Article Preview
TopIntroduction
The increased urbanization has led to many Socio-economic issues such as the hectic and unhealthy life-style, self-centered families and cut-throat completions. It is said that human is a social animal and need mental peace for its sustainable growth on all front of life. It is human tendency that he/she is always busy with lots of thoughts, most of which is absolutely unnecessary. 80 percent of human potential is utilized and wasted in unnecessary thoughts. This leads to the distraction from focus and increase in stress, blood pressure and many other health issues. Further, it may cut down the human work efficiency in day to day life. The modern medical science do not suggest any way-out to overcome this problem. However, the unnecessary thoughts can be removed from human mind by performing meditation. Meditation is not only sitting silently, relax with closed eyes, breathing with intention, focusing concentration on particular object or image, observe the thought progression without judging, non-analytically, repeat sounds in your mind, rhythmic movement of the body as in Sufi dervish dance and so on are taken to be a meditation. During meditation, higher frequency brain waves reduce and lower frequency brain waves increases, this activates different centers in the brain. Low frequency wave indicates more time between reactions in the brain (Kakumanua R J et. al. 2018). Figure 1 shows the classification of different yogic techniques.
Figure 1. Classification of Yogic techniques
Brain activities can be captured by using Positron Emission Technology (PET), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRE), Functional Magnetic Resonance (FMRE) and EEG signals. EEG signals are considered as the best way to analyse and represent the human brain activities due to its non- invasiveness, accuracy and real-time mode of operation.
TopBackground
Notable contributions are reported in the area of meditation and its exposure to the wellness, medical treatments, physiological and emotional balance in human being. Different types of meditations are used for stress reduction, concentration, focused attention and relaxation.
Chanting or mantra meditation is also another way of performing concentrative meditation. Telles et al. (1995) reported an experimentation on OM mantra using middle latency using auditory evoked potential on 18 subjects. For practiced meditators, it had been observed that practicing OM mantra reduced the skin resistance and heart rate.
Gujar and Ladhake (2004) had described relationship between OM chanting and frequency. It had been reported that frequencies generated by chanting OM are the frequencies of 7 chakra (the energy points) situated in human body. Whenever OM is pronounced, it activates all chakras i.e. Sapta chakra. Activation and harmony of these chakra will reach to the Kundalini Yoga i.e. the dense and dippiest meditation, which helps in emotional balance, increase productivity and healing in all respect.
Zen meditation was analyzed by Chang et al. (2005) with the help of flash visual evoked potentials (F-VEPs). A sample of 21 candidate were underwent the experimentation showing alpha wave were suppressed in presence of light stimuli for open eyes. Variation in alpha and beta waves suggested visualization of a flash light during Zen meditation.
Meditation activity was used by R. Madhavi and Anantha (2010) to investigate the effect of autonomic nervous system on cardiac performance by estimating approximate entropy (ApEn) of Heart rate variability data. Few healthy subjects were under test before and after meditation condition. It has been found that the entropy parameters indicate improved cardiac health after meditation. Chi meditation and Kundalini Yoga meditation are used in this experimentation for various analysis.
Changes in the heart rate variability in meditator and non-meditators were evaluated by Jing Hu et al. (2011) using Chinese Chi meditation (CCM) and Kundalini Yoga meditation (KYM).