more abstract (or largely psychic) level the internal representations of primary reality become, to varying degrees, verbally labelled as we develop and mature from infancy. However, this verbal symbolisation is rarely sufficient or complete—even in adulthood, and hence the persistent need for somatisation, acting out, acting in, and primitive forms of communication and psychological defence, such as hysterical identification, projective identification and/or other forms of basic communication typically found at the lower levels of awareness. This paper further goes on to examine, especially using constructivist, but also psychodynamic models, how verbal symbolisation can be helpful in practice with psychosomatic and hysterical disorders. Drawing on our understanding of concentrative and mindfulness meditation the workings of our psychological defences are examined. Constructivist and psychodynamic models are used to describe the distortion of consciousness by these defences—albeit from different perspectives. Both of these psychotherapy approaches are also concerned with the issue of increased awareness via insight, and are therefore complementary to the Eastern notion of enhanced awareness through the practice of meditation and mindfulness. Potential problems with meditation are discussed, as well as limitations to the “talking cure”—as verbalisation can also be used as a higher order cognitive defence, as observed in rationalisation—as well as in the higher service of the expansion of awareness.

Changing Definitions of Meditation-Is there a Physiological Corollary? : Skin temperature changes of a mental silence orientated form of meditation compared to rest

Objectives) Until very recently, the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) defined meditation as "a conscious mental process that induces a set of integrated physiological changes termed the relaxation response". Recently the NCCAM appears to have reviewed its understanding of meditation, by including a new central feature: "In meditation, a person learns to focus his attention and suspend the stream of thoughts that normally occupy the mind", indicating a shift from a physiological ("relaxation-response") to an experiential (suspension of thinking activity) definition, more in line with traditional eastern understandings. We explore the physiological implications of this paradigmatic shift. (Design) A controlled, observational study.of acute physiological changes. N=26. Participants were asked to either meditate or rest for 10 minutes. (Settings/Location) A temperature controlled room at Swinburne University's Psychophysiology Laboratory, Melbourne. (Subjects) 16 meditators proficient at a mental silence orientated form of meditation (Sahaja yoga, SYM) and 10 non-meditators with an interest in meditation. (Interventions) A mental silence orientated form of meditation (Sahaja yoga, SYM) was compared to rest. (Outcome Measures) Palmar skin temperature and heart rate. (Results) Throughout the meditation period mean ST of the SYM group decreased while that of the Rest group increased. After ten minutes of meditation, 13 of the 16 meditators manifested a reduction in ST compared to baseline whereas 7 of the 10 participants in the control group manifested an increase compared to baseline. Chi-Square tests showed that the difference between the two groups was significant (p=.003). Heart rate changes however did not differ between the two groups. (Conclusions) The study suggests that the experience of mental silence and rest are not psychophysiologically identical despite the fact that they are overtly similar. Implications of this, and need for further evaluation, are discussed.

Meditation, Social Change, and Undergraduate Education

This article argues that meditation guided by a competent teacher can be a positive influence in contemporary American society and even a force for progressive social change. A number of critical issues requiring further study are identified, including the need for a better understanding of meditation from the perspective of developmental psychology and of the relation between meditation and psychotherapy. The article proposes that American educational institutions can benefit from a deeper appreciation of the contemplative dimension of life. Special attention is given to how the American undergraduate college can provide students with opportunities to learn about and experience various forms of meditation. The role of teachers, chaplains, psychological counselors, and health care professionals in introducing meditation to students is discussed.

Meditation, Social Change, and Undergraduate Education

This article argues that meditation guided by a competent teacher can be a positive influence in contemporary American society and even a force for progressive social change. A number of critical issues requiring further study are identified, including the need for a better understanding of meditation from the perspective of developmental psychology and of the relation between meditation and psychotherapy. The article proposes that American educational institutions can benefit from a deeper appreciation of the contemplative dimension of life. Special attention is given to how the American undergraduate college can provide students with opportunities to learn about and experience various forms of meditation. The role of teachers, chaplains, psychological counselors, and health care professionals in introducing meditation to students is discussed.

Zen and the brain: toward an understanding of meditation and consciousness

Zen and the brain: toward an understanding of meditation and consciousness

Meditation and psychotherapy.

Meditation has been increasingly recommended as a practice with potential psychotherapeutic benefit. This paper provides a description of meditative practice and discusses selected issues related to the conceptual and technical integration of meditation with modern psychotherapeutic interventions. Evidence suggests that meditation may contribute to psychotherapeutic change and that the disciplines from which meditation arises are in some respects similar to modern psychological formulations, and in other respects are complimentary. It is hoped that improved understanding of meditation will contribute to an increased acceptance and use of these practices as aids to psychotherapeutic change and will facilitate meaningful research regarding meditation.

On the Emergence of Perinatal Symptoms in Buddhist Meditation

Advanced meditators in the Zen tradition occasionally experience traumatic physical seizures accompanied by powerful, disruptive emotions, a development consistently taken by meditation masters as signs of progress toward enlightenment. Using data from LSD research, this paper suggests that these seizures are emerging birth-trauma memories. Interpreting these perinatal memories as memories of fetal impingement, it then turns to object-relations theory to study the effect of impingement and impingement-generated fear on ego-development in order to understand why embodied impingement memories should manifest in the ego-dissolving context of meditation. It argues that a coherent explanation for the manifestation of these symptoms can be had by combining insights from these two fields with the understanding of meditation and consciousness emerging in transpersonal psychology. XVith the growing number of autobiographical descriptions of the meditation and enlightenment processes available in print, a striking and curious meditational experience has been brought to our attention. Advanced meditators occasionally experience traumatic physical seizures accompanied by strong, disruptive emotions. Even more curious, perhaps, is the fact that these agonizing experiences are consistently greeted by the meditation master as a positive sign of deepening meditation. One such account appears in Philip Kapleau's Three Pillars of Zen and provides us with a rather detailed description of the experience: