CZ Talk:Cold Storage/Natural stress relief meditation

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Topic Informant Disclaimer

The original author of this article is User: David Spector. He was a former TM teacher, but developed the NSR technique and founded Natural Stress Relief, Inc., an independent nonprofit corporation, to distribute the NSR learning materials in hardcopy throughout the world in cooperation with Istituto Scientia. He is a Topic Informant for this article. His version can be found at TI:Natural Stress Relief Meditation. (modified from User: David Spector by Howard C. Berkowitz 19:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)) and D. Matt Innis 01:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Context for the article

The justification for this article is that NSR Meditation is currently the most popular alternative to the highly effective and scientifically studied technique for stress reduction, Transcendental Meditation.

Since this article was written by the president of one of the organizations that teaches NSR Meditation, it is oriented toward those interested in learning it. This results in a certain commercial tone of voice (it may be relevant to note here that the organizations are nonprofit and charge only a small fraction of their nearest competitor, Transcendental Meditation). I believe the article could be improved by changing some wording to improve neutrality, at least so far as the tone of the article is concerned. Any help is welcome. David Spector 23:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand that it is an alternative technique, but I urge you not to put up any article that can be interpreted as being in a commercial tone of voice. That can result in some very negative reactions.

At the very least, look at the formatting conventions of other articles. For example, headings are not bolded strings, but lines delimited with an appropriate number of = signs (e.g., ==Related methods==)

The first sentence should repeat the article title, perhaps with slight grammatical tweaking, and give a succinct definition.

I would note that this article probably belongs with health sciences and possibly healing arts as well as psychology, but I would urge you to rephrase it so there is no question of it being misinterpreted as advertising. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Howard, Thank you so much for your helpful comments. I have edited the article to conform to the formatting conventions. I have also added a concise definition at the start of the article. I would like to add this article to the other groups or topic areas that you mention, but I have not been able to find instructions for doing this. Perhaps you could give me some specific instructions or a reference to the proper Help page.

The biggest problem is clearly whether the article can be misinterpreted as advertising. Since NSR has been so well received by the general public as an affordable alternative to TM, it deserves to be described in online encyclopedias. But I have no wish to advertise in encyclopedias, as advertising and publicity are much better done elsewhere.

I've changed one heading from "how to learn" to "how is NSR learned", which I think helps, but I don't think it is enough.

As president of NSR/USA, it is difficult for me to describe NSR Meditation in an unbiased way. Therefore, I really need your further and more detailed help (and that of other editors) to guide me in improving this article. David Spector 16:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but it really does read like advertising. As a starting point, you should think of this as the sort of thing that would be appropriately written for a scientific journal, although here, we would want either to include definitions, or links to definitions, that the general reader might not follow.

I can't always find the right help page myself. :-( Not that it's quite the same sort of subject, look at chiropractic and acupuncture as something that might give an example of style. There may be some useful terminology in National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. We don't have a general article on relaxation techniques, which would be a good "top-level" article to review, neutrally, the various techniques and underlying therapies. It might be a challenge, but if you could, for example, also write an article on TM that a TM practitioner would consider accurate (although not an endorsement), you'd be getting a good sense of the CZ approach to life and the uniers. :-) Howard C. Berkowitz 16:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Howard, I would like to see an article on Transcendental Meditation here, and I will consider writing it myself when I have more time. For now, I want to focus on getting this article on NSR Meditation right, since this is my area of greater expertise.

I know that it appears that meditation techniques are relaxation techniques, but that is not a good characterization. They are very different from sitting in a hot tub, listening to music, or other things we do to relax. Yes, it is true that relaxation is frequently a result of TM and NSR, but it is more significant that they generate a unique state of physiology (restful alertness) that eliminates even deep-rooted stresses. This is the source of that long list of benefits, not its relaxation effect.

I do appreciate your help, but you might take a few minutes to read up on some of the scientific research on TM and NSR so you can understand the benefits to the general population and to the psychological researcher a little better.

I still need more focused help in removing the advertising stigma from this article. Perhaps I should import some of the writing for journals that I have done, but it would not be so readable for the general public.

I still need help adding this article to other topic categories, since it is not primarily an article about psychology.

I'll write more later, when I'm not so busy. Sorry that I'm not doing such a good job with the rewrite so far. I may need more help from other editors here.David Spector 11:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

In all sincerity, a journal article would be far better than what you have here. As it is written, any number of Citizens would recommend that it be deleted as violating rules on advertising, which could lead to a ban on future contributions.

Actually, when I say meditation techniques are relaxation techniques, I am not basing tht on "feeling more relaxed". See complementary and alternative medicine and further links there. Certain relaxation techniques can be used to reduce pain that can't be measured directly, although in some cases of classical migraine, it is possible to measure the vasodilation causing the pain. In general, however, when I speak of a relaxation technique, I speak of something where I can use objective instrumentation to measure changes in physiologic parameters causing stress; this is something I've done quite frequently in monitored cardiac patients.

CZ has its own customs. Suggesting that someone reviewing an article "read up on some of the scientific research on TM and NSR" is not appropriate, especially when explicit and authoritative references are not given. The entire point of writing an encyclopedia article is to give the general reader a basic grasp of the subject, and, when alternatives exists, a neutral comparison. An article is not a reading list.

At this point, I would urge you to delete the text you have there now, perhaps leaving a neutral paragraph or so that could not be interpreted as advertising, and replace it later with an objectively written article. As the material reads, other editors, all of whom are volunteers, are not likely to take on a major rewrite on a topic with which they have no familiarity. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi David, I see what you mean about having a commercial tone. I think I can help clean it up some. I'll have some time a little later today or tomorrow and I'll take a look. It does need some deep "cutting" into some of the editorializing, but I agree that the article can be used here. Howard, how about showing David how to apply the subpages and lets pick the editors for this article. D. Matt Innis 14:34, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Some intitial cleanup

I made my first pass trough the overview section. Take a look and let me know if I've deleted anything important. D. Matt Innis 16:03, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I've made another pass, concentrating on tying it into what we generally call the navigation system. You'll notice, on top of the formatted page, that there are a variety of "tabs", one of which is "Related Articles". This is a technical difference from Wikipedia; we don't use categories in their sense. There are workgroups, but those are more administrative so the appropriate subject editors and authors can find new work.

Do look through the references and try to find as many as possible that are not on your own website, either online, scholarly publications, or general pubications. Especially, do not quote your own site for criticisms of TM; there are plenty of neutral sources for that. Don't point to TM's own site. Use neutral sources.

I've moved testimonials and other problematic sections to this page; testimonials are not things that CZ considers authoritative sources. Believe me, Matt and I have spent months working on another article where it took that long to get the testimonials out of the main article. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)