Meditation space

So, I was curious about the “studies” part of your comment, and did some randomly chosen reading.

On the TM website they feature prominently: “Hypertension, June 2013: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association concluded that the TM technique is the only meditation practice that has been shown to lower blood pressure”

I wanted to see how that claim holds up when looking at more details.

In a meta analysis that includes those claims, the summary about blood pressure is:

“Magnitude of reductions of systolic blood pressure varies widely.

Study limitations including the methods of blood pressure measurements and bias in data ascertainment, high dropout rates, and different populations studied”

In the detailed section about meditation practice and blood pressure, two things become apparent: first, the data quality is bad. That’s usually an indicator for suspicion. Chances are high the data was milked to support a biased claim. Second, another, earlier study than that citation by TM concluded that both Zen meditation and TM lower blood pressure.

Now, given that zen meditation is much much closer to Vipassana than TM, and there is no suggested mechanism of how meditation is supposed to lower blood pressure and the effect is still rather small in all studies (each with their own bad data quality), that raises some eyebrows.

Let’s remember that all of these studies were made during the time frame of the replication crisis.

In effect, I’m still suspicious about TM as a whole. They have a product that they’re selling, and they have a marketing team. For me, that doesn’t sit right in the space of meditation, even more so because cheap and powerful alternatives are plentiful.

But to each their own. If spiritually and money go well together for you, and you have the spare money to do it, go for it.