Effects of meditation on brain functioning

i have stumble upon few interesting articles concerning mediation i thought you might be interested in them.

1.Despite the tremendous advances in modern medicine we are still to develop truly effective strategies to deal with the common public health problems that cause the majority of mortality and morbidity in the wider community. The use of stress reduction has been shown to be beneficial in many diseases as it improves psychological and physical health and lifestyle awareness. Importantly the utilisation of stress-reducing techniques brings us closer to the ideal of a holistic, integrated health care strategy.

Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the way in which psychological stress translates into physical disease. Some of the mystery has been explained by the “general adaptation syndrome” in which stressors induce psychohumoral changes. In the acute context these changes result in emergency adaptation of physiological function. In the context of chronic stimulation these changes, rather than maintain homeostasis, ultimately result in physical debilitation of body systems (Benson, 1976). The autonomic nervous system and the “parasympathetic response” is another mechanism worthy of investigation (Rai et al., 1988) as is the role of the Hypothalamic pituitary axis.

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2. Human Makeup Contains a Specific Natural Meditative Function

This idea is the most important key to building a solid understanding of what Natural Meditation is, how to do it, and how its benefits unfold. As we said in Chapter One, meditation is not just something you do. It is also something that happens to you. In this course, we refer to the effect of meditation as the meditative function, although a generation of well-respected scientific reporting on mind/body medicine has called it the relaxation response. The essence of the meditative effect is the refinement of consciousness, not the relaxation of the body. And even within the body, as we will see, the complexity and intelligence of the response far exceed what is carried by the term relaxation.

According to meditation theorists, the meditative state is a fourth state of consciousness, considered to be a peer of the three major states—waking, dreaming and sleeping. Each of these four states is unique. The meditative function is unique in that it consists of high awareness with very low physiological function. The following chart displays the four states in a matrix, sorted by awareness. High awareness on this chart is open, fluid, and light. It isn’t awareness of lots of objects, but of the essence of the self.

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To learn more about my style of meditation an different other ones check out agama yoga in Thailand or at any other branch.