A national survey of Sahaja Yoga meditation practitioners using standardised measures revealed that meditators experienced significantly better levels of quality of life and mental health as compared to population data drawn from national health surveys using the same instruments. Similar surveys of populations practising Western forms of religiosity also reported better health than the general population but the meditators appeared to experience substantially greater advantages. Remarkably, analysis revealed a robust and consistent relationship between reported frequency of mental silence experience and health scores, especially mental health, thereby providing support for my central hypothesis that is that the experiential mental silence aspect of meditation is associated with health benefits. An association however does not prove causality and so it became necessary to conduct observational experiments to determine if meditation, and more specifically, mental silence, was specifically responsible for the health benefits observed in the health survey.
Related posts:
- Graph: the health scores of mental silence meditators vs. other groups
- Graph: health of mental silence meditators vs general population
- Graph: the relationship between mental silence and mental health
- The yogic idea of mental silence
- Dr Ramesh Manocha: 2 RCTs show therapeutic effects of mental silence
