Secular Meditation in The West
As stated by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a U.S. government entity within the National Institutes of Health that advocates various forms of Alternative Medicine, "Meditation may be practiced for many reasons, such as to increase calmness and physical relaxation, to improve psychological balance, to cope with illness, or to enhance overall health and well-being."
Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School conducted a series of clinical tests on meditators from various disciplines, including the Transcendental Meditation technique and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1975, Benson published a book titled The Relaxation Response where he outlined his own version of meditation for relaxation.
Biofeedback has been used by many researchers since the 1950s in an effort to enter deeper states of mind.
Read more about this topic: Meditation
Famous quotes containing the words secular, meditation and/or west:
“Washington’s birthday is as close to a secular Christmas as any Christian country dare come this side of blasphemy.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)
“The real meditation is ... the meditation on one’s identity. Ah, voilà une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you’re you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voilà une chose!”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“To have a place full of delights and nothing but delights, which one does not have to explain and defend to people who have ideas unsympathetic to one, it is to economize the forces which keep one from ending like the wisteria, from committing the unpardonable sin of doing things with difficulty.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)