Meditation is a technique of attentional focusing which has been practiced for several thousand years within the world’s great religious traditions. Over the past twenty-five years several hundred studies have been reported in the scientific literature detailing meditation’s effects in three areas: 1) self-regulation effects on areas ranging from stress and pain management to decreasing hypertension; 2) self-exploration effects; and 3) phenomenological, altered state effects involving increased sense of unity with oneself, others, and the universe. This paper reviews those effects; offers a cautionary note to those wanting to learn meditation; and then provides directions for a simple, non-cultic meditation technique, and gives guidelines and suggestions for where to get further information about the practice of meditation–both secular and non-secular.
