Brain-electric activity during eyes open Brahma Kumaris Rajayoga meditation.

Abstract

Brahma Kumaris Rajayoga’s open eyed ‘seed stage meditation’ was studied in 52 experienced meditators. The meditation consists of different stages: concentration on the feeling of peace, realization of being a soul and communion of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul. Brain electric source localization in the frequency domain was used on multichannel EEG recordings to establish activation differences between meditation and open eyed, task-free resting. Meditation showed reduced activity in delta and increased activity in low alpha frequencies. The affected brain areas comprised the following networks during meditation: the central executive network, the mirroring network and both the task-positive and the task-negative network. The altered activations of these networks and other affected brain areas reflect the main cognitive-affective and behavioral specifics of seed stage meditation: attention modulation, self-related processing, experiencing the soul as a point of light between the eyes, endowing the soul with the properties (peacefulness) of the Supreme Soul. Future studies need to differentiate between the stages of the meditation.

Does meditation lead to a stable mind? Synchronous stability and time-varying graphs in meditators

“…Dentre as inúmeras variações de meditação, existem aquelas que são realizadas paradas, outras em movimento, utilizando posturas 14 e danças 15 , por exemplo. Algumas são feitas de olhos abertos 16 , entreabertos 17 , outras de olhos fechados 14 . Há ainda meditações que são realizadas acompanhadas de músicas 18 , enquanto outras são realizadas em silêncio e, ainda, outras que envolvem a repetição de mantras 14 .…”

“…Trabalhos a respeito da atividade cerebral durante a meditação Raja Yoga (BK) ainda são escassos, embora alguns autores já tenham relatado diminuição de atividade delta e aumento de atividade alfa de baixa frequência durante a meditação em comparação a um relaxamento de olhos abertos 16 , assim como outros autores relataram não haver qualquer diferença na atividade elétrica cerebral entre a meditação Raja Yoga (BK) e o relaxamento 51 .…”

“…Algumas investigações não verificaram diferenças significativas na potência da frequência beta durante 2,16 ou depois da meditação 78 , ou mesmo a redução da sua potência durante a meditação 53 . Saggar et al 84 estimaram dados eletroencefalográficos de sujeitos ao longo de um retiro intensivo de três meses de meditação mindfulness, observando redução da potência beta bilateralmente nas regiões anterocentral e posterior ao longo de três avaliações com EEG no período do retiro.…”

Stress and the impact of stressful events are lesser among raja yoga meditators – A cross sectional study during COVID-19 pandemic from India

“…Raja yoga meditation also affected the psychosomatic components of hypertension patients [33] . This meditation intervention helped in lowering hypertension, and also improved general health by reducing psychosomatic symptoms of disease and medication dosages .The EEG recordings of experienced Raj yoga meditators showed that this meditation resulted in a decrease in delta activity and an increase in low alpha activity [34] . The brain areas that demonstrated altered activations relate to attention and cognitive abilities.…”

Reliability and factor analysis of Hindi version of IES-R scale: Effect of Rajyoga meditation on perceiving the impact of COVID-19

“…Not only physiological and psychological, but there are also neural evidences of benefits of meditation interventions. In a study observing neural correlates of Rajyoga meditators, they showed high-band strength in the alpha and theta range [ 26 ]. Thus, meditation had significant positive effect on frontal and parietal areas of brain responsible for emotion and cognitive processing.…”