ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests one mechanism which could account for the small falls in metabolic rate already found. A drop in oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production, found by previous authors during transcendental meditation, was confirmed. Transcendental Meditation is an effortless yoga-derived technique which is claimed to produce both a transient state of deep physical relaxation and beneficial long-term effects in both physiological and psychological functioning. The fasting control condition, which was designed to reduce the level of tension and the metabolic rate to the lowest possible level, showed that under these circumstances meditation failed to produce any significant change in the metabolic rate. The electroencephalogram records were separated into control or meditation epochs, all distinguishing marks were removed. The records were rated by a consultant neurophysiologist who then allocated them to either control or meditation groups using as the criteria the changes which have been published as occurring during meditation.
