Spirit recovery is about reclaiming your authenticity: unraveling the matrix of who you believe you are, while finding the willingness to consider other points of view—perspectives other than the one that you currently have. The individual meditations in this special recovery journal are intended to inspire and challenge the reader. The intention of each meditation is to help readers clear their minds and allow them to express themselves through the journaling process. The author suggests that readers review a meditation first thing in the morning and immediately give themselves the gift of allowing whatever comes up as a result of the reading to flow onto the accompanying journal pages. The contents of the meditations take the traditions of the recovery clichés and reframe them to allow readers to expand their point of view. Key Features Foreword by Don Miguel Ruiz, New York Times best-selling author of The Four Agreements. Ninety meditations can be used in conjunction with recovery of any kind. A journal page follows each meditation for readers to explore their own feelings and thoughts about the meditations.

Many claim that meditation is effective in the treatment of many ailments associated with stress and high blood pressure, and in the management of pain. While there are many popular books on meditation, few embrace the science as well as the art of meditation. In this volume, Shapiro and Walsh fill this need by assembling a complete collection of scholarly articles--Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. From an academic rather than a popular vantage, the volume takes the claims and counterclaims about meditation to a deeper analytical level by including studies from clinical psychology and psychiatry, neuroscience, psychophysiology, and biochemistry. Each selection is a contribution to the field, either as a classic of research, or by being methodologically elegant, heuristically interesting, or creative. Original articles cover such topics as the effects of meditation in the treatment of stress, hypertension, and addictions; the comparison of meditation with other self-regulation strategies; the adverse effects of meditation; and meditation-induced altered states of consciousness. Concluding with a major bibliography of related works, Meditation offers the reader a valuable overview of the state and possible future directions of meditation research. Today, in the popular media and elsewhere, debate continues: Is meditation an effective technique for spiritual and physical healing, or is it quackery? Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives weighs in on this debate by presenting what continues to be the most complete collection of scholarly articles ever amassed on the subject of meditation.

Many claim that meditation is effective in the treatment of many ailments associated with stress and high blood pressure, and in the management of pain. While there are many popular books on meditation, few embrace the science as well as the art of meditation. In this volume, Shapiro and Walsh fill this need by assembling a complete collection of scholarly articles--Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. From an academic rather than a popular vantage, the volume takes the claims and counterclaims about meditation to a deeper analytical level by including studies from clinical psychology and psychiatry, neuroscience, psychophysiology, and biochemistry. Each selection is a contribution to the field, either as a classic of research, or by being methodologically elegant, heuristically interesting, or creative. Original articles cover such topics as the effects of meditation in the treatment of stress, hypertension, and addictions; the comparison of meditation with other self-regulation strategies; the adverse effects of meditation; and meditation-induced altered states of consciousness. Concluding with a major bibliography of related works, Meditation offers the reader a valuable overview of the state and possible future directions of meditation research. Today, in the popular media and elsewhere, debate continues: Is meditation an effective technique for spiritual and physical healing, or is it quackery? Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives weighs in on this debate by presenting what continues to be the most complete collection of scholarly articles ever amassed on the subject of meditation.

Many claim that meditation is effective in the treatment of many ailments associated with stress and high blood pressure, and in the management of pain. While there are many popular books on meditation, few embrace the science as well as the art of meditation. In this volume, Shapiro and Walsh fill this need by assembling a complete collection of scholarly articles--Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. From an academic rather than a popular vantage, the volume takes the claims and counterclaims about meditation to a deeper analytical level by including studies from clinical psychology and psychiatry, neuroscience, psychophysiology, and biochemistry. Each selection is a contribution to the field, either as a classic of research, or by being methodologically elegant, heuristically interesting, or creative. Original articles cover such topics as the effects of meditation in the treatment of stress, hypertension, and addictions; the comparison of meditation with other self-regulation strategies; the adverse effects of meditation; and meditation-induced altered states of consciousness. Concluding with a major bibliography of related works, Meditation offers the reader a valuable overview of the state and possible future directions of meditation research. Today, in the popular media and elsewhere, debate continues: Is meditation an effective technique for spiritual and physical healing, or is it quackery? Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives weighs in on this debate by presenting what continues to be the most complete collection of scholarly articles ever amassed on the subject of meditation.

Despite the increase in meditation studies, the quality remains variable; many of them are trivial, and most remain unreplicated. Research on meditation has been plagued by insubstantial theorizing, global claims, and the substitution of belief systems for grounded hypotheses. Meditation punctures some of the myths about meditation, while retaining a place of value for mediation as a normal human function. In each chapter includes discussion of the major questions addressed, followed by a detailed critique of important theoretical, clinical, and research issues. In several instances the reader may find that questions seem to beget questions: research bearing upon certain issues may be contradictory, or not yet of sufficient thoroughness. In these cases, the author suggests the specific future research necessary to resolve the questions posed, so that claims about meditation are justified, and which are not. The profession of psychology itself is, and has been, in a polarized debate between the "practitioners" and the "experimentalists." The latter accuse the former of being "soft, non-empirical, non-scientific," while practitioners accuse the experimentalists of conducting research which is essentially irrelevant to human concerns. This approach provides a bridge between research and clinical practice. Meditation provides an encompassing survey of the topic--nearly forty tables and figures; sample questionnaires, evaluations and programs and a detailed overview of a controversial field. Shapiro separates self-regulation with self-delusion, to outline questions and possible answers.

Did you know that meditation can help you feel better - both mentally and physically - starting right now? No matter how busy you are, wherever you are, your age, or what you are going through, meditation offers simple, fast relief and can support you in your day-to-day life. Through science-backed, practical and accessible guidance, this book will show you how meditation can work for you. Balm your soul and body with over 75 can-do meditation techniques to build into your daily routine. Whether you want to practise on a mat or take your experience elsewhere – when walking, running and swimming; using sound and music; with art and creativity – discover which method works best for you. Meditation for the Real World will also address specific moments of need, such as how to find calm before a stressful situation such as a flight; to enhance focus before a big presentation; to reduce inflammation and pain; and much more, each with the science to support the practice. With a foreword by Dr Sara Lazar, meditation and yoga researcher at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

This volume features a collection of essays on consciousness, which has become one of the hot topics at the crossroads between neuroscience, philosophy, and religious studies. Is consciousness something the brain produces? How can we study it? Is there just one type of consciousness or are there different states that can be discriminated? Are so called “higher states of consciousness” that some people report during meditation pointing towards a new understanding of consciousness? Meditation research is a new discipline that shows new inroads into the study of consciousness. If a meditative practice changes brain structure itself this is direct proof of the causal influence of consciousness onto its substrate. If different states of consciousness can be linked with properties and states of the brain this can be used to study consciousness more directly. If the sense of self is modifiable through meditative techniques and this can be objectively shown through neuro-imaging, this has profound implications for our understanding of who we are. Can consciousness, in deep states of meditative absorption, actually access some aspect of reality which we normally don't? Meditation research can potentially foster us with a new access to the phenomenological method in general. This has even been branded with a new catch-phrase: Contemplative Science. It brings together the most modern neuroscientific approach and the most advanced phenomenological methodology of studying the mind from within, through highly skilled self-observation that has gone through many thousand hours of honing the capacity to look carefully, without distraction. This book addresses these issues by bringing together some of the leading researchers and thinkers in the field. The scope of the volume reaches from first person neuroscience to Indian philosophy, from pedagogic applications to epistemological aspects and from compassion meditation to the study of brain activity.