Neuroscience Reveals the Secrets of Meditation’s Benefits

This study evaluated the efficacy of the relaxation response on the postoperative recovery of 27 cardiac surgery patients randomly assigned to one of two groups. Thirteen experimental group patients received educational information and practiced eliciting the relaxation response before and after surgery. The 14 patients in the control group received only information. Experimental and control groups were compared before and after surgery on both physiological and psychological recovery […]

To examine the extent to which advanced meditative practices might alter body metabolism and the electroencephalogram (EEG), we investigated three Tibetan Buddhist monks living in the Rumtek monastery in Sikkim, India. In a study carried out in February 1988, we found that during the practice of several different meditative practices, resting metabolism ([Vdot]O2) could be both raised (up to 61%) and lowered (down to 64%). The reduction from rest is the largest ever reported. On the […]

Stress is a term used to define the body’s physiological and psychological reactions to circumstances that require behavioral adjustment [1,2,3], and the relaxation response is a psychophysiological state that is opposite to that of the stress or fight–flight response [4]. A variety of mind/body techniques can be used to elicit a relaxation response and achieve the therapeutic effects associated with reduced blood pressure. For example, researchers at the Cochrane Review [5] investiga […]