BLOGORAMA! (revised)

Hello friends!

If you have come across this blog intentionally, then you probably share my desire to learn about the wonders of meditation. I have always been very science-oriented, so I am not what you would call a spiritual person. But recently I have taken an interest in the benefits of meditation. Specifically, how does separating yourself from the material world and connecting with the nonphysical world, affect your psychological wellbeing? From what I have heard, people who meditate gain the ability to relax, greater awareness, and increased concentration. But that’s not all. They also reap various physical benefits. Is this a direct consequence of meditation? Or is it that our minds and immune systems are connected, and so by becoming psychologically healthy we indirectly promote the health of our bodies? Or maybe meditation is not the cause. Could it be that people who are inclined to meditate are also more likely to live healthier lives generally? These are just a few questions I hope to answer in this blog.

I am studying Psychology at the University of Southern California. After taking five Upper Level courses in Psych I am very knowledgeable about the link between someone's cognitions (thoughts) and how well-adjusted they are. One of the most effective therapies for depression (Cognitive Behavior Therapy, or CBT) teaches clients to challenge and refute their automatic thoughts that cause and sustain the depressive state. Meditation trains us to let go of our thoughts so they do not control us. When I learned in one of my Psych classes (actually in two, but it wasn't quite as impressive the second time) that meditation can be as effective as CBT in treating mental disorders like depression, my interest grew. Considering how expensive therapy can be, and how unwilling people are to seek professional help, meditation seems like a great alternative that might actually attract more people who otherwise would suffer on their own.

Meditation also works as well as chemical intervention for certain disorders, without the side effects. Generally, I don’t think people should turn to prescription drugs except as a last resort. They are a quick fix, and they only work as long as you are taking them. If the cause of the disorder has to do with the way you think, then drugs are only a superficial cure. On the other hand, therapy and meditation equip you with long-term skills to turn your thoughts into more adaptive ones.

I hope this blog will reach an audience that would like to learn about the benefits of meditation and possibly can contribute some of their own insights. This is also for people who want to know about nonconventional treatments for physical and psychological conditions, such as diet and lifestyle changes, herbal remedies, non-mainstream drugs and vitamins, massage therapy, music, and so many others.  Yoga and meditation, along with the approaches I just listed, are considered alternative medicine, but do they really belong in the same category?  I wonder if there might be enough scientific support for their healing capabilities to classify them within mainstream medicine.  After all, alternative medicine is so named because it is not empirically supported, so placing meditation in this category delegitimizes it and enforces the notion that it is just New Age mumbo jumbo.  I will look to scientific research in my posts to determine whether the 'alternative medicine' label is appropriate, or whether meditation actually has a place in clinical settings. This blog will focus on the effects of meditation from psychological and physiological perspectives, so I hope to attract readers from the natural and social sciences fields. But I will gear my writing toward an audience without a scientific background.

I hope that, whether you are reading out of pure curiosity or to learn more about getting healthy in a natural way, you will enjoy and benefit from my posts.

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YOGIC TRANCE

Are you anxious? Stressed? Depressed? Do you wish you could quit smoking? Do you yearn for a better night's sleep? Do you have trouble concentrating? Wish you had more energy? Or maybe you would just like to quiet your mind and relax? No matter the ailment, there is a good chance that practicing yoga can provide some relief, if not as a cure, then as a way to create inner peace and reduce the pain or anxiety associated with the problem.

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, and if you do yoga or would like to start, then Yogic Trance is the place for you. You can learn postures and breathing techniques, read true accounts about how meditation has improved individuals’ qualities of life, explore disorders that yoga can treat and the specific meditations used, discover the ideology behind yoga… and the list goes on. The blog is updated frequently; some days have multiple posts. And the archive dates back to May 2008. It is a popular blog, which is understandable since the content of the posts is intriguing and informative. The most viewed post, Bed time blues: When you can’t sleep!, has been viewed 61 times (what else is there to do when you can't fall asleep?). The title is simple, descriptive, and informal, letting the reader know the subject of the post and implying that it isn't full of scientific jargon. Finally, the title hooks the reader and reels him into the post. I mean, don't you want to read the post now? Maybe not, but at least just read the first paragraph:

It’s 3 a.m. You’re scheduled to give a big presentation at eleven, only eight hours away. You desperately need to sleep so you will be rested and alert when your big moment comes, but here you are staring wide eyed at the bedroom ceiling. Your mind is agitated and your body won’t relax. The harder you work at getting to sleep, the wider awake you are. You’ve already tried counting sheep, watching the late show, and making yourself a snack-all to no avail. In desperation you reach for a sleeping pill.

