Numerous recent clinical trials have shown that meditation can have a profoundly positive effect on physical health.14 One study, funded by the US National Institutes of Health and published in 2005, discovered that the form of meditation that has been practised in the West since the 1960s (Transcendental Meditation) leads to a massive reduction in mortality. Compared with controls, the meditation group showed a 23 per cent decrease in mortality over the nineteen-year period that the group was studied. There was a 30 per cent decrease in the rate of cardiovascular mortality and a 49 per cent
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