Explores meditative practice, experience and research. The bloggers practise Acem Meditation, but represent their own views here.
By Erik Ekker Solberg, PhD, cardiologist, specialist in sports medicine
According to recent studies, yoga and meditation practices may help us to lose weight, reduce our blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, and slow down our pulse. Both psychological and physical quality of life seems to improve. Read more…
“We discovered the default mode network accidentally, without any preconceived notion of it,” says the brain researcher Marcus Raichle. “Nobody had thought of anything like the default mode network in our brain. It is different from the brain’s visual and movement systems.” Read more…
On 25 February 2015, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between Acem and Centurion University in India. At the same time, 28 female engineering students at the university learned Acem Meditation.
Read more…
The brain shows more signs of relaxation during meditation than during ordinary rest. Nondirective meditation has a greater impact than does concentrative meditation, especially in parts of the cortex associated with the processing of stress, emotions, and memories.
Svend Davanger, MD, PhD
Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oslo
Meditation Instructor in Acem
An increasing body of medical evidence confirms that meditation has a wide range of positive effects for the practitioner. The probably most influential and respected print media in Germany, der Spiegel, recently ran the article: Der heilende Geist: Gesund durch Meditation und Entspannung (The healing spirit: Healthy through meditation and relaxation) on its front page.
By Øyvind Ellingsen
The brain’s natural resting state is not a void or an absence of thoughts, but a spontaneous wandering among thoughts, episodes, images and feelings (1). Usually only 50 % of us are aware of them, but if we ask people at random, we learn that we all have such activity 30-50 % of the time, also when we are preoccupied with other activities.
The spontaneous stream of thoughts is reduced during tasks that require concentration, and increases during routine activities and rest. During the practice of Acem Meditation, a free mental attitude often increases the spontaneous activity of the mind.
Would you volunteer to participate in a study where viruses are injected in order to measure the risk that you catch a cold? 276 volunteers actually participated in an American study of this kind*). After the injection of the virus, the participants stayed in quarantine for five days. Then measures were taken of congested noses, and the snot was weighed.
The results indicated that stressed persons more easily catch a cold, which may not come as a big surprise, and those who experience chronic stress are most likely to catch a cold. The researchers wanted to assess the participants’ level of stress. After the necessary interviews, the conclusion left no doubt: those who had been most stressed were also the hardest hit by the cold.
Two and a half years after her father died, the Norwegian-American novelist Siri Hustvedt was about to give a speech in his honour at the place where he had worked. Before she had finished her first sentence, she began to shudder violently from the neck down, her arms flapping, and her knees knocking.
She kept shaking as if she was having a seizure, but her voice was not affected, and she managed to finish her speech. When the speech ended, so did her shaking, but similar fits returned to her on several later occasions. And then she wrote a book about it: “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”. I read the Kindle version on an iPhone.
