The Transcendental Meditation Program

Archive

• March 9, 2010
  • “Transcendental Meditation
    Resets Brain” —PsychCentral
  • “Why I Meditate”
    by Russell Simmons
• December 22, 2009
  • “Transcendental Meditation program helps heart disease patients lower cardiac disease risks by 47 percent”
  • Meditation cuts student’s stress, lowers blood pressure
  • Transcendental Meditation technique reduces stress, improves mental health among women with breast cancer
  • “Study Shows Transcendental Meditation’s Promise for Kids with ADHD”—Los Angeles Times
  • Update: Campaign to Teach One Million At-Risk Youth to Meditate
• April 27, 2009
  One million at-risk youth will soon be able to learn the Transcendental Meditation technique

A new EEG study discovers the practice of the
Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique helps the
brain reset to a natural state of restful alertness.

The three-month randomized, controlled study was conducted on college students at American University. During the study, researchers found students could more highly activate the default mode network, a suggested natural “ground state” of the brain. Results of this study were published in the February 2010 issue of the journal Cognitive Processing.

Specifically, the study found the TM technique:

• Produces a unique state of “restful alertness,” as seen in the markedly higher alpha power in the frontal cortex and lower beta and gamma waves in the same frontal areas during TM practice.
• Creates greater alpha coherence between the left and right hemispheres of the brain suggesting the brain is working as a whole.
• Enhances an individual’s sense of “self” by activating what neuroscientists call the “default mode network” in the brain. (This is considered the natural ground state of the brain, glimpsed by neuroscientists during eyes-closed rest but more fully activated during Transcendental Meditation practice.)

“The finding of significant brain wave differences between students practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique and those simply resting with their eyes closed is especially convincing because subjects were randomly assigned to conditions, and testing was conducted by a researcher unaware of the experimental condition to which the subject had been assigned,” said David Haaga, Ph.D., coauthor and professor of psychology at American University.

“Research has already shown that simply closing one’s eyes and relaxing increases the default mode. A significant additional finding of this new study is that activity in the default mode increases during TM compared to simple eyes-closed rest,” said lead author Fred Travis, Ph.D. “Different meditation techniques entail various degrees of cognitive control. Thus, activation patterns of the default mode network could give insight into the nature of meditation practices.”

Previous published research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, shows TM practice decreases high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, cholesterol, stroke, and heart failure.

Reprinted from PsychCentral, voted by TIME.com
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