Meditation meets behavioural medicine - The story of experimental researchon meditation

This paper juxtaposes Asian spiritual narratives on meditation alongside me dical and scientific narratives that emphasize meditation's efficacy in mit igating distress and increasing well-being. After proposing a working defin ition of meditation that enables it usefully to be distinguished from categ ories of similar practices such as prayer, I examine meditation's role in M ind/Body medicine in the West. Here, I survey a number of scientific studie s of meditation, including the work of Dr. Herbert Benson and his colleague s who examine a meditational variant they call the 'Relaxation Response' to examine the breadth of efficacy claims made on behalf of the complex and m ultidimensional grouping of diverse practices we have come to as 'meditatio n'. Among other positive outcomes, meditation has been credited with reduci ng blood pressure, anxiety, addiction, and stress, while Relaxation Respons e has been shown to decrease sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity, met abolism, pain, anxiety, depression, hostility, and stress. I conclude the p aper by suggesting that findings from cognitive neuroscience on the subject of visual imagery can be used to elucidate genres of meditative practice t hat focus on internal visualization sequences, and I use practices from the Rnying ma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism to illustrate why certain integral aspects of meditation forever will remain beyond scientific grasp.