A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine shared an 8-minute video on "neuroscience and meditation". The speaker, a renowned neuroscientist and long time practitioner of Zazen, mentioned the existence of thousands of studies on meditation. She brought up potential advantages and drawbacks of practicing and, although she ultimately recommends the practice of meditation, she concluded that the measured effects are usually mild.
I told my friend that in my opinion the woman's points were quite shallow. The bigger problem lies on the generalized definition she makes of the term "meditation". That's just as vague and imprecise as putting "Michael Phelps' olympic workout" and "an old person's 10-minute daily walk through the corridors of a hospital" in the same bucket labeled "physical exercise" and then attempting to arrive at precise, meaningful conclusions applicable to all. Not all meditations are created equal.
Besides, even though more and more studies on multiple meditative practices continue to pop up (which is great!), the scientific knowledge available today on these matters is still extremely limited and barely scratches the surface.
I tend to be very cautious when talking about meditation in a generalized way, especially not to misrepresent techniques I'm not particularly familiar with. Specifically regarding the techniques I practice and know fairly well - Meditation on Twin Hearts, Arhatic Yoga - I can attest to how well designed they are to promote deep life improvements, not only effectively but - just as important - efficiently and safely. Taking a closer look, it's not hard to see that Master Choa Kok Sui, who put these techniques together, was an engineer!
Specific studies on some of these practices are already starting to appear. In a recent one, developed in a Master's thesis in Brazil, the researcher had the intent of demonstrating the benefits of Mindfulness meditation on emotional control. Apart from the group of people practicing that technique, she had two control groups: one with people not practicing any kind of meditation and another with people practicing the Meditation on Twin Hearts. The conclusion surprised both the researcher and the panel: the benefits observed on those practicing the Meditation on Twin Hearts were substantially superior (ref.: Frontiers in Psychology).
Another one, a study on the Meditation on Twin Hearts conducted in 2015, demonstrated measurable, significant increase in gamma waves on people's brains after just a few weeks of practice (ref.: Pranic Healing Research Institute).
I'm confident that, with time, more studies on Master Choa's teachings will come up and the tendency will be for their conclusions to corroborate what thousands of us practitioners have been observing through years of practice.
Taking good care of the body's vitality, the emotions and the mind with the proper use of meditation and techniques that manipulate prana - like Pranic Healing - is just as important as taking care of the physical body by exercising regularly and having a healthy diet.
There are many potentially decent paths which involve meditative practices but, again, not all paths are created equal and there's still a lot to be unveiled by science in this area. Regardless of that, what is already acknowledged today allied with the practicality and beauty found in Master Choa's teachings was the perfect combination to open this once very skeptical software engineer's mind.
Here's a brief clip about Arhatic Yoga to plant a seed:
I told my friend that in my opinion the woman's points were quite shallow. The bigger problem lies on the generalized definition she makes of the term "meditation". That's just as vague and imprecise as putting "Michael Phelps' olympic workout" and "an old person's 10-minute daily walk through the corridors of a hospital" in the same bucket labeled "physical exercise" and then attempting to arrive at precise, meaningful conclusions applicable to all. Not all meditations are created equal.
Besides, even though more and more studies on multiple meditative practices continue to pop up (which is great!), the scientific knowledge available today on these matters is still extremely limited and barely scratches the surface.
I tend to be very cautious when talking about meditation in a generalized way, especially not to misrepresent techniques I'm not particularly familiar with. Specifically regarding the techniques I practice and know fairly well - Meditation on Twin Hearts, Arhatic Yoga - I can attest to how well designed they are to promote deep life improvements, not only effectively but - just as important - efficiently and safely. Taking a closer look, it's not hard to see that Master Choa Kok Sui, who put these techniques together, was an engineer!
Specific studies on some of these practices are already starting to appear. In a recent one, developed in a Master's thesis in Brazil, the researcher had the intent of demonstrating the benefits of Mindfulness meditation on emotional control. Apart from the group of people practicing that technique, she had two control groups: one with people not practicing any kind of meditation and another with people practicing the Meditation on Twin Hearts. The conclusion surprised both the researcher and the panel: the benefits observed on those practicing the Meditation on Twin Hearts were substantially superior (ref.: Frontiers in Psychology).
Another one, a study on the Meditation on Twin Hearts conducted in 2015, demonstrated measurable, significant increase in gamma waves on people's brains after just a few weeks of practice (ref.: Pranic Healing Research Institute).
I'm confident that, with time, more studies on Master Choa's teachings will come up and the tendency will be for their conclusions to corroborate what thousands of us practitioners have been observing through years of practice.
Taking good care of the body's vitality, the emotions and the mind with the proper use of meditation and techniques that manipulate prana - like Pranic Healing - is just as important as taking care of the physical body by exercising regularly and having a healthy diet.
Here's a brief clip about Arhatic Yoga to plant a seed:
- Eduardo Sztokbant