مزایای مدیتیشن: یافته های تجربی

This work looks at meditation and its possible benefits. Differences between an experimental group that practiced meditation for a period of 14 weeks and a control group that did not meditate are analyzed along a number of lines. The mean age of the subjects in the experiment was 24. Most were college juniors. The vast majority of subjects were single, watched television an average of 2.41 hr a day, and had a 2.83 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale). Differences between meditators and non-meditators were found for a number of variables including: feeling upset over the criticism of others, taking tranquilizers or “street” drugs to change mood, and aching muscles and joints. The work supports the idea that meditation is beneficial along a number of lines. Among these subjects, meditators benefited most as regards experiencing fewer symptoms of aching muscles or joints and well as less use of drugs and tranquilizers.

In 1996, the National Library of Medicine and the Medical Subject Headings Term Working Group, of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), defined alternative medicine as an unrelated group of non-orthodox therapeutic practices, often with explanatory systems that do not follow conventional biomedical explanations. Alternative medicine is also defined as medical interventions not taught at medical schools or available in hospitals in the United States. The OAM, a part of the National Institutes of Health, was created in 1992 by Congressional mandate. The mission of the OAM, now the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, is to facilitate research and evaluation of unconventional medical practices and to disseminate this information to the public.