Meditation from an Indian Perspective

In our personal lives, we are often consulted by relatives, friends and non-mental health professional colleagues for problems of a situational nature, or problems of living, which rarely warrant a psychiatric diagnosis. We cannot undertake formal psychotherapy in this population, nor are drugs or conventional behariour therapy procedures (such as Jacobson's progressive relaxation) quite appropriate. We have, instead, suggested meditation in many such cases, almost invariably with good results. While meditation is most helpful when psychic or somatic anxiety is present in a nonclinical population, we have also observed its utility in recalcitrant, diagnosed case (Andrade and Andrade, 1991).