Benefits of Meditation

Research on the physiological effects of meditation led to the application of
meditative techniques as a treatment to combat stress-related illnesses.
Meditators have often experienced significant decreases in such problems
as general anxiety, high blood pressure, alcoholism, drug addiction, insomnia,
and other stress-related problems. Researchers have also found that the
scores of meditators on various psychological tests have indicated general
mental health, self-esteem, and social openness. Many psychologists argue,
however, that these effects are not unique to meditation and can be produced
by means of other relaxation techniques. Meditation researcher Robert
Ornstein has suggested that the long-termpractice of meditation may induce
a relative shift in hemispheric dominance in the brain from the left
hemisphere, which is associated with such linear processes as language and
logical reasoning, to the right hemisphere, which is associated with nonlinear
processes such as music perception and spatial reasoning. Consistent
with this idea are findings that meditators are better on certain righthemispheric
tasks such as remembering musical tones but worse on verbal
problem-solving tasks that involve the left hemisphere.