Francis Wheen shock - 'Meditation is good for you!'

Francis Wheen: Anti-mumbo jumbo guru recommends meditation for its benefits - halting the interior dialogue through what some have described as the use of "magical passes"

In a shock development, Francis Wheen - author of the bestselling anti-new age How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions - has admitted that meditation is "good for you". This will surprise many of his followers who delighted in his mockery of Transcendental Meditation self-help gurus such as Deepak Chopra.

Wheen recanted in response to a Madame Arcati meditation science report which concluded that the new age practice helps keep the brain young. To read his letter and Madame Arcati's reply click here and then go to comments.

Those whose minds are still keen may also notice how Wheen's view has been somewhat exaggerated by this report without being entirely misrepresented.

Francis Wheen: Wrong on mumbo jumbo meditation

Five or six years ago, Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions had a giggle at the influence of the new age industry and its mystical ideas and practices. He was particularly scornful of the Hollywood "self-help guru" Deepak Chopra and the $20m he earns pa peddling spiritual advice to the likes of Demi Moore and Bill Clinton. Once a respectable "Harvard-trained endocrinologist", Chopra lost his way - as Wheen saw it - when he turned to transcendental meditation (among other things) in the early 80s: mumbo jumbo silliness had turned the head of an enlightened scientist - what a waste!

But a new study on meditation by researchers from Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may even cause Wheen to think again. They have discovered that meditation increases grey matter in the brain (related to "sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception, such as heart rate or breathing") and that "regular meditation practice may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex," reports Science Daily (click here).

I trust Wheen will include this research should his know-all book ever be updated.