User:Halvore/Acem

Acem is a non-profit organisation teaching Acem Meditation, yoga, group psychology and other methods for stress management and personal development. Acem is non-religious, has developed its own psychology of meditation, and emphasises scientific research on meditation. Acem (pronounced ['akem]) is a ??fantasy name??, not an acronym, and has no semantic meaning.

History
Acem was founded by Dr Are Holen, at the time a student of psychology, in Oslo, Norway in 1966. Dr Holen is currently Dean of Education at the Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.

At the end of the 1970s, Acem started activities in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. In 1986, Acem Taiwan was established. Since the mid-1990s, Acem has taught meditation and set up centres in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, India, the United States, Canada, and the Dominican Republic.

After a brief period of collaboration with the TM movement, Acem established its own teaching methods based on a non-religious psychology of meditation. Rituals and seremonies were dispensed with, mantras were supplanted by neutral meditation sounds developed in Acem, course formats based on group-dynamic interaction were introduced, and a yearlong programme for the basic education of Acem Meditation instructors was established.

In the 1990s, Acem also developed so-called deepening retreats for advanced meditators, with more than 6 hours of meditation every day for 1-3 weeks.

Acem has arranged group psychological activities since 1970, initially restricted to Acem Meditation instructors, but later open to other Acem meditators, and often also to non-meditators. Acem has also continued to develop courses within yoga and stress management.

Over the years, Acem has arranged a number of large-scale cultural activities, such as meetings with Nobel Peace Prize laureates Dalai Lama (1973, 1988 and 1989) and Andrei Sakharov (1988), recipient of the Nobel Prize of Literature Isaac Bashevis Singer (198?), Indian author Salman Rushdie (198?), German author Siegfried Lenz (198?), and Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng (199?).

Acem opened its first retreat centre at Skaugumåsen near Oslo, Norway in 1982, followed by Acem Nordic Retreat Centre Lundsholm near Arvika, Sweden in 1997 and Acem International Retreat Centre Halvorsbøle near Oslo, Norway in 2003.

Organisation
Acem is run as a non-profit organisation comprising Acem International School of Meditation and a number of national organisations. All teaching and most administrative and organisational work is done on an unpaid basis by volunteers.

Acem currently has approximately 200 assistant instructors, instructors and initiators, all of whom have been through years of basic training followed by extended periods of close supervision. In addition, introducers or moderators with more limited organisational and pedagogical tasks, as well as other interested meditators, work as Acem volunteers.

Most of Acem's courses, retreats and other activities are run by the organisation itself, but courses in meditation and stress management are also often given in collaboration with colleges of continuing education or other institutions, including private companies, employees' associations, and universities.

Teachings
Since the beginning, Acem has been active in developing a psychological understanding of meditative processes, stimulated by the parallel development of communication groups and other group-psychological activities. This has been partly done in opposition to so-called magico-mythological approaches to meditation, which Acem has criticised for their unrealistic promises and their tendency to encourage fantasising rather than reality orientation. ??REFERENCES??

The notion of a free mental attitude stands at the centre of Acem's psychology of meditation and is considered crucial to the long-term effects of meditation. In Acem Meditation, the free mental attitude describes the gentle and effortless way in which the meditation sound is repeated in the mind, without concentration or the use of force.

As part of this emphasis on a free mental attitude, a positive evaluation of spontaneous thoughts distinguishes Acem sharply from many other meditation groups. Acem stresses the value of letting spontaneous thoughts come and go freely during meditation. This is believed to enhance the mind's inherent capacity for mental processing, to help release energy and creativity, and to bring unconscious impulses closer to the threshold of consciousness.

??KNYTT STERKERE TIL ORGANISASJON?? Acem believes that one's way of meditating is a manifestation of typical patterns of perception and behaviour. At times, meditators will deviate from the free mental attitude in ways that reflect their personality. For instance, a tense person may repeat the meditation sound too forcefully, while an evasive person may tend to be more passive in his or her meditation. Adjusting one's meditative practice is seen as a means to overcome limitations set by one's personality, both in meditation and in everyday life. Acem sees this psychological process as a basis for long-term physiological, psychological and existential effects of meditation.

Research
Since the mid-1990s, Acem has taken an ever greater interest in scientific research on meditation. Svend Davanger, Halvor Eifring & Anne Grete Hersoug (eds.): Fighting Stress: Reviews of Meditation Research. Oslo: Acem Publishing 2008. Erik E. Solberg, Øivind Ekeberg, Are Holen, Frank Ingjer, Leiv Sandvik, Per A. Standal and Agneta Vikman: Hemodynamic Changes During Long Meditation. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback Vol 29 (2004) No 3 pp. 213-221 Erik Solberg, Are Holen, Øivind Ekeberg, Bjarne Østerud, Ragnhild Halvorsen, Leiv Sandvik: [The effects of long meditation on plasma melatonin and blood serotonin]. Medical Science Monitor 2004; 10(3):CR96-101 E E Solberg, F Ingjer, A Holen, J Sundgot-Borgen, S Nilsson, I Holme: Stress reactivity to and recovery from a standardised exercise bout: a study of 31 runners practising relaxation techniques British Journal of Sports Medicine, Aug 2000; 34: 268 - 272. Solberg EE, Halvorsen R, Holen A.: Effect of meditation on immune cells. Stress Medicine 2000; 16:185-190. EE Solberg, KA Berglund, O Engen, O Ekeberg, M Loeb: The effect of meditation on shooting performance. British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dec 1996; 30: 342 - 346. EE Solberg, R Halvorsen, J Sundgot-Borgen, F Ingjer, A Holen: [http://bjsm.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/29/4/255?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Solberg&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT Meditation: a modulator of the immune response to physical stress? A brief report]. British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dec 1995; 29: 255 - 257. In 2004, Erik Solberg, a Norwegian medical doctor and Acem Meditation instructor, published his PhD thesis on the psychobiological effects of meditation, indicating that Acem Meditation may provide relaxation, improved performance under stress, lower blood pressure, reduced lactate deposits during training, and possibly a reduction in the negative effects of stress on the immune system. This is in line with other studies both of Acem Meditation and other relaxation techniques. The studies of Dr Solberg and other researchers suggest that non-directed meditation techniques, in which thoughts are allowed to come and go freely, have more pronounced physiological effects than directed techniques like progressive relaxation.

Literature
The first book on Acem Meditation, Stillhetens psykologi (The Psychology of Silence; first published in Norwegian, translations in Swedish, Danish, Dutch and Chinese) appeared in 1976, followed by a number of books and tapes in English, German, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.