Psychophysiological Correlates of Meditation

The Dream of God: How Do Religion and Science See Lucid Dreaming and Other Conscious States During Sleep?

“…Another study obtained a similar result with a different technique called Transcendental Meditation, which uses mantras ( Woolfolk, 1975 ) and shares the same goal with Yoga Nidra ( Cranson et al, 1991 ). The authors found that 11 long-term practitioners were able to report being aware during sleep when compared to 9 short-term practitioners and 11 non-practitioners.…”

Relaxation-induced anxiety: Paradoxical anxiety enhancement due to relaxation training.

“…In a within-subjects crossover design, all subjects received two commonly employed relaxation techniques, progressive relaxation and mantra meditation, in counterbalanced order. Both techniques have been found to produce significant reductions in subjective and physiological arousal in previous research (e.g., Borkovec & Sides, 1979;Woolfolk, 1975). However, as argued by Davidson and Schwartz (1976), progressive relaxation involves active self-generation of, and passive attention to, somatic processes, whereas meditation employs active and passive cognitive procedures.…”

Impact of preksha meditation on alpha waves in EEG

“…These waves are usually generated either in right hemisphere of brain or in a synchronized pattern between both right and left hemispheres. 9 It modulates many psychological, neurological, and physiological functions in human. Higher levels of creativity, super learning ability, emotional stability, peak performance, increased level of serotonin, lower level of stress and anxiety are benefits occurred with the generation of alpha waves.…”

“…Many studies done earlier have confirmed that EEG shows specific changes in certain frequencies particularly in alpha range. 9 Percentage and voltage of alpha waves are usually higher in person performing meditation. 24 Yamamoto et al (2006) observed that medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) play an important role in generation of alpha activity in practitioners of transcendental meditation.…”