A team of researchers, at Sydney University’s Meditation Research Programme, monitored stress levels of full-time Australian workers in Sydney’s CBD to determine the effectiveness of meditation in combating this widespread and expensive problem.

The 8 week clinical trial provides strong evidence that there are measurable, practical and clinically relevant effects that appear to be specific to Sahaja Yoga meditation.

The study divided volunteers into three groups. And those who used Sahaja Yoga meditation showed significant reduction in their stress levels compared to those who used other methods of meditation that didn’t involve thoughtless awareness, which usually only generate a placebo effect at best.

It’s one of only a few meditation studies in the world that clearly demonstrates an effect that is much greater than just placebo hence it has broad and important implications for all levels of society.

Work stress is described by many experts as a modern epidemic. It costs the Australian economy $15 billion per year and the US economy more than $300 billion. It is a leading cause of absenteeism, causing both mental health problems such as anxiety and physical problems such as heart disease. Sahaja Yoga can now be confidently put forward as a simple, low cost intervention that can help prevent this.

The strategies currently available to tackle work stress often have limited effectiveness. This is where this study is remarkably relevant. It shows that a simple, mental silence orientated meditation skill, reduces stress significantly more than other often more expensive approaches to stress management.

Another remarkable aspect of the study was the impact on depressive mood. Depression is a major problem in our society, so any low cost intervention that reduces the risk of depression is of great public health significance. This study, along with the evidence from other research that we have done, indicates that strategies such as Sahaja Yoga should be used to prevent some of the major mental health problems that are facing our community.

A substantial proportion of depression in the community starts as works stress, says recent Australian research. Given the shortage of other options to prevent the mental health epidemic that threatens the younger generation, we should seriously examine the potential of this unique finding to stem the tide of depression that affects our communities.

Stress is not just limited to the workplace. In western countries, studies estimate that more than 70% of medical consultations feature stress as a major issue. Until now medical practitioners have been at a loss to know what to recommend that is safe, effective and scientifically evaluated to tackle this stress. This study clearly says that Sahaja Yoga is something that health professionals can confidently recommend to both prevent and reduce stress.

To see the research article go to: Sahaja Yoga Meditation research.

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

Please download the full article here by right-clicking on the link and selecting “Save Target As” or  “Save Link As”

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Dr Ramesh Manocha

1. Relaxation Response and studies describing the intervention as based on it.
2. The MBSR and studies describing the intervention as based on it.
3. TM and studies describing the intervention as based on it.
4. Multimodal interventions of which meditation is one part, such as yoga, lifestyle strategies etc.
5. Miscellaneous, where only a few studies had been conducted on a particular technique and/or when a technique did not easily fall into one of the previous categories.

Dr Ramesh Manocha

1) Case studies of meditation featuring small numbers of participants in which there is no attempt to control for confounding variables. While these are useful for generating hypotheses, they do not provide scientifically valid insights into meditation’s purportedly unique effects.

2) Own-control studies use participants in time sequential series (ie ab, aba or similar designs) in which the “a” condition is pre-meditation or non-meditation and the “b” condition is meditation. The “a” and “b” conditions are then compared. These studies have generally demonstrated significant differences (interpreted to be in favour of meditation) but they suffer from substantial limitations because they compare meditation to non-meditation and then assume that any differences are due to meditation, whereas they may in fact be due to methodological factors not specific to meditation at all (such as rest, expectancy, researcher demand and environmental issues). Further, this design is vulnerable to the possibility that one condition might be contaminated by carry-over effects from the preceding condition. A further important consideration applies especially to the case of novices — if the meditator is not sufficiently skilled then they may have difficulty in generating physiological changes and the effects (although potentially real) may not become detectable.

3) Experimental control studies are much more reliable as they involve two independent groups in which one meditates and the other engages in a control activity such as rest. There are however, methodological difficulties associated with this approach as well. First, use of novices (who are introduced to meditation during the trial) may mean that the effects of meditation are not large enough to generate a detectable change. Second, while use of advanced meditators (those who have practiced meditation over many years) may ensure that the necessary magnitude of effect is achieved, the question of selection bias becomes a significant consideration.

An ideal strategy would involve an experiment in which participants are randomly assigned from the same sample to either a meditation or a control group. This approach is rarely feasible however, since it would conventionally require many months or even years of practice before the participants achieved competence. With such lengthy time-lines the accumulation of drop-outs may in any case lead to selection bias. Therefore, a reasonable compromise strategy might involve using experienced meditators and comparing them to non-meditators who have either been matched for parameters including interest in meditation, or have been randomly selected from the population. This latter design was selected for the study described in this chapter.

Dr Ramesh Manocha

Dr Ramesh Manocha

This graph shows the number of meditation studies considered as serious explorations of meditation’s effects published per year in the MEDLINE database.

The maximum yearly output was in 2000–2001 when 12 RCTs were reported in MEDLINE. In the same time period 106 RCTs for fluoxetine, as an example of a mainstream medication, and 98 RCTs for acupuncture, as an example of a complementary medicine, were published. The rate of publication of RCTs on meditation is poor in comparison to other therapeutic modalities in either the mental health or complementary and alternative medicine genres.

Dr Ramesh Manocha