Article PDF :

Veiw Full Text PDF

Volume :

10

Issue :

1

Abstract :

Meditation is known to be a conscious mental process tends to induce certain integrated physiological changes further leading to the relaxation of mind and body. Mental stress, anxiety, depression are the common silent sufferings in the instrumental world faced today not only in adults but also in school going children. In the present scenario meditation is used as a clinical tool in various areas of mental and physical health improvisations and also as a curator for the emotional and disease sufferings. In this study we made an attempt to know the effects of meditation on depression, anxiety and stress levels before and after meditation and to also study the cognitive functions before and after meditation. The study was conducted on 160 apparently healthy participants, male (n=80) and female (n=80) studying class 6th to class 10th who were not undergoing any medical treatment. The students were randomly distributed into four groups, control male (n=40), control female (n=40) group, meditation male (n=40), meditation female (n=40) groups. The students were allowed to practice meditation in sitting posture, under the supervision of the expert at 6:30 am in the morning for 35 minutes for a period of 90 days. Subjects were analyzed based on the data before and after therapy. Depression, anxiety, and stress levels were assessed by DASS 42 and perceived stress scale. Spatial and verbal memory test was used to assess cognition. We found a profound decrease in the levels of depression, anxiety and stress in all the subjects’ pre- meditation and post- meditation with and significant improvement in spatial and verbal memory. Further studies based on biochemical parameters may show more accurate and explorative results. Further one can also study the effect of meditation on other various parameters of the body and further experimenting with the variations noted with different types of meditation correlating its effects on health could be promising.