Most questions about meditation use this word as though everyone knows what it means, and that it means one particular practice: "meditation".
Nothing could be further from the truth. There are thousands of different mental techniques that are taught as part of various schools of meditation.
These techniques can be grouped together roughly as relaxation, contemplation, concentration, and transcending techniques.
Most forms of meditation will produce good effects, such as improved ability to focus, right away, due to the placebo effect. But for a technique to be worth practicing in the long run, it should match the goals of the individual using it, so it helps the individual achieve their goals.
One technique is rather remarkable in producing a deep state of restful alertness in just a few seconds, every time. Researchers have found unique changed physiological markers that establish transcending as the fourth state of the physiology and of consciousness.
This missing state of consciousness dissolves and eliminates the stresses (definition at https://www.nsrusa.org/about-stress.php) that prevent us from focusing or concentrating on accomplishing a task. At the same time, these stresses, or dysfunctions of the nervous system, can generate anxiety, anger, agoraphobia, and all the other stress-based disorders.
Since everyone seems to want more peace or happiness, these two goals are the most important for a meditation technique to reach. Transcending provides these goals in a natural and gradual way. It is such a pleasure to teach people and see each one experience profound transformations on the path to greater peace and happiness.
Since transcending is easy to learn, it is easy for anyone to improve their own life in a pleasant 15 minutes twice a day. Since so many are practicing it, it is easy to find subjects to study, if you are a researcher.
I teach transcending (with 2800 clients currently for our mail-order course), and I recommend it to everyone, since everyone is missing an entire state of consciousness required for full functioning of the nervous system. Everyone needs more peace, happiness, harmony, productivity, and fulfillment.
I am very thankful to the meditation traditions of India, which are the source of our knowledge of the states of consciousness available to us and the techniques, especially transcending, that are available to experience them.
Further information on transcending is available at www.nsrusa.org, www.tm.org, and several other websites.
Hi Abhijit:
Meditation will absolutely improve concentration, as well as a long list of other positive improvements in your life, David did a great job with his answer.
My paper published on this topic may also help your research: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330369892_An_Essay_Reviewing_The_Physiological_Psychological_and_Spiritual_Benefits_of_Meditation_Deborah_L
Enjoy!
Deborah
Deborah L. Erickson,
Thank you for mentioning your paper on meditation.
I have read it with pleasure, finding that you did a fairly good job of summarizing a very large and somewhat inconsistent and incomplete body of research on a number of different kinds of mental techniques that are all called meditation.
I found some flaws in reading your paper and thought it best to give you some feedback on them. But, in general, I wish to emphasize that I found the paper to be a good one, and I was happy to see it give weight to some of the more important results in the field of meditation research.
Here, then, are my comments, recorded while reading your paper (which means that there may be some mistakes due to reading linearly, for which I apologize):
1. Your listing of studies does not always state the form of meditation being studied. Recent discussions of meditation on public fora such as Quora.com and researchgate.net have also almost always lumped all mental techniques together under the name "meditation", and indeed in your abstract you lump together breathing techniques, chanting, and silent mantra meditation in one category, while ignoring the thousands of meditation techniques under categories established by other researchers such as concentration, relaxation, kundalini, mindfulness, etc.
While it may be true that there is similarity in the benefits reported in the meditation research literature across various techniques, this fact is not sufficient to establish that all mental techniques produce the same results.
Indeed, in my many years of experience as a meditation teacher (first, of Transcendental Meditation™, and later, of Natural Stress Relief™), I have seen a number of meditation techniques produce very different results in those of my clients who have practiced more than one technique.
I have learned from my clients something that has not yet been studied by researchers: that some forms of meditation (specifically those based on concentration) are not only ineffective, they also come with practices that can be difficult, frustrating, and tiring in the extreme. About half of my clients find great relief in learning a natural and effective form of meditation after having practiced mindfulness, vipassana, kundalini, and other forms of concentration.
2. You quote theories of left-right brain function, neuroplasticity, and the evolution-based "fight or flight" theory without establishing any actual connection with meditation, and indeed without stating that these are all theories, not established fact.
You say, for example, "The modern, Western world generally no longer requires constant vigilance or scanning for danger, but this hypervigilance reduces quality of life," implying that meditation corrects or balances a fundamental brain dysfunction of modern humans.
In my experience as a meditation teacher, I see not just a temporary correction, but profound and lasting transformations in many of my clients.
The way these transformations happen support, not a theory that we are naturally dysfunctional, but that we are dysfunctional due to growing up in a stressed world (one filled with false beliefs, conflict, greed, injustice, and war).
Furthermore, my experience with 2800 clients supports a theory that our dysfunctions specifically originate in traumas and other overloads of experience (see https://www.nsrusa.org/about-stress.php for details).
