Since the 1950s hundreds of studies on meditation have been conducted, though many of the early studies were flawed and thus yielded unreliable results. More recent reviews have pointed out many of these flaws with the hope of guiding current research into a more fruitful path.
Research on the processes and effects of meditation is a growing subfield of neurological research. Modern scientific techniques and instruments, such as fMRI and EEG, have been used to see what happens in the bodies of people when they meditate, and how their bodies and brains change after meditating regularly.
Meditation is a broad term which encompasses a number of practices.
"Méditation" (pronounced: [meditasjɔ̃]) is a symphonic intermezzo from the opera Thaïs by French composer Jules Massenet. The piece is written for solo violin and orchestra. The opera premiered at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on March 16, 1894.
The Méditation is a symphonic entr'acte performed between the scenes of Act II in the opera Thaïs. In the first scene of Act II, Athanaël, a Cenobite monk, confronts Thaïs, a beautiful and hedonistic courtesan and devotée of Venus, and attempts to persuade her to leave her life of luxury and pleasure and find salvation through God. It is during a time of reflection following the encounter that the Méditation is played by the orchestra. In the second scene of Act II, following the Méditation, Thaïs tells Athanaël that she will follow him to the desert.
The piece is in D major and is approximately five minutes long (although there are a number of interpretations that stretch the piece to over six minutes). Massenet may also have written the piece with religious intentions; the tempo marking is Andante religioso, signifying his intention that it should be played religiously (which could mean either strictly in the tempo or literally with religiously-founded emotion) and at walking tempo. The piece opens with a short introduction by the harps, with the solo violin quickly entering with the motif. After the violin plays the melody twice, the piece goes into a section marked animato, gradually becoming more and more passionate (Massenet wrote poco a poco appassionato). The climax is reached at a place marked poco piu appassionato (a little more passion) and is then followed by a short cadenza-like passage from the soloist and returns to the main theme. After the theme is played twice, the soloist joins the orchestra while playing harmonics on the upper register as the harps and strings quietly play below the solo line.
Passage Meditation is a book by Eknath Easwaran, originally published in 1978 with the title Meditation. The book describes a meditation program, also now commonly referred to as Passage Meditation. Easwaran developed this method of meditation in the 1960s, and first taught it systematically at the University of California, Berkeley.
The program is an eight-point program intended for the "spiritual growth" of the practitioner. The first step in the program involves meditating on a text passage, and since the 1990s the method as a whole has come to be known as "Passage Meditation" (not Easwaran's term). The book has been frequently reprinted and translated into 14 languages. It is reported that more than 200,000 copies were sold in the period of 1978 to 2001.
The first edition of the book had the full title Meditation; commonsense directions for an uncommon life (1978). A second edition in 1991 was subtitled a simple eight-point program for translating spiritual ideals into daily life, and a third, revised edition of the book was published posthumously as Passage Meditation; Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart Into Daily Life (2008).
Sonia or Sonja may refer to:
Hollyoaks is a British television soap opera that was first broadcast on 23 October 1995. The following is a list of characters that appeared or will appear in the serial in 2015, by order of first appearance. All characters were introduced by executive producer, Bryan Kirkwood.
Sonia is an Indian film actress in Malayalam movies. She debuted, at the age of three, as a child artist in the Malayalam film Ival Oru Naadodi. She continued to appear in many films as a child actor, credited as Baby Sonia. During her childhood she lent her voice for many child artists mainly for Baby Shalini. She got Kerala State Film Award for Best Child artist for the movie Nombarathi Poovu in 1987. She acts in Tamil, Kannada, Telugu movies as well. Her brother Tinku is an actor in Tamil movies.
She is married to Tamil actor Bose Venkat in 2003. The couple have a son, Tejaswin and a daughter, Bavatharani