Researching Meditation » sahaja yoga meditation

Skin temperature changes associated with mental silence.

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 05:50:58 +0000

This study demonstrates a skin temperature reduction on the palms of the hands during the experience of mental silence, arising as a result of a single 10 minute session of Sahaja yoga meditation. However when people (non-meditators) were asked to do a simple relaxation exercise, under the same conditions, their skin temperature increased which is the opposite of what occured for those using the mental silence approach to meditation.

The outcomes of this study therefore suggest that “thoughtless awareness” may be both experientially and physiologically different to simple relaxation. Interestingly, all other studies of meditation that have studied skin temperature show changes similar to that of relaxation (ie that skin temperature rises) and none show reductions, adding further scientific weight to the idea that the mental silence definition of meditation may well be the best way to differentiate meditation from relaxation, hypnosis, sleep and other forms of behavior therapy!

Manocha R, Black D, Ryan J, Stough C, Spiro D, Changing Definitions of Meditation: Physiological Corollorary, Journal of the International Society of Life Sciences, Vol 28 (1), Mar 2010

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Dr Ramesh Manocha investigates meditation as a stress management invervention

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:03:37 +0000

Dr Ramesh Manocha recently had a paper published titled “Using meditation for less stress and better wellbeing; A seminar for GPs”. The paper detailed a study in which 293 doctors were taught meditation in order to reduce stress and increase wellbeing. The abstract and full paper can be found here.

Using meditation for less stress

and better wellbeing

Mental silence as a taxonomy of meditation

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:47:11 +0000

Mental silence and its associated yogic philosophy may provide a basis for taxonomy of meditation that is practically useful in the delivery of healthcare. An intervention with a specific effect such as Sahaja Yoga meditation has a wide range of applications in medicine, psychology and neuroscience. It is particularly relevant to the growing field of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) since meditation represents an important genre of CAM modalities and the apparent therapeutic effects of mental silence that are apparent in this thesis now position this genre of CAMs in a higher category of practical importance to healthcare.

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Sahaja Yoga meditation as a treatment for hot flushes

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:05:08 +0000

Sahaja Yoga meditation (SYM) may be helpful in mitigating the experience of hot flushes (HFs) in menopause via a number of possible pathways. First, like many other forms of meditation, SYM has been shown to reduce arousal in laboratory experiments. An interesting study on stress-induced HFs however, suggests that simple reduction of arousal may not be the only explanation. Swartzmann (1990) used objective measuring strategies and found that menopausal women exposed to various experimental stressors, experienced not only greater sensitivity to pre-existing symptoms, but also more episodes. Unexpectedly however, the additional HFs neither occurred in acute association with the stressor nor were they directly associated with elevated sympathetic arousal. Rather, the data suggested that the effects were mediated by a mechanism that is considerably slower than the sympathetic adreno-medullary system. This implies that a neuro-endocrine pathway may be involved in reducing central sympathetic activation. SYM may exert its effect by disrupting that part of the HF mechanism which is associated with increased central sympathetic activation.

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Sahaja Yoga meditation and physical health

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:57:18 +0000

The observed relationship between Sahaja Yoga meditation (SYM) practices and mental health are not similarly as strong for measures of physical health. In many ways this might be expected since the intervention is primarily focused on a mental experience with the specific aim of reducing negative affect, thinking patterns and related behaviours. Mood, thoughts and behaviour patterns are in constant flux, much of it reflecting (and influencing) brain electrical activity and other neuro-behavioural phenomena which change from moment to moment. Aftanas (2001) has shown that the practice of SYM, and the experience of meditation, is strongly reflected in both brain electrophysiology and mood. This might explain why mental health factors are much more likely to be immediately responsive to such an intervention whereas physical health factors, which rely significantly on anatomical structures and mechanical function, will take much longer to manifest (if at all) and are subject to a vast number of other environmental confounders that may obscure any such relationship.

Neki's description of the sahaja state

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:51:24 +0000

Neki (1975) describes the sahaja state as a mental health ideal in more detail, asserting that it combines the elements of illumination (the direct experience of reality, devoid of the filtering effect of the mind), equipoise (the absence of emotional turbulence) and its replacement with a sense of underlying joy and spontaneity. It creates a personality that is well adjusted but without pretence, affectation or hidden agenda and also freedom from the desires and motivations that give rise to frustration and destructive behaviours. It leads to harmonisation of the subtle inner rhythms of one’s being and the greater cosmos, a sort of suprasensory perception. All of this suggests a positive, robust and fully functional state of health combined with ongoing and continuous perception of the deeper significance of reality.

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Historical descriptions of mental silence and trans-mind states Part 3

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:00:58 +0000

Christian mysticism

Importantly, the experience of “thoughtless awareness” and its connection to higher states of consciousness is not exclusive to the East (although it is more systematically described in that culture than any other). There are isolated descriptions throughout the religious history of the West. For example in the anonymous Christian mystical text The Cloud of Unknowing, the writer encourages the development of a profound, introspective understanding of God that is accessible in the non-thinking state, “strike down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting” (Walsh, 1981).
St John of the Cross described the state as “silent music” and “the sound of solitude” (Herrera, 2004) while the poet Wordsworth (1849) suggested it in his ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood which is a meditation on the possibilities and limitations of consciousness: “Our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal Silence”.

