Damn! I knew this meditation stuff didn't work. Now
I've got proof! Come on. Let's go get drunk.
-Peter
--- anonymousff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> [this was forward to me today and I thought it might
> be of interest]
>
> Over the past 20 years there has been widespread
> interest in the use
> of meditation, with the most publicized and popular
> technique being
> TM (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi 1963). It appears that
> many persons use
> meditation to reduce physiological arousal, and
> because of its
> purported effects on arousal, meditation is used to
> treat numerous
> disorders which stem from or involve hyperarousal.
> For example,
> meditation has been used to treat hypertension
> (Benson and Wallace
> 1972a; Benson et al. 1973; Blackwell et al. 1975;
> Michaels et al.
> 1976; Simon et al. 1977), asthma (Wilson et al.
> 1975), inflammation
> of the gums (Klemons 1977); drug abuse (Benson and
> Wallace 1972b;
> Shafii et al. 1974), alcohol abuse (Shafii et al.
> 1975), insomnia
> (Miskiman 1977a, b), stuttering (McIntyre et al.
> 1974), and a variety
> of psychiatric disorders (Bloomfield et al. 1975;
> Glucck and Stroebel
> 1975). Furthermore, meditation has been suggested as
> an alternative
> to progressive muscle relaxation training (Boudreau
> 1972).
>
> Because of the potential importance of meditation as
> a technique for
> reducing physiological arousal, in 1983 three of my
> students and I
> conducted a simple experiment in which we compared
> the arousal-
> reducing effects of meditation and rest (Holmes et
> al. 1983). In that
> experiment, 10 experienced meditators and 10 other
> persons who had no
> experience with meditation came to my laboratory for
> individual
> appointments on each of 4 days. Each subject was
> first asked simply
> to sit quietly for 5 minutes. Meditators were then
> asked to meditate
> for 20 minutes, whereas non-meditators were asked to
> rest for 20
> minutes. Following the meditation/relaxation period,
> all of the
> subjects were again asked to simply sit quietly for
> another 5-minute
> period. The results of that experiment were very
> striking: meditation
> and rest resulted in decreases in arousal, but,
> contrary to what is
> generally expected, meditation did not result in
> greater reductions
> in arousal than did the rest. In considering these
> results it is
> important to recognize that the meditators were
> highly trained
> (certified teachers of TM and/or trained in the
> Sidhi type), and thus
> the findings could not be attributed to lack of
> skill on the part of
> the meditators. These findings raised serious
> questions about the
> effects and value of meditation.
>
> As it turned out, we were not the first
> investigators to compare
> directly the effectiveness of meditation and rest
> for reducing
> physiological arousal. In fact, an initial
> examination of the
> literature revealed a variety of similar
> experiments, and those
> experiments failed to provide any reliable evidence
> that meditation
> was more effective than simply resting for reducing
> physiological
> arousal! I was intrigued by the sharp contrast
> between the widely
> held view of the effects of meditation and the fact
> that there was a
> substantial body of evidence that meditation was not
> more effective
> than rest for reducing physiological arousal. An
> examination of the
> research that was cited by the advocates of
> meditation quickly
> revealed the basis for the widely held but
> apparently erroneous
> conclusion concerning the effects of meditation on
> arousal. The
> findings cited by the proponents of meditation were
> based on
> uncontrolled investigations in which the
> investigators simply
> compared the arousal levels of subjects before they
> meditated with
> their arousal levels during meditation. They found
> (as did I and my
> colleagues) that arousal decreased when the subjects
> began
> meditating. The problem with those investigations is
> that they did
> not include a condition in which nonmeditators
> simply rested, and
> therefore the investigators could not determine
> whether meditation
> was more effective than rest. It is of interest to
> know that
> meditation reduces arousal, but it is of more
> interest and importance
> to know whether meditation is more effective than
> simple rest for
> reducing arousal. Indeed, it is meditation's alleged
> incremental
> value that is its raison d'être.
>
> Comments and Conclusions
>
> A number of comments should be made concerning the
> results of the
> experiments in which the levels of arousal of
> meditating subjects
> were compared with the levels of arousal of resting
> subjects.
> Firstly, from Table 5.1 and the accompanying
> discussion, it is clear
> that across experiments there is not a measure of
> arousal on which
> the meditating subjects were consistently found to
> have reliably
> lower arousal than resting subjects. Indeed, the
> most consistent
> finding was that there were not reliable differences
> between
> meditating and resting subjects. Furthermore, there
> appear to be
> about as many instances in which the meditating
> subjects showed
> reliably higher arousal as there are instances in
> which they showed
> reliably lower arousal than their resting
> counterparts.
>
> Secondly, it is clear that within any one experiment
> there is no
> consistent evidence across measures that meditating
> subjects have
> reliably lower arousal than resting subjects. In
> fact, of the 23
> experiments that involved more than one measure of
> arousal, only two
> experiments revealed reliably lower arousal of
> meditating subjects on
> more than one of the measures which were considered
> (Dhanaraj and
> Singh 1977; Elson et al. 1977), and in the latter of
> those two
> experiments the meditating subjects evidenced
> reliably higher arousal
> on one of the other measures obtained.
>
> Thirdly, it is very important to recognize that the
> results of one
> well-done experiment can outweigh the results of
> numerous less well-
> done experiments, and thus, in addition to simply
> counting findings,
> the quality of the research must be considered. With
> the present set
> of experiments, considering those with more or fewer
> problems does
> not change the patterning of results. Furthermore,
> as noted in the
> preceding paragraph, there is not one experiment
> that provided
> consistent evidence that meditating subjects were
> less aroused than
> resting subjects, and thus the possibility that
> there is one good
> experiment confirming the utility of meditation for
> reducing arousal
> is precluded. Indeed, there does not even appear to
> be one bad
> experiment which offers consistent evidence that
> meditating reduces
> arousal more than resting.
>
> Fourthly, in this review we are able to draw
> conclusions
=== message truncated ===
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