In their review of scientific studies of meditation, published in the International Journal of Psychotherapy, Perez-De-Albeniz and Holmes[7] identified the following behavioral components of meditation:
1. relaxation,
2. concentration,
3. altered state of awareness,
4. suspension of logical thought processes, and
5. maintenance of self-observing attitude.
The medical community has studied the physiological effects of meditation Many concepts of meditation have been applied to clinical settings in order to measure its effect on somatic motor function as well as cardiovascular and respiratory function. Also the hermeneutic and phenomenological aspects of meditation are areas of growing interest. Meditation has entered the mainstream of health care as a method of stress and pain reduction. In 1976, the Australian psychiatrist Ainslie Meares, reported in the Medical Journal of Australia, the regression of cancer following intensive meditation. Meares wrote a number of books on the subject, including his best-seller Relief without Drugs.
As a method of stress reduction, meditation is often used in hospitals in cases of chronic or terminal illness to reduce complications associated with increased stress including a depressed immune system. There is growing agreement in the medical community that mental factors such as stress significantly contribute to a lack of physical health, and there is a growing movement in mainstream science to fund research in this area (e.g. the establishment by the NIH in the U.S. of 5 research centers to research the mind-body aspects of disease.)
Dr. James Austin, a neurophysiologist at the University of Colorado, reported that Zen meditation rewires the circuitry of the brain in his landmark book Zen and the Brain (Austin, 1999). This has been confirmed using functional MRI imaging which examines the activity of the brain.
Dr. Herbert Benson of the Mind-Body Medical Institute, which is affiliated with Harvard and several Boston hospitals, reports that meditation induces a host of biochemical and physical changes in the body collectively referred to as the "relaxation response."[32] The relaxation response includes changes in metabolism, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and brain chemistry. Benson and his team have also done clinical studies at Buddhist monasteries in the Himalayan Mountains.
Other studies within this field include the research of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts who have studied the effects of mindfulness meditation on stress.
Some particular schools of meditation have claimed to have beneficial health effects. For example, an early study in 1972 suggested that Transcendental Meditation could affect the human metabolism by lowering the biochemical byproducts of stress, such as lactate, decreasing heart rate and blood pressure and inducing favorable brain waves. Likewise, some studies have claimed that Sahaja Yoga meditation can be used in the treatment of asthma and ADHD,
There is no evidence however to demonstrate that any one particular school of meditation is more effective than another. There have also been claims made that some such studies have been carried out by individuals with a conflict of interest. For example, at least one of the authors of a Sahaja Yoga study is a Sahaja Yogi who attends to the personal medical needs of Nirmala Srivastava, the founder of Sahaja Yoga.[40] Studies making claims about particular schools of yoga should therefore be treated with particular caution.
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