Best Ways to Ease Anxiety Disorders?...Meditation vs. Relaxation?

Question

Meditation vs. Relaxation
In a study , researchers reviewed research on meditation and other types of relaxation techniques. Only two studies that compared meditation to other relaxation techniques met the researchers' requirements for review.

The first compared transcendental meditation to relaxation therapy and EMG (electromyography) biofeedback.

Transcendental meditation involves focusing the mind on an object until the mind achieves stillness. EMG biofeedback measures muscle relaxation and teaches people to control their own level of muscle relaxation.

The second study compared mindfulness meditation, which encourages awareness of one's thoughts while maintaining detachment, to Kundalini yoga. Kundalini yoga includes a meditative form of breathing known as pranayama.

Researchers say both studies showed that meditation was comparable to other forms of relaxation therapy in reducing anxiety overall. But the small number of people involved in the studies makes it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the effectiveness of meditation in the treatment of anxiety disorders.

In particular, the results showed:

All relaxation and meditation techniques resulted in improved scores on measures of anxiety, current mood, and symptoms of distress, but sleep disturbances did not improve.
Work, social functioning, and family relations also improved among all treatment groups, but marital relations and sex life were not affected.
Kundalini yoga wasn't as effective in treating obsessive-compulsive disorders as mindful meditation, although participants who practiced this form of yoga had more improvement on scores of perceived stress and purpose in life.

So what are your thoughts?....What technique works for you...day to day?

Answer 1

Hmmm good question!!! Meditations vs relaxation, like the King Kong one!
Trying to Leave My Body: Did I Really Get Out?
Arthur Ellison

I have not had significant spiritual/transpersonal experiences (though I have meditated for many years), but I have had out-of-body experiences by following for one month the methods in the Muldoon/Carrington book (Muldoon, S. J. & Carrington, H., 1929, The Projection of the Astral Body. London: Rider), and I have had a number of lucid dreams by following the LaBerge and Rheingold book (LaBerge, S. & Rheingold, H., 1990, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine).

Muldoon's techniques involved (in my case) going along temporarily with the belief that I had an "astral body," imagining it a bit bigger than the physical body, and doing mental exercises to loosen its attachment to the physical. These involved such things as looking at the ceiling, then at the right wall, then at the floor, then at the left wall, and back to the ceiling again. I can still imagine myself revolving several times within the still physical body. Other techniques he recommended, such as not drinking so that thirst would drag you in the other body to go and get a drink, I did not use. I also did not use what is really an induction of a lucid dream - going into a dream of an elevator and suggesting that one would wake up on reaching the top - into an astral projection according to Muldoon, and into a lucid dream according to Stephen LaBerge.

My most impressive OBE[1] Lay down on my bed with the light on and used the Muldoon/Carrington (The Projection of the Astral Body) methods for a month for one hour per evening. Finally found myself cataleptic. Willed/imagined (more imagined than willed) myself to float upwards. Felt as though embedded in mud at the bottom of a river and the water gradually reduced the viscosity of the mud until I slowly began to float upwards. Rose above the physical body, approached the ceiling and remember well the little cracks in the plaster I could see when near. Floated through it into the darkness of the roof space. Carried on through the roof tiles. Was cataleptic[2] also in the 'other body' I had imagined. Velocity increased and I well remember the whoosh! as I shot up into the cloudy night sky. Did not lose consciousness for one moment from lying down.

[1] Editor's note: OBE = Out of Body Experience, the more modern phenomenological term for the experience of mind being experienced as both clear and temporarily located somewhere other than where the physical body is.

[2] Editor's note: catalepsy is a feeling of total paralysis.


Decided this was a waste of time, as any sensible person would say I had dreamed the whole thing. Intended next time to go off into the nearby town and get some information I could check the following day.

The next experience took me two or three more hours. Similar experience. But when half a meter above the body changed the direction of imagining and floated towards the window. Intended to descend to the lawn behind the house to a distance outside Muldoon's "cord activity range" - when he said in the book that the catalepsy would go and I would be free to walk about.

Floated through the window frame and about to make the descent to the lawn (still cataleptic) when what felt like two hands grabbed my head over the ears and I was bodily moved back into the room and replaced in the body. I have no explanation for the latter experience.

I left the experiments then for a while as I needed the sleep and have only recently started experimental work again.

I feel fairly sure that I was cataleptic because Muldoon had said so. I may have been in an autohypnotic trance. I heard no "roaring" or other sounds (which are often reported). All occurred exactly as I described.

Contributor's Comments on the Experience

I was trying Muldoon's techniques to produce "astral projection" because I wanted to have the experience and thought naively (it was a long time ago!) that it would prove survival. It has not affected my doing 'normal science' at all. But I did occasionally have questioning guilt feelings when I sent a student back to the lab to do an experiment again because he had not got the "right answer'." Now I am "retired" my early experiences have caused me to devote a lot of time to research into consciousness via personal experience, with a number of others.

Commentaries

Commentaries about accounts on the TASTE site are submitted by scientists, as the accounts are. Like with accounts, submitters are granted confidentiality unless they choose otherwise. For information on editorial standards for accounts and commentaries, please see the Editor's Notes page.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

both meditation and relaxation are simillar,with little distinction between the two. the individual is guided by another in some cases. unfortunately no one person is the same, therefore neither one is better than the other. I would recommend, that the unexpended person seeks out and experienced instructor for meditation or a professional guide for relaxation techniques. the most effective will be the one you're most comfortable with.

Answer 4

I have suffered from panic attacks all my life. The only way to beat them is to seek counseling and to work through things yourself. I find a mixture of relaxation, breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, self help books and counseling helps.