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Historical descriptions of mental silence and trans-mind states Part 2

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:00:53 +0000

Gyaneshwara

A famous teenage saint from Maharasthra, Gyaneshawara (1275–1296) described the ascent of the kundalini energy in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, called the Gyaneshawari, the awakening of this energy is associated with a unique state of consciousness which includes the experience of mental silence: “…the imagination subsides, activity becomes calm, and the functions of the body and mind become still…” (Noyce, 2006).

Zen

The ancient Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition also encompasses the idea of non-thought — elegantly and famously described in the Koan with the question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” (Hoffman, 1975). The answer is, of course, that there is no sound and similarly, the state of meditation involves no mental activity. The aim of this kind of riddle is to challenge the mind into realizing the futility of rational thought, thus triggering a sudden leap of consciousness toward the trans-mind state, described in the Zen tradition as satori (Littleton, 1996).

Buddhism

In the Buddhist tradition, the Mahayana school’s The Awakening of Faith described several stages in the practice of Buddhist faith, the final one being “the stage of preventing vain thoughts.” In meditative posture the aspirant is instructed that “all kinds of ideas, as soon as thought of, must be put away, even the idea of banishing them must also be put away” (Richard, 1907).

Dr Ramesh Manocha

1.1.1 Gyaneshwara

A famous teenage saint from Maharasthra, Gyaneshawara (1275–1296) described the ascent of the kundalini energy in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, called the Gyaneshawari, the awakening of this energy is associated with a unique state of consciousness which includes the experience of mental silence: “…the imagination subsides, activity becomes calm, and the functions of the body and mind become still…”²²⁴

1.1.2 Zen

The ancient Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition also encompasses the idea of non-thought — elegantly and famously described in the Koan with the question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”²²⁵. The answer is, of course, that there is no sound and similarly, the state of meditation involves no mental activity. The aim of this kind of riddle is to challenge the mind into realizing the futility of rational thought, thus triggering a sudden leap of consciousness toward the trans-mind state, described in the Zen tradition as satori²²⁶.

1.1.3 Buddhism

In the Buddhist tradition, the Mahayana school’s The Awakening of Faith described several stages in the practice of Buddhist faith, the final one being “the stage of preventing vain thoughts.” In meditative posture the aspirant is instructed that “all kinds of ideas, as soon as thought of, must be put away, even the idea of banishing them must also be put away.”²²⁷

Historical descriptions of mental silence and trans-mind states Part 1

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:06:06 +0000

Trans-mind states are extensively described in ancient India, and are regarded as a characteristic aspect of the spiritually developed condition.

Mahabharata

In one of India’s most ancient texts, the Mahabhrata,(13.294.16) meditation is described as follows:

He does not hear…smell…taste…see…or experience touch…his mind ceases to imagine…He desires nothing, and like a log he does not think… quoted in Feuerstein, 2006. (p97).

Upanishads

The Upanishads are some thousands of years younger than the Mahabharata. Mascaro, an eminent translator of Indian spiritual texts, summarizes the Upanishadic ideas on meditation and consciousness as follows:

In the infinite struggle of man to know this world and the universe around him, and also to know the mind that allows him to think, he comes before the simple fact that life is above thought: when he sees a fruit he can think about the fruit but in the end he must eat it if he wants to know its taste: the pleasure and nourishment he may get from eating the fruit is not an act of thought (Mascaro, 1965, pp1–47).

Mascaro’s authoritative translations of the Upanishads further illustrate these points. In the Kena Upanishad it is stated:

He (God) comes to the thought of those who know him beyond thought, not to those who imagine he can be attained by thought: he is unknown to the learned and known to the simple (p51).

Further, in the Kaushitaki Upanishad it is stated “It is not thought which we should know: we should know the thinker” (p105).

And in the Katha Upanishad:

When the five senses and the mind are still, and reason itself rests in silence, then begins the path supreme. This calm steadiness of the senses is called yoga. Then one should become watchful, because yoga comes and goes (p55).

Patanjali

One of the most well known yogic treatise is Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms. Patanjali was a physician who attempted to synthesise the many disparate texts on yogic discipline (such as the Hathayogapradipika, cited above) into single coherent practical guide for those aspiring to experience higher consciousness and self realisation, it is stated:

By being aware of the silent void moments pervading the emptiness between thoughts, one can glimpse and expand the skill of thought subjugation which leads to transformation (Messenger, C).

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Evidence that meditation is not relaxation

Dr Ramesh Manocha — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:57:11 +0000

There is widespread agreement in the literature that meditation reduces sympathetic activation and increases parasympathetic activation of the ANS, that is, it reduces physiological arousal thereby triggering a characteristic spectrum of simultaneous physiological changes: reduced respiratory rate (RR), reduced heart rate (HR), reduced blood pressure (BP), reduced electrodermal activity (EDA) and increased skin temperature (ST). Many studies of non-meditative practices such as relaxation, listening to music and sitting quietly have demonstrated the same pattern, leading to the assumption that meditation can be defined merely as a method of rest or relaxation — no different to other methods.

The significance of my research is that it has challenged current thinking by demonstrating that Sahaja Yoga meditators manifest changes that in some part are opposite to that which one would expect to see in participants who simply undergo rest/relaxation. Specifically, while the “relaxation” explanatory paradigm for meditation predicts that meditators’ ST should increase, this study found that it decreases and that this decrease correlates with the degree of mental silence reported by the meditator. A review of the literature indicates that this pattern of changes is difficult to mimic consciously. The observations in this study correspond closely with other studies on Sahaja Yoga meditation reported in the “grey literature”. Taken together these findings suggest that the mental silence experience may be associated with a relatively unique pattern of physiological activity.

Dr Ramesh Manocha