A selective review of dharana and dhyana in healthy participants

• Main Authors: Shirley Telles, Nilkamal Singh, Ram Kumar Gupta, Acharya Balkrishna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2016-10-01
• Series: Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine
• Subjects: Meditation; Yoga texts; Dharana–dhyana; Electrophysiology; Neuroimaging
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0975947616302406

Attention is an important part of the process of meditation. Traditional Yoga texts describe two stages of meditation which follow each other in sequence. These are meditative focusing (dharana in Sanskrit) and effortless meditation (dhyana in Sanskrit). This review evaluated eight experimental studies conducted on participants in normal health, who practiced dharana and dhyana. The studies included evaluation of autonomic and respiratory variables, eLORETA and sLORETA assessments of the EEG, evoked potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, cancellation task performance and emotional intelligence. The studies differed in their sample size, design and the method of practicing dharana and dhyana. These factors have been detailed. The results revealed differences between dharana and dhyana, which would have been missed if the two stages of meditation had not been studied separately.