In the Mind's Eye Enhancing Human Performance (1991) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 120-133
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7Meditation Meditation is generally defined as a class of techniques designed to influence an individual's consciousness through the regulation of attention. However, there is less agreement on its conceptualization than is commonly thought.
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the central principle of which is that God is knowable through proper meditation. An insight unknowable except to the faithful can also lead to greater physical strength, long life, and a general contentment ("Nirvana")
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school of thought that an external event is a stressor only if it is appraised or evaluated as such; see Lazarus, 1966.) If a person seeks out a quiet place, closes his or her eyes, and repeats a mantra, there is every reason to expect that the person's cognitive apparatus will become less occupied with processing negative information.
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1960 the government of India established a committee to study yogic practices as part of an investigation of indigenous medicine. Most controlled research in the West has been conducted in conjunction with this Indian effort.
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management method must include the conditions of its application. For example, if a person's task is to lie still in a confined space and "just" control his anxieties so that he does not panic after hours or days, then meditation, relaxation, or prayer can be useful.
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relaxation achieved with certain forms of biofeedback, effect cognitive change. Recent evidence in support of this is available in a report by Davison et al.
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work to date is characterized by weak designs: a lack of control for subject selection, experimenter biases, expectancies, and atmosphere effects. Work on meditation has led to speculations regarding presumed links between psychological processes (e.g., states of nonanalytical thought)
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pursue a program of basic research designed to relate meditative practices to performances on relevant tasks. If the effects of meditation reviewed in the Brener and Connally paper are replicable, there is reason to believe that those effects would intervene between the procedures and observed performances.
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literature on meditation. One glaring weakness is in their treatment of the yogic perspective.
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Khalsa proposes numerous exercises, many of which entail unilateral forced nostril breathing. He cites some of his own studies that purport to show that unilateral forced breathing could stimulate the contralateral hemisphere, producing relatively greater amplitudes in the electroencephalogram.
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Shannahoff-Khalsa (1987) asserts that Kundalini Yoga can make soldiers markedly resistant to the highest stress; he strengthens this assertion with references to Tibetan monks carrying out extreme activities, such as being isolated for 3 years.
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things as reducing hypertension, the combined use of other techniques, such as relaxation training, precludes a clear attribution of any positive effects to meditation itself. Life-style changes to reduce conflict are also apparently instrumental, a sensible enough conclusion and one that is consistent with the growing recognition that successful interventions must usually be multifaceted.
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REFERENCES Beatty, J., and J.F. O'Hanlon 1979 Operant control of posterior theta rhythm and vigilance performance: repeated treatments and transfer of training.
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Meditation Research with a Comprehensive Bibliography 1931-1988. San Rafael, Calif.: Esalen Institute for Exceptional Functioning.
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