Daily meditation, in some cases, may help certain people avoid the need for medication.
2. The act of thinking about something carefully, calmly, seriously, and for some time, or an instance of such thinking: Joshua and Amelia spent each morning in meditation because they were convinced that daily meditations helped them to clear and to relax their minds.
3. Religious discipline in which the mind is focused on a single point of reference: Meditation may be a means of invoking divine grace, as in the contemplation by Christian mystics of a spiritual theme, question, or problem.
Meditations are thought to be a means of attaining conscious union with the divine; for example, through visualization of a deity or inward repetition of a prayer or mantra (sacred sound).
Some forms of meditation involve putting the body in a special position; such as, the seated, cross-legged lotus position, and using special breathing procedures.
4. Etymology: "discourse on a subject"; from Latin meditationem, meditatio, from meditatus, past participle of meditari, "to think over, to consider".Often, active mediations are guided by instructors, and feedback between students and instructors are considered important to the processes.
Active meditation involves a series of tensing and then relaxing all of the muscles in the body, usually starting with the head and moving down to the feet.
The use of active meditation is considered a safe treatment and it is often useful in connection with other forms of therapy.
Until recently, the primary objective of meditation was religious, although its health benefits have also been recognized, and so during the last decades, medical meditation has been explored as a way of reducing stress on both the body and the mind.
2. A state of consciousness in which an individual strives to eliminate environmental stimuli so one's mind has a single focus that produces a condition of relaxation and a relief from stress: Dr. Diedrich told June, his patient, that the primary objectives of medical meditations are to clear her mind of stressful outside interferences.Meditation therapy is a physically calming treatment for the body and mind and some clinical trials have shown that such procedures can be a valuable therapy for reducing stress levels and in helping to treat stress-related disorders.
This approach to quiet relaxation meditation has been used by some physicians to produce therapeutic alterations in stress control, as indicated by a reduction in blood pressure in hypertensive patients.