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:
“As high as mind stands above nature, so high does the state stand above physical life. Man must therefore venerate the state as a secular deity.... The march of God in the world, that is what the State is.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“And hiving wisdom with each studious year,
In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought,
And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)