The blogger (who cleverly goes by the pseudonym Admin) writes very interesting posts that draw the reader in from the beginning. Some posts provide information about the biological mechanisms and all that science-ey stuff, but it is presented in a way that any semi-educated person can understand. His (or her?) audience is anyone who wants to know about yoga and its benefits. As we will see, the blog does include academic sources and research studies, so it is sophisticated enough for people in the field of Psychology to enjoy it and learn from as well.

One post that I found interesting is Meditation and Yoga for Depression and Bipolar, which is an account of the blogger’s experience with depression and how meditation helped him sort out his life. I was really amused by the way he describes losing control of his mind:

My mind, for one, is like a Circuit City showroom, with TVs and VCRs and home sound systems blaring all at once from all sides, and K-mart blue light specials and beepers and police radios going off against a truckload of gongs clattering down marble steps.

...This is probably more amusing for me than for the person actually going through it. But of course that's what he intended - he uses humor and metaphor to explain his problem in a way that is easy to understand, light-hearted, and compelling. It’s amazing that yoga could help him calm this racket inside his head (Read the post if you want to find out his routine!).  He supplements his anecdote with insight from a yoga instructor, Amy Weintraub, who pulled herself out of chronic depression by practicing yoga, then wrote Yoga for Depression: A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga after researching depression.  Then he cites a UCLA study that supports the effectiveness of yoga as treatment for depression:

28 mildly-depressed young adults attended two one-hour yoga classes twice a week for five weeks. Midway into the course, subjects "demonstrated significant decreases in self-reported symptoms of depression and trait anxiety," which they maintained to the end. Subjects also reported decreased negative mood and fatigue following class.

I would not call this a scholarly or academic blog, seeing as the posts are informal and address a wide audience, but it is definitely credible. The blogger uses stories from his experience and those of other people (not very scientific sources), as well as professional wisdom and scientific research to explain what's going on and support the claims made in the post.

Another interesting post, Yoga Cure for Smoking, explains how yoga helps people overcome psychological and emotional problems, which in turn gives them the strength to quit smoking (Check out the post to see a breathing technique that fights cravings). So far I have cited depression, bipolar disorder, and substance dependence as mental illnesses for which yoga can provide relief, but the blog includes plenty more examples. Real life story of how Kundalini Yoga helped OCD describes a female patient's struggle with obsessive compulsive and body dysmorphic disorders. After undergoing Kundalini Yoga therapy she says,

Yoga put me in a state of balance, and gave me peace of mind immediately. I was able to quit cigarettes. I also started to have a normal appetite again…The most beneficial aspect of the experience, however, was the immediate release from anxiety, depression, and OCD… The continuation of the practice led to a greater state of peace and general strength that has continued up to this day.

This is an example of someone who achieved considerable gains from yoga and whose life was truly improved as a result. She quit smoking, regained a normal appetite and recovered from psychiatric problems in all the short term, and she obtained enduring inner peace and strength. This is experiential proof that yoga can have a significant positive impact on a person's quality of life and that it can help people become physically and mentally healthier.

No matter the topic, all the posts (at least the ones I got around to reading) were rich and detailed. I like this blog a lot because the content of its posts go beyond the obvious and expected benefits of yoga. I was actually surprised by some of the illnesses that meditation can help people deal with (addictions, ADHD, insomnia, etc.). Just looking through the titles made me want to read what was inside the posts because I wanted to know how meditation produces these effects, especially from a Psychological point of view. And, to my delight, I found such explanations in the posts.

My blog, like this one, will look at yoga and its health benefits. Specifically, how yoga affects the brain to improve psychological and physical health. Yogic Trance will contribute insight on this particular topic, but my blog will differ because it will consider various practices that involve meditation, not just yoga. My focus will be meditation in general, its effect on the brain, and how this produces the oh-so-many health benefits associated with meditating.

So check out that blog guys! Seriously.

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Blogger's Voice: Quint(ess)en(ce)

It's not always what you say that's important, but how you say it.

I want to learn about the connection between the mind and the body and about meditation's role in improving the health of both. I want to explore what other people are saying about this topic right now. But I'm not going to be interested in what someone has to say if the message is too dry or difficult to understand. A writer's voice describes how he tells a story, and I am interested in authors who write in a way that is compelling, easy to follow, and enjoyable to read.

Quint(ess)en(ce) presents information on meditation, yoga, and hypnosis in an effective way. It has over 38,000 hits, so I'd say it's got a decent fan base, and it contains lots of blog posts, covering quite a range of topics. But generally the posts address superphysical states, like hypnosis and meditation, and discuss recent scientific research related to health.

