Psychologically speaking, the objectives of yoga mirror those of conventional methods designed to enhance self-control and self-regulation. For example, yoga-psychology proposes that negative-affect states, even transient ones, are pathological states of mind. Such states include gloominess, doubt, procrastination, sloth, attachment, hallucination, inability to concentrate and instability. Ideas like this delineate an understanding of health that, [...]
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Eastern mystics have often asserted that the presence or absence of altered states of consciousness (such as mental silence) comprise the crucial difference between religious ritual and religious experience. Western scholars such as William James (1902) mirror the Eastern ideas:
In just the degree that we come into a conscious realisation of our oneness with the [...]
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In traditional cultures around the world, spirituality has been associated with better health. Both Eastern and Western historical traditions closely linked physicians with the religious establishment. In the East, Traditional Chinese and Indian medical systems clearly describe, even today, the idea that the mind/soul is an important influencing factor in health is integral to their [...]
Posted in complementary and alternative medicine, medicine, meditation, research, thesis excerpt | Also tagged dr ramesh manocha, history of meditation, meditation, mental silence, negative health, ramesh manocha, religiosity and health, research, wellbeing |
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 [...]
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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 [...]
Meditation has been heavily commercialised in the west and Dr Manocha believes this has harmed the proper research, development and propagation of meditation through the west – read about it in an extract from his thesis at the Researching Meditation blog.