Your evolution-based theory condemns humans who do not work to counter their natural dysfunction to unsatisfying lives. My theory states that there is nothing natural or necessary about the stresses we have accumulated in our nervous system due to living in a stressed world and consequently experiencing overloads of stress.
My theory goes on to propose a simple solution: restore the knowledge of the fourth state of consciousness in each individual so that everyone is practicing all four states of the physiology and of consciousness (waking state, dreaming, deep sleep, and transcendental consciousness).
Such individuals eliminate old stresses and tend not to acquire new ones. The reach their natural goal of eliminating problems and living with peace and happiness.
Finally, my theory has been validated thousands of times, once for each NSR client (if we include those who practice Transcendental Meditation™, my theory has been validated millions of times).
In fact, if we only include clients who actually took the time to learn the NSR technique from their printed materials, and only include those who used our free and low-cost support options to get their questions answered, we have had close to 100% success in our clients teaching themselves transcending and experiencing actual benefits in daily life great enough to motivate them to practice regularly, without ceasing (over the past 13 years of teaching NSR). Sorry for that extremely long sentence!
This assessment of 100% success includes the 0.5% of NSR clients who reported negative effects after learning NSR but who accepted free support sessions from myself: even these clients with negative reactions at the beginning ended with success in meditation and outside of meditation as judged by the growth of positive effects (peacefulness, happiness, harmony, satisfaction, productivity, and energy) in their daily lives.
4. Mindfulness is a modern collection of several specific mental techniques, including progressive relaxation, breathing awareness, and thought monitoring. But you present it as a black box, undefined, and compare it to "concentrative methods [that] focus on specific mental or sensory activity, such as a repeated sound, chant, mantra, a visualization, or on specific body sensations, such as breath." In actuality, mindfulness consists simply of relaxation and concentration techniques, not really following your definitions.
5. You then introduce Transcendental Meditation™ and summarize it incorrectly as "the repetition of a mantra". Given the context, you imply that the mantra may be chanted or focused on mentally. This is not correct, as is shown in your following quotations.
Transcendental Meditation is a technique of transcending that starts with a mantra (a meaningless but life-supporting sound from the ancient Indian tradition of bija mantras), but within a few seconds leaves the mantra behind while the mind enjoys inward experience leading to pure consciousness, the source of thought, which is completely free of sound perception or any other form of thinking.
This mechanism is quite different from "repeating a mantra"; mental repetition or chanting that does not transcend levels of consciousness (that is, concentration or focus on a mantra) is quite ineffective in producing deep rest, eliminating stress, or bringing peace and happiness to the individual.
I don't blame you for this misunderstanding of TM, as it is difficult to understand our missing fourth state of consciousness if you have not actually experienced it yourself. It does not have the usual qualities we ascribe to objective phenomena in space and time, since it is purely subjective in nature.
You do quote some accurate descriptions of TM, including the fact that it is free of concentration.
In this lies the interest for meditation researchers, and the challenge to measure the effects of TM, which is free of effort, and compare it with the effects of mindfulness or Buddhist meditations, all of whose techniques involve effort and having to deal with obstacles (these obstacles turn out to be due to the same internal stress/dysfunction of the nervous system I mentioned at the start of this review).
6. In one place, you say, "TM is different from most other mindfulness meditation techniques..." I think you did not mean to put the word "other" there, as it is generally acknowledged that TM does not overlap in its mechanism with mindfulness (unless, perhaps, one uses the normal English meaning of "mindfulness").
7. At one place, the paper speaks of the effects of TM as Herbert Benson's "relaxation response".
Benson's technique (thinking the word "one" or another word silently) comes with very few instructions and very little support. It was Dr. Benson's response to seeing so many of his associates and graduate students benefiting and getting enthusiastic over TM.
No one has ever shown comparable physiological markers or benefits in daily life between Relaxation Response and TM.
Strangely, Dr. Benson never learned TM himself, and never wanted to became a TM teacher. He claimed he wanted to maintain "objectivity", yet the end result was trivializing the effective technique of TM, the fourth state of consciousness.
In my opinion, having read some of his materials and reports of results, his simplified technique is a poor imitation of the genuine fourth state of consciousness. It produces relaxation, but not transformation.
8. There is a quotation from (Begley, 2007) that "left asymmetry was off the charts--higher than 99.7 percent of everyone ever measured." Something is wrong here, as 99.7% of anyone ever measured would actually mean that the subject's measurement was .3% lower than the highest second measurement; not very high at all.
9. "The scientists saw real brainwave changes at the exact moment of transition." I think we have to be careful when accepting reports of unusual brainwave behaviors, which can be generated by loose electrodes and muscle twiches, or be the result of mistaken interpretation of good measurements.
