You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'meditation' category.
Alternative Therapies – Meditation, with Dr Kathy Sykes
- Matthieu Ricard (French) - translator for Dalai Lama – Nepal, Kathmandu, meditation
- Dr Herbert Benson – the relaxation response - book
- Marharishi Vedic City
- Transcendental meditation, impact on coronary health
- pubmed.gov for papers
- “reviews” collate information from a number of papers, periodically
- Professor Mark Williams, Oxford
- Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
- Anti-depression/clinical-depression
- 80% mindfulness meditation, 20% cognitive therapy
- Uses meditation similar to that taught by Mattiau in Nepal
- Buddhist practices
- focus on breathing
- Observing without trying to fix
- Seeing thoughts as just thoughts
- Reduces risk of recurrence by up to 50% in patients who have had 3 or more depressive episodes
- Helps other anxiety – can help everyone (universal anxieties, self-doubts etc, awareness)
- Available to some on the NHS
- Dr Richard Davidson, University of Wisconsin – Madison
- Meditation shifts brain activity over time from left-hand-side to right-hand-side
- Dr Sarah Lazar
- Meditation over time is associated with increased cortical thickness
- Effects are cumulative (“every minute sitting counts”)
- Cortex associated with attention and sensory processing
- alters ability to concentrate
- alters response to “sensory” stimuli – physical sensations (pain, hunger etc) but also emotional sensations (fear, anger etc)
