Unlike modern Western therapeutic thinking however, meditation was not originally designed to be used as a course of treatment so much as to be part of an ongoing lifestyle thus implying that the benefits of meditation are likely to persist in the follow-up phase only so long as the person chooses to meditate regularly.
Meditation instructional [...]
In a 2001 US study Meisenhelder surveyed a sample of 1,400 Presbyterian pastors and found that they had considerably better health in comparison to US normative values. After controlling for age and other demographic variables, a small correlation was found between frequency of prayer and certain important health dimensions, particularly mental health (r = 0.117, [...]
One of the central themes of my thesis is that the failure of the proponents of meditation in the West to produce conclusive data on its specific efficacy in the health sphere has been due to understandings having been largely confined to Westernised versions of the practice. Such understandings have meant that the original ideas [...]
Pharmacological treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), while at the moment more effective than any other treatment option, is still considerably limited in its usefulness. For instance, although stimulants act for only a limited period, symptoms are continuous. Thus stimulants must be given several times per day (or at least daily in the case of [...]
Herbert Benson (1974, 1975, 1978) argued that Eastern meditative traditions, Western religious practices and even secular activities such as hypnosis or simple rest were essentially the same despite their philosophical or metaphysical differences. He coined the term “Relaxation Response” and proposed it as a universal physiological process underlying apparently divergent tasks such as listening to [...]
The Center for Disease Control survey in 2002 showed that 36% of US adults aged 18 years and over were using some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) at the time. When prayer specifically for health reasons was included in the definition of CAM, the number of adults using some form of CAM over [...]
The system of yoga is thought to have developed progressively over thousands of years but it nevertheless became mostly strongly associated with a single person, Patanjali, who was both a mystic and physician. In his definitive treatise, the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, he describes a single, comprehensive integrated system.
At the physical level the aim of [...]
In this excerpt from his thesis, Dr Ramesh Manocha highlights the scientific importance of religious and spiritual traditions.
The notion that religious and spiritual traditions have somehow evolved knowledge and methods to exploit the most potent of these mind body pathways is fascinating and provocative. Importantly these biological explanations might help to understand the mechanisms [...]
Back in 2003 when Pan Pharmaceuticals were forced to recall all of their products, ABC reporter George Negus interviewed a number of people about the context and repercussions of the recall. Dr Ramesh Manocha, at the time working in the Natural Therapies Unit of the Royal Hospital for Women, participated in the discussion. Seeking to [...]
Dr Manocha discusses the flaws in western medicine that are causing people to seek alternate treatments in this article from the Sydney Morning Herald.
The continuing rise in the popularity of alternative therapies can be attributed to much more than a search for quick-fix, tactile pleasures – there has been a fundamental shift in our understanding [...]