Meditation is a practice of momentarily switching off the constant mental activity happening in our mind and allowing our mind to rest and rejuvenate. Searching for scientific evidence is one more mental activity and if one can simply give two minutes of rest the search may provide convincing answers.
Before I go on to provide scientific evidence please take a pause for just a couple of minutes after reading the following article to practice what is suggested there.
Humanity “THE BEST RELIGION” · December 18, 2022
Your first tool for an effective meditation practice – Focused Breathing and Conscious Breathing – FGCB
Do this for just three minutes and see if it helps. Sit on a straight back chair with feet flat on the floor, the entire soles of the feet from tips of the toes to the heels firmly contacting the floor. Keep your back erect, you may place a cushion behind your back for support if required but do not lean back on an inclined backrest of the chair. Let your head be held straight, neck straight, shoulders square and relaxed. You may tilt the head very slightly downward to gaze at a point on the floor in front of you a few feet away from you. Keep your eyes fixed on that spot for the three minutes without moving your eyeballs. Allow your eyes to be half open and half closed and hold that spot in a gentle gaze and not a stare. You are not looking there to see something but simply holding that spot in a gentle gaze. Exhale with a loud sigh from your mouth and use gentle effort to empty your lungs as far as possible without straining too much. Then relax your body and allow the inhale to happen effortlessly and soundlessly through your nostrils. When you sense that the inhale is over, do not put any further effort to breathe in but repeat the exhale from the mouth with the sound and gentle effort. I call this conscious breathing. Effort only for the out breaths and allowing in breaths to happen effortlessly. This entire process is called FGCB or fixed gazing with conscious breathing. You may set hourly reminder alerts on your smartphone and repeat this 3 minute FGCB every hour throughout the day today and see how it helps with calming your mind. This is a powerful grounding practice and you can do this even when you are driving and waiting for the red signal to turn green. Allow any such interruptions in your day to remind you to come back to the practice of FGCB repeatedly. For more information and plenty of free resources to aid with the practice of meditation and deep healing, please visit my website.
Simply notice how it feels after sitting with the FGCB practice for one or two minutes. If it feels good, simply keep practicing this as often as possible every day and you will have all the evidence you would ever need from your own life experiences with this practice.
Now let us also analytically address the question. Efficacy means what? I suggest some attainable goals from a practice of meditation in the article linked below.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
What is the goal of meditation?
For each session of meditation itself there cannot be any goal. Meditation is a practice of non-doing being when you hold a stance of a disengaged witness to all that is arising or happening in the here and now. Things are constantly happening within us and around us. Things happening within us include thoughts arising in our mind, emotions arising in our emotional mind-body and physical sensations arising in our body. Things happening around us is constantly perceived by our senses of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. All of these together is called arising phenomena in the moment. It is happening momentarily and changing every moment. We do not just perceive these but constantly react, respond or engage with it. Our engagement is in the form of mental activity which may or may not be followed by physical activity. When we choose to simply sit and witness the arising phenomena without engagement, it is called meditation. To hold a goal for this would necessitate mental activity and therefore it is not possible to meditate while holding a goal. A stance of active acceptance and allowing towards all arising phenomena is necessary to remain in the state of meditation for at least a few minutes. Therefore there is no goal of meditation. However, you can have a set of goals as an outcome of the regular habit of meditation practice. Use these goals to motivate you to continue with the practice regularly and cultivate a habit out of it. When you spare some time for a regular meditation practice you can except a lot of practical benefits arising out of this in your life. These include better sleep, improved memory, lesser stress, lesser anxiety, more confidence, more decisive, clarity of mind, peace of mind, joy, better and deeper relationships, mastery over emotions, physical fitness, higher immunity, relief from chronic disease conditions, etc. If you would like to read more about an effective meditation practice that could throw up the above benefits please read the answers linked below and the articles linked therein.
In my experience as a healer, I have practically seen many incurable disease conditions heal and people returning to perfectly healthy states with a practice that I call Awareness Journey and I have written and published a book based on these real life experiences.
I would invite you to read about my book on my website and also read several sample pages on the Amazon kindle link provided there. These are true life experiences.
One could also do a simple google search to find innumerable peer reviewed papers on research and scientific studies about meditation.