The Power of OM - Benefits of Meditation Recieve Certificate from Science.

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Power of ‘Om’

Brain researchers discover meditation’s myriad benefits, says Carey Goldburg

In search of peace: A group of Buddhists of European and US origin attend a

prayer ceremony in Bangkok Meditation seems to energise the sleep-deprived. It

seems to help with concentration. It even seems to bolster the very structure of

the brain as we age. Neuroscientists presenting their latest research at a

convention of 34,000 colleagues recently had so much praise for meditation that

it was starting to sound like a mantra.

Their work fits into a growing body of data that tries to bring modern science

to bear on age-old methods to quiet the mind. Enthusiasts have long touted the

health benefits of meditative practices such as chanting, yoga, and prayer.

Now, using the latest high-tech tools of neuroscience and biochemistry, they

are teasing out how those benefits work. And increasingly, they are focusing on

how meditation may help not only the body but the brain.

“As time goes on, we’re understanding this phenomenon in ever more advanced

scientific terms,” said Dr Herbert Benson, president of the Mind/Body Medical

Institute and a Harvard Medical School associate professor who has studied the

body’s “relaxation response” for nearly 40 years. “And why it’s so important

today is because over 60 per cent of visits to the doctor are in the

stress-related realm.”

While some of the most striking studies have involved monks who were experts

at meditation, the new research also backs up claims that garden-variety

meditation can bring scientifically demonstrable benefits. Consider-ed on the

fringes of science just a generation ago, serious research on meditation now

includes hundreds of studies examining its possible benefits. Three of five

researchers on a panel about meditation at the recent Society for Neuroscience

meeting in Washington, D.C., were from Harvard.

In recent years, academic researchers seeking to turn anecdotes into hard data

have suggested that meditation may provide a broad array of benefits, from

lifting depression to relieving pain to fighting flu.

Skeptics remain. Many of the studies are small and preliminary, and some

depend on the meditators’ own descriptions of what they feel, which could be

biased by their desire for it to work.

When the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader and a longtime collaborator

with brain scientists, was scheduled to speak at the Society for Neuroscience

conference, several hundred scientists signed a petition questioning his

presence, and arguing that meditation research has not been objective enough.

But researchers say that that is their very aim: to improve the quality of the

research, using new tools and better methods, to determine more conclusively

what meditation really does.

“If we’re going to make extraordinary claims, and claim that certain

individuals can break the rules we have about human performance, the methodology

has to be absolutely airtight,” said Sam Moulton, a psychology student at

Harvard.

As the power of meditation gained credibility during the 1970s and 1980s,

Moulton noted, researchers were looking mainly for physiological effects, such

as blood pressure and heart benefits. “Now, we’re looking for mental effects.”

Monks are considered the superstars of meditation, but Benson and others say

benefits can come from a spectrum of repetitive, mind-clearing practices that

elicit the so-called relaxation response — from swaying in prayer to saying the

rosary to knitting.

Among the studies presented at the recent conference was one by Massachusetts

General Hospital researchers, who scanned the brains of 20 people who meditated

regularly. These people had four regions of cortex — the rind of the brain,

associated with higher functions like memory and decision making — that were

thicker than in 15 subjects who didn’t meditate. In addition, the researchers

found signs that one area of the cortex seemed to have aged less quickly than it

did in nonmeditators. The study did not look at whether those brain differences

had a noticeable impact on behaviour, but researchers are now doing follow-up

work to assess that.

The findings “provide the first evidence that alterations in brain structure

are associated with Western-style meditation practice, possibly reflecting

increased use of specific brain regions,” said Sara Lazar, of Harvard, the

study’s lead author.

In the other Harvard-affiliated work, researchers reported that by using a

device that can analyse every breath a person exhales, they could measure the

depth of relaxation a person had achieved. People who reached deeper states of

relaxation exhaled more nitric oxide, a gas known to relax the smooth muscles in

arteries, and aid blood flow. “Our results provide initial evidence of how the

relaxation response intervention and other mind/body approaches might lower

blood pressure,” said Jeffery A. Dusek, the study’s lead author.

Another new study, from the University of Kentucky, found that meditation

could offset the sluggishness of sleep deprivation better than a nap.

Researchers tested volunteers on a button-pressing speed task, and found that

even novice meditators improved their performance more after 40 minutes of

meditation than after a 40-minute nap.

Meditation helped even after a full night of sleep deprivation, the study

found, said researcher Bruce ’Hara.

NYTNS

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051205/asp/knowhow/story_5548507.asp

[Enigma Valdez]

This is a great article. Of course, speaking from my own limited experience, OM meditation has helped me with so many things in life, everything from losing weight, to getting better quality sleep, to improved relationships, to being able to handle my own finances better, clear skin. etc. I have to agree with the skeptics, that people's benefits may come because they have a strong desire for the OM meditation to work. I agree totally, because simply chanting on its own without a sincere desire for it to work and focusing on the actual Idea of OM, will probably not do anything. The weight loss I've experienced, was not directly from the chants, but because the vibrations of my voice began to be felt throughout my body and the pronounciation of OM "AUM" is close to yawning, which when repetively done in conjunction with vibrating the OM will put you in a very relaxed state, a waking sleep state. This is a natural and healthy state of balance of mind and body. In turn, it allows people to make healthier life choices in small steps throughout multiple areas of life. OM can work for some people, for others there are all kinds of ways to get relaxed. I've found that playing certain musical scales to the beat of a metronome for half an hour to 45 mins a day has helped me relax and have more inner peace.