Another practice being used for stress relief, which is the polar opposite of encounter groups, is meditation. The most widespread and easily accessible technique is called Transcendental Meditation. It first caught the headlines in 1967, when the Beatles and Mia Farrow tripped off to the Himalayas to learn about it from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
With T.M. the individual sits down and closes his eyes for two periods of 20 minutes a day, during which time he, in effect, leaves the stress battlefield, willing himself into a state called ‘restful alertness’. He does this by concentrating on the silent repetition of a word called a mantra, a soothing meaningless sound secretly assigned to each student by the instructor.
After commencing meditation, various things may occur. Frequently there is a marked increase in the number of dreams during sleep- This is thought to be very beneficial, since we all need to dream at night whether or not we remember our dreams the next morning. It has been demonstrated that people who do not dream enough become tense and anxious. Dreams, fantasies, trances, hallucinations, are all forms of consciousness expansion and are enriching experiences. Physiologists have shown that in meditation there is a marked reduction of oxygen consumption; the reduction is greater than that of a person after six hours of sleep. Similarly galvanic skin resistance, another positive key to relaxation, in some cases is increased fourfold. In this and other movements derived from the East, diet is often involved, a vegetarian emphasis being common. Almost always there is also a degree of deliberate detachment from the turmoil of daily urban life, and a surrender to a group. This erasure of ego can produce a calm and may ease many life stresses.
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