Yes, more to be discovered and I enjoy your reasoning. About turning the attention inward: once a TM teacher who had spent a lot of time in Seelisburg, said that there comes a point where there is no longer an inward stroke and an outward stroke. So maybe more alpha coherence and strength even during activity? Restful alertness can be quite present even in activity as the years go by. It is a unique experience and I wouldn't mind seeing an EEG reading or 2 on that!
________________________________ From: sparaig <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 5:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Teach meditation to 40 formerly incarcerated youth --- In [email protected], Share Long <sharelong60@...> wrote: > > Thanks L, this is quite clear and I enjoy your sense of humor. Anyway, what > about the old restful alertness. You've said what indicates relaxation. > Is there an EEG indication for the alert part? > Well, standard EEG texts talk about alpha EEG as being associated with "wakeful relaxation" so its not just the TM organization's terminology. If you are sitting with your eyes closed, you tend to generate at least some alpha automatically. "When you close your eyes, naturally you feel some quietness, some silence. Yes?" All eyes closed meditation techniques appear to activate the Default Mode Network, which is what scientists are now calling the parts of the brain that become more active when you are turning your attention inward. How this activation works appears to vary from technique to technique. As far as I know, TM is one of the few where alpha EEG isn't eventually replaced with some other frequency. Instead, pure awareness is associated with MORE alpha EEG power and coherence, not less. > I also appreciate this that you said in another post: > "Stress" means a lot more in this context than was believed 40 years ago. Yeah, and there's more to be discovered I think. "Yoga is the subsidence of mind fluctuations" after all, and mind fluctuations are due to the leftover effects of past experience. Mindfulness has its own stress-reducing qualities and scientists are starting to come up with new theories to explain this beyond MMY's old "meditation = rest" theory. I'm thinking that perhaps activation of the DMN automatically induces stress reduction so all the various meditation techniques are going to have some effect in that direction. TM, being the most relaxing (gamma is associated with concentration and compassion meditation for example, and gamma is NOT a sign of a relaxed brain usually), should prove to have the most stress-reducing effect. Or so my reasoning goes... L
