Examining randomised controlled trials exploring meditation in my review, control methods were presumptively categorized according to their face-validity into low, moderate or high face validity categories.
The low face-validity controls used strategies that were:
• Passive and unstructured: Participants were involved in minimal or no activity relating to the trial and had no interaction with researchers [...]
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In order to effectively tease out the effects of mental silence as opposed to the effects of other aspects of Sahaja Yoga meditation it was obviously necessary to use randomised controlled trial methodology. Having refined the practical approach in previous clinics it became possible to develop a standardised, instructional strategy whose structure could also be [...]
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Practitioners of sahaja yoga meditaiton (SYM) consistently report that the state of mental silence is characteristically associated with other subjective phenomena such as a natural focusing of attention and a sense of wellbeing which somehow leads to improved physical health. A number of SYM practitioners do describe occasional transcendent experiences, with concomitant benefits to physical [...]
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The mechanism of action provoked by meditation is thought primarily to involve its ability to reduce stress. There are two main theories about how this happens. First, that it reduces somatic-arousal thereby reducing the reactivity of the individual to environmental stressors and, second, that it alters the individual’s cognitive appraisal of and perceived self-efficacy with [...]
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