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Meditation

There is now hard evidence that meditation can cut stress, newspapers reported October 10 2007. The Daily Mail said that “five short sessions of meditation could be enough to help us achieve piece of mind”. The Daily Telegraph reported that “after meditation training of 20 minutes once a day for only five days, people, had measurably less anxiety and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol”. The papers said that levels of anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue had also gone down. The stories are based on a study comparing meditative practice (using integrative body-mind training) with relaxation training, in 80 Chinese students. The newspapers have reported accurately the positive outcomes of the research. The study is a small but well-conducted trial. Whether the findings can be generalised to the practice of individual meditation (as opposed to guided, group practice as is used here) and across cultures remains to be seen.

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