The' Freiburger Personality Inventory was administered to a group of 37 subjects three times-before they learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, approximately seven weeks later, and approximately 55 weeks later. At the last testing, 12 subjects had discontinued meditation and were treated as a control group in the data analysis. Comparison of the mean pretest scores of the 25 meditatin...

The Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) profile of Maharishi International University (MIU) students who practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique regularly was compared to profiles presented in the POI manual for a group of college students and for a group of relatively self-actualized people. MIU students scored significantly higher than nonmeditating college students on eight of the...

Substantial evidence indicates that psychosocial stress contributes to hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Previous meta-analyses of stress reduction and high blood pressure (BP) were outdated and/or methodologically limited. Therefore, we conducted an updated systematic review of the published literature and identified 107 studies on stress reduction and BP. Seventeen trials with 23...

Sixteen patients with documented angina pectoris were exercised on a bicycle ergometer to an end point of moderately severe angina pectoris. Electrocardiograms and blood pressure were taken at one-minute intervals. The reliability of the testing procedure was gauged from the reproducibility of the values of both maximum ST segment depression and maximum double product at the end point of the te...

In the first part of th~ essay, I considered various forms of meditation and the ways in which they seem to affect human physiology. 1 This second part will deal with medhation and its effects on learning and creativity. As noted earlier, proponents claim that the daily practice of meditation provides many benefits, includlng relief from the harmful consequences of stress and anxiety. Scientist...

Meditation techniques are increasingly popular practices that may be useful in preventing or reducing elevated blood pressure. We reviewed landmark studies and recent literature concerning the use of meditation for reducing blood pressure in pre-hypertensive and hypertensive individuals. We sought to highlight underlying assumptions, identify strengths and weaknesses of the research, and sugges...

Previous EEG studies have shown that transcendental meditation (TM) increases frontal and central alpha activity. The present study was aimed at identifying the source of this alpha activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) simultaneously on eight TM practitioners before, during, and after TM. The magnetic field potentials corresponding to TM-induced alpha act...

This study was designed to assess whether transcendental meditation (TM) could influence various endocrine responses in 10 experienced male meditators. Nine matched subjects, uninformed of the TM procedure, acted as controls. Meditators successfully practised their technique for 40 min in the morning while controls relaxed for this period. No significant differences emerged between these 2 grou...