I participated in TM research in the early 1970s at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut by programming computer analysis of subject brainwave measurements before, during, and after the practice of TM and found that the much-publicized alpha wave increase from TM actually resulted from simply closing the eyes.
While the alpha wave activity became relatively dense during TM practice, the synchronization of individual alpha wavelets never varied, either in time or across the scalp in any direction.
We later determined that major cranial blood vessels electrically conduct the output of a fixed oscillator near the base of the brain up and over the scalp.
The variation in wavelet density that is observed is the result of masking of oscillation by the visual cortex when the eyes are open and visual information is being processed.
There is nothing magical or spiritual about alpha waves or any other frequency bands of brain waves, to the best of my knowledge.
10. "The brain has specific areas that are involved in altered states of consciousness..." This is an old opinion that has gained traction without any real or repeatable experimental evidence.
In my opinion, the only real physiological effects of any form of meditation (with certain specific individual exceptions) are general in nature, as would be expected from a fourth state of consciousness. While meditation may affect the brain and other parts of the body, the effects are most definitely nonspecific in nature.
I theorize that the reason for this is that we are not so far away from our full spiritual maturity as we believe we are. Only a set of a few thousand stresses stored in the nervous system modifies our experiences and behaviors from those one might observe in an "enlightened" or "self realized" person.
This is actually a very positive way of viewing the general inadequacy of meditation research results and its domination by wishful opinion and brash statements.
David Spector
Volunteer President,
Natural Stress Relief/USA
Hi David;
Wow, thank you so much for your time and effort with such excellent feedback! Your experience in this topic is clearly both deep and broad. I will be exploring the Natural Stress Relief method as I have not run across that in my research.
And on behalf of all ResearchGate members, thank you again for so generously sharing your depth of knowledge!
Deborah 🙏🏻
Deborah, Thank you for your kind words. As our own stresses/dysfunctions are dissolved, it is easy to see that helping others is the primary necessity of our times (our stressed-out times).
And the best way to help others is to help ourselves. So every person who is practicing an effective mental technique (such as the basic fourth state of the physiology and of consciousness) and thereby ridding themselves of problems, suffering, and limitations, is performing the greatest service to humanity possible.
To help others effectively, we must be fully functional ourselves. Growing in functionality is our responsibility when living in a suffering and ignorant world. We should try to help whenever any opportunity to do so presents itself.
David Spector
Natural Stress Relief/USA
Dear Abhijit Mitra ,
Cognitively speaking, there are two broad families of meditation: Focused attention (FA) and Open monitoring (OM), both forms of meditation recruit activity from the prefrontal cortex. If you define concentration as the ability of not letting irrelevant stimuli to catch your attention (i.e., you do not want to be distracted by noise when writing a paper), then FA might be regarded as the purposeful training of this ability. Indeed, because research shows that attention is malleable as any other cognitive skill (memory, learning, etc.), the explanations of how FA helps concentration is simply that practicing the top-down processing (involved in FA) generalizes to everyday activities.
The story with OM is maybe more interesting because it involves practicing the ability of putting attention, without censorship, to your own stream of consciousness (or the stream of environmental stimulation perceived). So it looks like OM has more participation in detecting new events in the environment or in the flow of consciousness, and it is related to bottom-up attentional processes, but still requires activity from the prefrontal cortex. So it is more difficult to understand how OM reduces mind wandering. I have found very useful the research by Lorenza Colzato and Bernhard Hommel to understand the involvement of meditation on attention and learning.
Meditation is essential to feel well and live a Happy Life. Meditation can help us to eliminate negative thoughts, worries, anxiety, all factors that can prevent us feeling happy. It has been proved that the practice of meditation, carried out on a regular basis, will mitigate the symptoms of stress and anxiety. When you are relaxed, you are more attentive, focused, and think even better!
Marwah Firas Abdullah Al-Rawe , I have taught a transcending technique to 2800 clients. It always reduces anxiety, improves peace and happiness. I have used the STAI inventory to conduct research on 50 clients learning Natural Stress Relief™. There is dramatic improvement in both state and trait anxiety.
There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that meditation can help to reduce anxiety and stress, including from studies at Harvard University. However, in order to gain these benefits, you have to meditate. In this study recommend setting aside at least 10 minutes a day to meditate, and with this practice, you will inevitably see the benefits to your mood and well-being.
The power of meditation can actually increase the working size of your brain. People who consistently meditate experience new connections within their brains, and an increased capacity to think. Meditation is a powerful activity because it improves neural connections, preventing the degeneration of your neurons and protects your hippocampus. Meditation increases your mind power, and it is also a mind control method.
Meditation can put the mind at ease and be relaxed. This enables an improvement in the efficiency of several functions including concentration as well as problem solving ability. When the brain is calm and can think rationally it is more apt to come up with solutions to problems.
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