Uit talloze Wetenschappelijke Publicaties blijkt dat meditatie de echt de gezondheid bevordert. Er zijn hiernaast ook onderzoeken uitgevoerd die specifiek het thema Meditatie en Slapeloosheid behandelen.
Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you perform better – and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have found.People who meditate say the practice restores their energy, and some claim they need less sleep as a result. Many studies have reported that the brain works differently during meditation – brainwave patterns change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has remained largely unexplored.
So Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, US, decided to investigate. They used a well-established “psychomotor vigilance task”, which has long been used to quantify the effects of sleepiness on mental acuity. The test involves staring at an LCD screen and pressing a button as soon as an image pops up. Typically, people take 200 to 300 milliseconds to respond, but sleep-deprived people take much longer, and sometimes miss the stimulus altogether.Ten volunteers were tested before and after 40 minutes of either sleep, meditation, reading or light conversation, with all subjects trying all conditions. The 40-minute nap was known to improve performance (after an hour or so to recover from grogginess). But what astonished the researchers was that meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance, despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.
“Every single subject showed improvement,” says O’Hara. The improvement was even more dramatic after a night without sleep. But, he admits: “Why it improves performance, we do not know.” The team is now studying experienced meditators, who spend several hours each day in practice.
- Verkorting van de inslaaptijd
Een van deze onderzoeken gedaan door Dr. Miskiman van de universiteit van Alberta, Canada, getiteld "De behandeling van Slapeloosheid door middel van Meditatie" (Scientific Research on the Transcendental Meditation Program: Collected Papers. Vol.1, 1976) laat ziet dat meditatie de inslaaptijd van slapeloosheid lijdende personen significant verkort. De gemiddelde inslaaptijd van de onderzochte personen was gedurende een periode van 30 dagen ongeveer 70 minuten. Na meditatie schijnt de gemiddelde inslaaptijd terug te vallen naar 10 minuten!!!! Ook slaapstoornissen namen zienbaar af. Meditatie is eenvoudig toe te passen, maar is wel een direct een duurzaam effectief tegen slapeloosheid en zonder bijeffecten. - Verhelpen van Slaap-apneu
Mensen die sterk snurken en meestal bij te zware mensen lijden soms aan een slaap-apneu. Hierbij raken de luchtwegen tijdens de diepe slaap geblokkeerd, die kan leiden tot gevaarlijk lang durende ademstilstanden of snurken. Door meditatie leer je beter en bewuster ademen was op zijn beurt het snurken verhelpt en jezelf (en je partner!!) beter en rustiger doet slapen. - Verkorting van de Slaapbehoefte en Verbetering van Slaapkwaliteit
Niet alleen is meditatie een goed middel tegen slapeloosheid, maar het helpt mensen, die normaal geen slaapproblemen hebben, ook om zich meer uitgerust en frisser te voelen. Velen blijken ook met veel minder slaap te kunnen doen. William Hague, de partijvoorzitter van de Britse Conservatieven, zegt zelfs: "Meditatie helpt mij met slechts een paar uur slaap toe te kunnen. Met 5 minuten per dag mediteren, krijg je meer dan van een hele nacht slaap!!!"
Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you perform better – and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have found.People who meditate say the practice restores their energy, and some claim they need less sleep as a result. Many studies have reported that the brain works differently during meditation – brainwave patterns change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has remained largely unexplored.
So Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, US, decided to investigate. They used a well-established “psychomotor vigilance task”, which has long been used to quantify the effects of sleepiness on mental acuity. The test involves staring at an LCD screen and pressing a button as soon as an image pops up. Typically, people take 200 to 300 milliseconds to respond, but sleep-deprived people take much longer, and sometimes miss the stimulus altogether.Ten volunteers were tested before and after 40 minutes of either sleep, meditation, reading or light conversation, with all subjects trying all conditions. The 40-minute nap was known to improve performance (after an hour or so to recover from grogginess). But what astonished the researchers was that meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance, despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.
“Every single subject showed improvement,” says O’Hara. The improvement was even more dramatic after a night without sleep. But, he admits: “Why it improves performance, we do not know.” The team is now studying experienced meditators, who spend several hours each day in practice.