The blogger's voice is pretty consistent throughout the posts. He is generally straightforward and informal, and his posts are simple and fluid: it is easy for us non-intellectuals to read, and the sentences flow together nicely. He is personal and conversational, sharing anecdotes, experiences, and reflections and addressing the audience as "you." This way, the reader gets a sense about the person who is writing and feels like he or she is being talked to. It also grabs the readers' attention instead of boring them with overly-academic babble. Some of the titles are kind of dry and straightforward, like Kinesiology tutorials, Learn to solve your sleeping problems and more, and Physiology of Meditation: Sensitization of the nervous system, but others describe the subject in a way that is more enticing, like Niche marketing on crack and Otherness: The experience of vastness of Being.

Now, why don't we look at the blogger's use of voice in some of these posts...

The experience of Vastness of Being opens with:

When I was around this age of seventeen I was interested in Psychology, Yoga, Otherness. In short I was interested in the Power of the Mind [or lack of it] with the goal to experience those insights people have that is beyond the world of the Physical.

Psychology, Yoga, Otherness. This is not grammatical; there should be an "and." but he left it out for a reason. These aren't the only three things he was interested in. There is so much that goes along with these topics. If he had said "Psychology, Yoga and Otherness," it would seem that this is the extent of his interest. Nothing more. He also capitalizes each of these words, as well as Power, Mind, and Physical, for emphasis. These words connote something that extends beyond the physical world and is much greater than us. Yet, when speaking about these things, he doesn’t attempt to act as a guru, blessing us with information from on High. He remains very informal, writing with brackets and speaking as he would in conversation.

His conversational speech means that he does not pay attention to grammatical rules, but instead structures his sentences to mimic how he would actually speak, isolating certain words for emphasis or pausing to let the reader think about what was said and wonder what is next. He says that he has become a dreamer and that he creates idealistic expectations about this life.
After listing some books (and links to those books) that contributed to his idealism, he says:

The latter was the icing of the cake, so to speak. Because soon after that I left this path of thinking. Satified. Or not?! At least until today. Today I have the urge to write about my Vision of Otherness based on those people who have sculped me.

Let's ignore the typos and focus on what he meant to say. His sentences are mostly short. He puts a period between speak and Because to create a pause. He uses lots of periods (and other punctuation) to separate his thoughts. He gives satisfied its own sentence to create a sense of uncertainty about whether he really is satisfied. He questions it (very dramatically- he apparently really wanted to emphasize this doubt). And the next sentence is kind of a hook, drawing his audience to continue reading in order to find out what he means by questioning his satisfaction and what happened today to affect it. He uses the same technique in his post Physiology of Meditation: Sensitization of the nervous system:

It is stated that Atman is the Soul (animation). Because … where there is no Soul there is no Atman. You get it: no breath, no life. It is that simple.

In this case, he uses it to state a seemingly complicated topic in a very simple way. The pauses give the reader a chance to understand what they just read. It also emphasizes how simple the concept actually is so that the reader doesn’t over-think it.

This particular blog contains many words that are unfamiliar to most people who do not have a background in science or yoga. The main words are defined in the post in block format, while the other words include links to their Wikipedia definitions.

After defining sensitization and providing a short personal story about public speaking, the post says:

Because this is the link where I want to prove to you that Meditation, Relaxation, Centering your mind are all techniques to train your nervous system to become sensitive. Even running can do bring you in a Alpha state because of the rythm of your running and the physiological changes that take place.

Why running you might ask? Well, everybody knows about the releasing of those endorphins while running.

This is followed by a definition of the word endorphin. Here is another example of a sentence beginning with Because and employing capitalization to represent significant words. Bold font is used to emphasize a very important point.  Clearly, it is the writer's intention to convince us of his argument by explaining it as thoroughly and clearly as possible, and by focusing our attention on the major terms and phrases.  That he cares more about his audience than about impressing us with his expertise and eloquence says a lot about his character.  His writing voice portrays him as a friendly, approachable guy, and as someone who doesn't put on airs, but who is genuine.  Whether or not he is actually capable of speaking formally and intellectually, it is clear that he is smart and able to express his argument effectively.

The entire post up to this point has been about sensitization and its importance to health. The above quote links sensitization to yoga and creates a transition to the next, more crucial, part of the post, which discusses this link in depth.  Running is used as a metaphor to explain how these techniques make you more sensitive and thus healthier.

The blogger is clearly enthusiastic about meditation and all things relevant (why else would he devote a blog to it?). He enjoys telling others about all the fascinating things he has learned. And he wants to make sure that his audience understands what he is saying. He does this by forgoing grammar in favor of simplicity. His sentences are short, which gives the reader time to pause and take in what has been read. It also makes the post easy to read. He uses metaphors occasionally and bold font throughout his posts so that the reader pays attention to those phrases that are most important for understanding his point. He capitalizes words that are significant and defines words that are not part of the common person's vocab. His personal stories give us some information about him and his interests. He passes on his knowledge to us as a friend, not as a teacher or a guru. And he is very happy to be able to share this with us.