Comments on: Meditation for Troubled Minds: Can the Mind Heal the Mind?

By: Mike Logan

Mike Logan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:52:55 +0000

Hello All,

Anybody read what Sharon Begley wrote in the Wall Street Journal about Buddhist meditators and neuroplasticity?
I wonder where HeartMath heart rate variability biofeedback would fit? Mike

By: kscastings68

kscastings68 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:20:08 +0000

This was a study about the effects of meditation on anxiety and depression, so it seems perfectly appropriate to exclude a study about blood pressure.

By: Sonia Gallagher

Sonia Gallagher — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:58:40 +0000

I have been practicing mindfulness meditation for a few months now to manage my stress level. I have been a lawyer for over five years and owned my own Firm for the past two years. The stress got so bad I’d get migraines and back pains almost every day. My massage therapist introduced me to meditation and my life has completely changed since then.

Meditating made me realize I was in the wrong profession and that life was too short to waste away doing the wrong thing. I closed my Firm in February and now dedicate myself to online publishing about the benefits of meditation to people like me; overstressed, overworked, personality type A.

I am a firm advocate of meditation being beneficial to reduce anxiety and depression because it has had that effect on me personally. Each day that passes, I become more calm and compassionate and overall a better person.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:40:38 +0000

Craig, we’re talking about two different Canadian studies. You’re right.

By: Alick NEwman

Alick NEwman — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:53:23 +0000

I refer you to vipassana meditation, not a religion or belief system, but a simple, easy to learn and difficult to practice technique, said to be the only thing the Buddah taught and passed on. A way of ending suffering. May not be suitable for anyone with a diagnosed mental condition, but certainly useful if you have the balls to pracrice it. I don’t.

By: A ‘New’ Psychology Blog; A Piece on Mindfulness « pasadena therapist

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:31:45 +0000

[...] Meditation for Troubled Minds: Can the Mind Heal the Mind? [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:01:25 +0000

One of the basics of Buddhism is that there is suffering. In my experience depression is suffering. While meditation is not a cure for depression, I am changing the the way I think and how I live. It’s all happening too slowly for me so I assume it’s happening to slowly to to be considered a successful treatment but I’m not quitting.

By: Olga

Olga — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 18:02:46 +0000

Meditation is indeed a great way to reach the level of seeing the

wholeness and inter-connectedness of things”

as you have so nicely explained it in you article. I also agree that by trying to use meditation as a direct cure, one somewhat lowers the aim of meditation and the results are probably not so good as those which come when really using meditation in the spirit of reaching the highest possible spiritual goals.

By: Reach For Magnificence Healthy Living Carnival

Reach For Magnificence Healthy Living Carnival — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:44:43 +0000

[...] Lakhan presents Meditation for troubled minds: Can the mind heal the mind? posted at GNIF Brain [...]

By: Janna

Janna — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:57:00 +0000

From personal experience, meditation really does help with anxiety but it shouldn’t be a primary cure. I believe it’s an excellent tool for preventing mental illness as well. It keeps things in balance as well as in perspective. I thoroughly enjoy it!

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:27:16 +0000

Tom

Read the abstract . “Our review included any study that was published in a peer-reviewed journal, used a control group, and reported outcomes related to changes in depression and anxiety”

This was not about cardiovascular outcomes. If they had been studying that topic then the study you mention would have been included, subject to meeting the inclusion criteria. As both a meditator and a scientist, this just looks like good review technique to me.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:06:03 +0000

Dear Craig and Everyone, Thank you for this opportunity to post a response to the above remarks on meditation research. Actually, the ill-thought study referred to above was NOT just on anxiety and depression, it alleged to consider the general health-effects of meditation and drew sweeping, unfounded conclusions. Scientists around the world are calling for a retraction of the misleading study, which used protocols that were inapplicable and excluded pertinent data. As an emergent science of consciousness, certain theoretical and practical aspects of the Transcendental Meditation program can appear, at least initially, to challenge the established scientific world view. The old test-tube egghead folk science does not predict or explain that a person could sit down, close their eyes and in effect do nothing, resulting in a broad range of immediate and measurable physiological outcomes and health benefits, such as growth of EEG brainwave coherence, reduced anxiety and depression, development of IQ and learning ability in children AND adults, reduced substance abuse, reduced hypertension, 70% drop in the need for medical care, and younger biological age — all of which have been borne out in the hundreds of scientific studies on TM, published in peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals (and conducted at Harvard, Yale, UCLA Medical School, Stanford, etc.). When resistance to the TM research arises within ostensibly objective-minded people, I have noticed that the opposition has little to do with the actual scientific data, but is rather about the old superstitions of materialism clashing with an emerging body of data that the opponents perceive as inconsistent with their beliefs. Thomas Kuhn says that in the course of scientific revolutions, there are stages of reaction to a new paradigm: First the anomalous data is ignored, then it is laughed at and ridiculed, then it is criticized, then it is violently attacked and becomes intensely controversial. (“It is very hard for a man to desert a tradition.”…the ignorance of the old paradigm being their tradition.) Only when the old codgers die off, says Kuhn, can the revolution in knowledge create a new world view. (Kuhn is usually credited for coining the phrase “paradigm shift.”) Indications are that the science of TM seem to be entering the final, argumentative stage of acceptance. In the spirit of science, anyone can know the truth about Transcendental Meditation by examining the data with an open mind. The vast and accumulating body of research validating the effects of TM may be seem anomalous in the context of the antiquated paradigm based on classical “billiard ball” physics (which still pervades our culture), but anyone who directly experiences the unified field at the source of their thinking process through TM knows that a new paradigm is on the rise: one that sees consciousness as the most fundamental element in the universe; to such a scientist, human awareness is as a field of limitless possibilities, where the vast range of benefits of TM are second nature and easy to accept because they are an everyday experience.

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:41:22 +0000

Dr. Schneider cited two studies published in the American Journal of Cardiology in 2005, which demonstrated that individuals with high blood pressure who were randomly assigned to TM groups had a 30% lower risk for mortality than controls. These studies should have been included in the AHRQ report, Dr. Schneider said, but were inexplicably excluded.

Inexplicably? This was a study about the effects of meditation on anxiety and depression, so it seems perfectly appropriate to exclude a study about blood pressure. Honestly! Don’t they teach kids the fundamentals of meta-analysis these days

By: bohemian scientist » Blog Archive » Encephalon 28: Neuroscience Blarnival!

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:52:45 +0000

[...] at brain blogger writes a meditation for troubled minds, a review of a metastudy on meditation. apparently, mindfulness meditation has a checkered record [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:13:49 +0000

The recent meditation study cited here was seriously flawed. If the same standards were used for all scientific research, there would be NO research studies showing that cigarette smoking is harmful, or that diet and exercise have any benefits for your health. For example, how can you do a do a double-blind study on Transcendental Meditation without the people meditation KNOWING that they are practicing TM? How could you study smoking without the smokers knowing they are smoking a pack a day? Here is a link to an article just published addressing the flaws of this study: http://www.physorg.com/news104501710.html