Here are some steps that helped me:
1. When you feel like the panic attack is coming on, start breathing deeply and slowly. Close your eyes and think of something happy. Tell yourself that its going to be ok, that you are going to be just fine.
2. Try to find an activity, sport or passtime that you really enjoy. This helps you to take your mind away from things that may be negative.
3. Tell yourself it's all in your head. Nothing bad is really going to happen to you.
4. Buy some self help books on anxiety and panic attacks. One that really helped me is called 'Women Who Worry Too Much' by Holly Hazlett-Stevens
5. Seek a local counselor to help you work through the trauma you have been through.


Source(s):
http://www.amazon.com/women-worry-too-mu...

Answer 5

Meditation practiced on a daily basis produces remarkable changes in your thinking process. I recommend it highly. It has made a real difference in my life

Answer 6

I recommend that you see:

"How to wash a man's brain?"

http://www.avolites.org.uk/jokes/wash.htm

What said Loving_Heart is this:

Aura [Gr. anra, breeze]: Ger. Aura; Fr. aura; Ital. aura. (1) Any subjective sensory or motor phenomena that ushers in a nervous seizure such as epilepsy or hysteria; (2) specifically, the subjective sensation as of a current of air rising from some part of the body to the head, which is a frequent premonition of an epileptic attack; (3) a supposed emanation or fluid assumed by believers in mesmeric or similar forces as the medium of conveyance of such forces.

The premonitory symptoms of epilepsy are frequently spoken of as the aura epileptica, and of hysteria as the aura hysterica. The forms of aura are extremely various. They may be motor, such as local tremors, twitchings, or spasms, deviations of the eyes, contortions of the face, &c.; they may be sensory, as a general feeling of heat or cold, tingling, numbness, pain, dizziness, as well as subjective auditory and visual sensations; they may be visceral or vaso-motor sensations, blushing, choking, burning in the stomach, excessive salivation; and they may be mental, such as sudden fright or apprehensiveness. The nature and development of the aura is at times of importance in detecting the precise nature of the malady. See EPILEPSY (also for literature), and HALLUCINATION.

For these I recommend for you, less and less movies. I can't explain, now.

Answer 7

There are lots of people who would make fun of the prospect of altering their fates. This is because it believes that no one gets more that what is written in his fate.

Answer 8

I DON'T REDRESS.
...
24. "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.'
25. When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order.
26. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first."
Luke 11

.....
ONLY WORK IS GOOD.
...

In the neighborhood lived a famous dervish who passed for the best philosopher in Turkey; they went to consult him: Pangloss, who was their spokesman, addressed him thus:

"Master, we come to entreat you to tell us why so strange an animal as man has been formed?"

"Why do you trouble your head about it?" said the dervish; "is it any business of yours?"

"But, Reverend Father," said Candide, "there is a horrible deal of evil on the earth."

"What signifies it," said the dervish, "whether there is evil or good? When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt does he trouble his head whether the rats in the vessel are at their ease or not?"

"What must then be done?" said Pangloss.

"Be silent," answered the dervish.

"I flattered myself," replied Pangloss, "to have reasoned a little with you on the causes and effects, on the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and a pre-established harmony."

At these words the dervish shut the door in their faces.

During this conversation, news was spread abroad that two viziers of the bench and the mufti had just been strangled at Constantinople, and several of their friends impaled. This catastrophe made a great noise for some hours. Pangloss, Candide, and Martin, as they were returning to the little farm, met with a good-looking old man, who was taking the air at his door, under an alcove formed of the boughs of orange trees. Pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was disputative, asked him what was the name of the mufti who was lately strangled.

"I cannot tell," answered the good old man; "I never knew the name of any mufti, or vizier breathing. I am entirely ignorant of the event you speak of; I presume that in general such as are concerned in public affairs sometimes come to a miserable end; and that they deserve it: but I never inquire what is doing at Constantinople; I am contented with sending thither the produce of my garden, which I cultivate with my own hands."

After saying these words, he invited the strangers to come into his house. His two daughters and two sons presented them with divers sorts of sherbet of their own making; besides caymac, heightened with the peels of candied citrons, oranges, lemons, pineapples, pistachio nuts, and Mocha coffee unadulterated with the bad coffee of Batavia or the American islands. After which the two daughters of this good Mussulman perfumed the beards of Candide, Pangloss, and Martin.

"You must certainly have a vast estate," said Candide to the Turk.

"I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us three great evils-idleness, vice, and want."

Candide, as he was returning home, made profound reflections on the Turk's discourse.

"This good old man," said he to Pangloss and Martin, "appears to me to have chosen for himself a lot much preferable to that of the six Kings with whom we had the honor to sup."

"Human grandeur," said Pangloss, "is very dangerous, if we believe the testimonies of almost all philosophers; for we find Eglon, King of Moab, was assassinated by Aod; Absalom was hanged by the hair of his head, and run through with three darts; King Nadab, son of Jeroboam, was slain by Baaza; King Ela by Zimri; Okosias by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; the Kings Jehooiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, were led into captivity: I need not tell you what was the fate of Croesus, Astyages, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Ariovistus, Caesar, Pompey, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian, Richard II of England, Edward II, Henry VI, Richard Ill, Mary Stuart, Charles I, the three Henrys of France, and the Emperor Henry IV."

"Neither need you tell me," said Candide, "that we must take care of our garden."

"You are in the right," said Pangloss; "for when man was put into the garden of Eden, it was with an intent to dress it; and this proves that man was not born to be idle."

"Work then without disputing," said Martin; "it is the only way to render life supportable."
.......................

"Excellently observed," answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden."

Candide
---Voltaire