The Experience of Meditation among Long Term Sahaja Yoga Practitioners and its Role in Facilitating Well Being and Managing Stress
Meditation is increasingly becoming a popular practice and is used as a strategy for stress management, coping with illness and spiritual growth. It is estimated that meditation is being practiced by a hundreds of millions worldwide (Deurr, 2004). However, results of the published studies on meditation have often been interpreted to be inconsistent (Shear, 2007). This could be attributed to the modification and westernisation of the original ancient meditation practice (Manocha,2008). Also, it is not clearly understood how the experience of meditation leads to stress management and well being. Hence, Sahaja yoga which is based on the classical understanding of meditation and begins with Self realization or Kundalini awakening was chosen for investigation for the present study. The present study aims to understand the experience of meditation among long term meditators and understand its role in facilitating well-being and management of stress. To achieve this 6 long term meditators were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide and were also requested to make diary entries of their daily meditation experience. All the participants were full time working adults. Interpretative phenemonological analysis was used to analyse the interview transcripts. The results of the study indicate that Sahaja yoga meditation practice aids its practitioners to attain thoughtless awareness and experience ??Sahaja and ??witness states which is accompanied by experience of indescribable bliss and peace. These states were found to create a sense of well-being among the practitioners and also had a significant role in facilitating physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being and helped in the management of stress as well. Since, participants found it easy to balance it with work and family responsibilities it can be recommended for working adults. Key words: meditation, Sahaja yoga, stress, well-being.