MEDITATION, PSYCHOTHERAPY AND HEALING Introduct

Traditionally, meditation has been viewed as a spiritual practice involving a mental discipline in which one attempts to realize or consider or reflect upon a religious truth in order to arrive at a personal understanding and love for what it signifies; however, in the behavioral and medical sciences, the practice is increasingly being claimed as a stress-reduction technique that enhances both physical and psychological healing and well-being (Astin, 1997). The purpose of this paper is to examine the empirical research on meditation and psychotherapy in order to evaluate the validity of this claim.

Effects of Meditation and Psychotherapy on Healing

Does meditation increase the healing power of psychotherapy? Answering this question is difficult for two reasons. First, there has not been a great deal of research examining for the conjoint effects of psychotherapy and meditation; and second, the research that does exist suffers from problematic methodology.

One problem with the existing research supporting the efficacy of conjoint meditation and psychotherapy treatment is that many of these studies were conducted by clinicians using only case study methods which are research approaches lacking in empirical rigor (Kiess & Bloomquist, 1985). For example, Urbanowski and Miller (1996) discussed five case studies in which psychotherapy and meditation techniques were used conjointly for clients with diverse problems.

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ficantly reduced post-treatment daily anxiety ratings and was associated with changes in four of ten irrational beliefs and a shift toward more internal locus of control in treated subjects. Reduction in anxiety was no longer evident at the 2.5- and 5.5-month follow-ups. It was also observed that the men in the program showed a significant decrease in daily drinking rates at post-treatment and at the 2.5-month follow-up; however, drinking returned to baseline levels by 5.5 months for the group as a whole. Significant improvement variance in daily moods and in drinking rates over all post-treatment periods was accounted for by individual difference variables in the trained subjects but not in the control group; this was said to suggest that these cognitive, personality, and social support variables are associated with response to treatment. The foregoing study provides support for the notion that combining meditation with forms of psychobehavoral therapy is associated with therapeutic effectiveness. However, it's degree of support is limited by the fact that meditation and psychotherapy (cognitive restructuring) were not the only treatment modes given to subjects, e.g., they also had training in muscle relaxation and coping
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1955
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)