History of Meditation - click on picture for more...

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Meditation is over 3,000 years old.  Early records of meditative practices go back to India in 1,500 BCE, and in China almost 1,500 years ago.

Cultures and religions from around the world have helped meditative practices evolved into modern meditation that we practice today.  Many religions, and many diverse cultures have contributed to modern meditation.

Images of meditation have been found in India and date back as far as 5000 BCE. Very old texts for the Hindu traditions of India (Vendatism) go back to 1500 BCE. Buddhism in China is set to date to 600 BCE.

Meditation practices in the western world can be traced back to the 1700's, where eastern philosophy texts describing meditation practices began appearing in Europe. Some of these texts included, "The Bhagavad Gita", in a sanskrit scripture format.

However meditation did not take hold in the west, and by the 1800's, meditation was sidelined as a topic of interest for philosophers and other intellectuals. 

Around the 20th century, in the US, meditation began to blossom.  During this time, prominent yogi's came to the US from India, along with other well regarded spiritual teachers.  Some of the more well known teachers in meditation and eastern philosophy include, Yogi Swami Vivekananda, Swami Rama from the Himalayan Institute, Paramahansa Yogananda from the Self-Realization Fellowship, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with his Transcendental Meditation practice. 

As early as the 1960s, meditation research intensified in the west, resulting in making it more mainstream America.  It felt good and helped, beyond any spiritual or metaphysical awakening.  

Toward the end of the 1970s, Transcendental Meditation started to grow in popularity.

The ancient origins of mindfulness came from all over the world. Mindfulness in meditation form has been traced to Hinduism, around 1500 BCE, and is very connected with practicing of yoga.

Many religions have prayers or meditation techniques to help individual in their search of greater self-awareness and presence in appreciating a greater perspective about life and their religion. This form of meditation is very closely aligned with the practice and purpose of mindfulness. Mindfulness has become more prevalent in Western cultures since around the 1980s. 

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a clinically proven program to help support healing for those experiencing many delbilitating conditions such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, and cardiovascular problems.

Meditation can also manifest physical and biochemical changes in the body, and many researchers and psychologists continue to engage in studies looking at the effects of meditation on the mind and body, with a particular focus on addiction, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive functioning.

The Dalai Lama, in 2000, met in India with psychologists and neuroscientists from Western backgrounds, to lobby for more study of accomplished meditation masters with advanced neuroimaging technology and further explore the impact of meditation on the brain.

Transcendental Meditation uses a meditative practice, which involves the repetition a mantra sound, for 15-20 minutes, twice or more daily. In transcendental Meditation the goal is to help the individual to slide into a state of relaxed awareness through its process.

This particular technique and movement were introduced in the 1950s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian Guru. 

By the 2000s, Transcendental Meditation practice and movement has grown tremendously and includes health products, educational programs, and even well designed teacher training courses. 

Transcendental Meditation is one of the most popular practiced forms of meditation today. 

Vipassana is a very old Buddhist meditation practice and can basically be translated to mean ‘insight’: an awareness of what is happening, exactly as it happens. This is the core distinction between Vipassana Meditation compared with other techniques. Individuals should work to understand this distinction, as best they can to be able to authentically engage and develop practicing with Vipassana as a meditative technique.