Meditation Melts PTSD Symptoms

Meditation can help reduce symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, according to a new study on African refugees.

Many people who live in war-torn countries in African suffer from severe posttraumatic stress disorder after witnessing abuse, torture, rape and death of people they know.

The latest study revealed that Transcendental Meditation significantly reduces posttraumatic stress disorder in just 10 days.

Researchers had 11 participants engage in 10-day and 30-day Transcendental Meditation practice, and found that PTSD symptoms dropped 30 points after 10 days of meditation.

"An earlier study found a similar result after 30 days where 90% of TM subjects dropped to a non-symptomatic level. But we were surprised to see such a significant reduction with this group after just 10 days," study author Dr. Brian Rees said in a news release.

Researchers explained that before the meditation, participants had an average score of 77.9. However, just 10 days of practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique, their PTSD test scores dropped to an average of 48. Researchers said from a clinical standpoint, these results were considered highly significant.

Participants' PTSD score fell to an average of 35.3 after being tested 30 days later.

"What makes this study interesting is when we tested them in the 90 days before they began the TM technique, their PTSD scores kept going up," co-author Fred Travis, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management, said in a statement. "During that period their scores were rising, from 68.5 at the beginning to 77.9 after 90 days. But once they started the Transcendental Meditation technique, their PTSD scores plummeted."

Researchers said the meditation works by having a person experience a deep state of restful alertness, and repeated experience of this state for 20 minutes twice a day trains the nervous system to maintain calm mental and physical functioning the rest of the day.

"Your mind, your body relaxes. You feel you are out of the outside world. You are just in your peaceful world. No negativity. It doesn't come near me now," Esperance Ndozi, a 35-year-old Congolese refugee said in a statement.

"Something very profound is happening. Because experience changes the brain, and trauma locks in a specific brain functioning (the over stimulated amygdala), you're stuck in a specific way of thinking and feeling, (vigilance, fear and mistrust) and appreciating the world," Travis said. He explains that the meditation pacifies the amygdala, relieves PTS symptoms and frees the individual "to see more possibilities."

The findings are published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress.