title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: Israeli President Isaac Herzog released a video congratulating the Queen on her Platinum Jubilee, expressing his gratitude for her “lifetime of dignified service” and praising her “sound model of conscientious leadership.”


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: King Abdullah II of Jordan paid tribute to the Queen in an interview with the BBC. North Korean leader, General Secretary of the Workers' Party Kim Jong-un also sent a letter of congratulations through the Foreign Affairs ministry office; the Queen had reportedly sent a letter of best wishes during their National Day the year before. The President of Germany paid tribute to the Queen in a video message.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 16 May, the Queen was gifted with a Karabakh horse named "Shohret", and sculptures of a Karabakh horse called "Alkan" and a Dilbaz horse called "Galkhan", by the president of Azerbaijan.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: As part of its jubilee celebrations, the British Embassy in Baku displayed a carpet which uses traditional local weaving techniques to combine the English rose, Scottish thistle, Welsh daffodil, and Irish shamrock with the Azerbaijan's national emblem, the pomegranate.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the Kampot Provincial Administration, with the support of the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, planted 1,000 mangrove trees on 30 April as part of the Queen's Green Canopy in the Prek Tnoat Fishing Community and commune in Bokor Town, Kampot province.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 6 February, Chinese president and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to Queen Elizabeth II on the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In Hong Kong, which was a British colony until 1997, a jubilee dinner hosted by the Royal Commonwealth Society Hong Kong Branch took place on 2 June at the Hong Kong Club.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, who is celebrating her golden jubilee, paid tribute to the Queen in an interview with ITV. She also sent a letter to the Queen on 31 May, in which she said the Queen's "unprecedented and remarkable achievement" underlines the "importance of the Monarchy as a strong symbol of national identity and historic continuity in a rapidly changing modern world".


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On Accession Day, the French Embassy in the United Kingdom planted a "Royal Beauty" apple tree from Normandy to highlight the UK's historic ties with the region.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: President Emmanuel Macron gifted the Queen a seven-year-old horse named Fabuleux de Maucourt, which was part of the President's Garde Républicaine. Other gifts included a ceremonial saddle and cavalry sabre. In a video message, Macron said:


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 2 June, buildings on the UK-facing coasts of Hauts-de-France were lit up in red, blue and gold in the Queen's honour. At the Arc de Triomphe, President Macron participated in a flame rekindling ceremony to mark the jubilee. The anthem "God Save the Queen" was played by the Royal Regiment of Scotland brass band, followed by performed by the Republican Guard orchestra. On 7 June, the Prince of Wales expressed the gratitude of the Royal Family to Macron for the "gestures of deep friendship" shown by France during the jubilee.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In the British Normandy Memorial, an alley of 70 hornbeams will be planted in the autumn, one for each year of the Queen's reign.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: A Jubilee Concert took place at All Saints' Anglican Church, Rome, on 5 June. The New Chamber Singers and the All saints' Orchestra performed music played at the Queen's coronation.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The "Smile Orchestra" big band from Rome took part in the Platinum Jubilee with a swing concert (June 5) where the music of the sovereign's youth was performed as a tribute. The concert was the subject of interviews by RAI and BBC.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The Italian luxury brand Bulgari unveiled the jubilee emerald garden high jewellery tiara which can be worn either as a headpiece or as a necklace.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British Embassy will plant a tree, and continue the Queen's tradition who planted several oak trees in Japan during her visit in 1975. The embassy also plans to host a "Big Japan Jubilee Lunch" later in the year.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: Ten hotels in Tokyo and Osaka signed up for the "Platinum Jubilee Afternoon Tea and Cake Competition" to organise a British-inspired afternoon tea and to create a cake that is "fit for a Queen". The finalists were to be announced at The Queen's Birthday Party event at the British Embassy on 16 June.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 2 and 3 June, British Embassy in Mexico City organized a Jubilee Dinner and a Photo Exhibition of the most important moments in the reign of Elizabeth II with concert commanded by British diplomat Jon Benjamin.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 2 June, a number of Polish buildings were lit up in purple and white in honour of the Queen, including the Palace of Culture and Science, in Warsaw, Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre, and Plac Litewski, in Lublin.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British Embassy opened a photo exhibition along the side of Warsaw's largest park including images of the Queen meeting with Polish icons Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II during her 70-year reign.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 31 January, President Michael D. Higgins wrote a letter to the Queen, congratulating her on her upcoming Platinum Jubilee, and said that it was "very encouraging to see the legacy of your historic visit to Ireland being given expression in recent years through visits by other members of your family".


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the Republic of Ireland from 24 to 25 March. In County Waterford, the couple visited Waterford city centre, met with members of the Ukrainian community, toured a selection of museums and learned about the history of Reginald's Tower. In County Tipperary, they toured a farmers market in Cahir, and visited Cahir Castle and the Rock of Cashel.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On Accession Day, Margareta, Custodian of the Crown of Romania, sent a letter to the Queen. The Romanian royal family plans to participate in several platinum jubilee events throughout the year. A weeping hornbeam tree was also planted at Săvârșin Castle in Romania. On 18 February Margareta and Andrew Noble, the British Ambassador to Romania, unveiled a plaque at Săvârșin Castle to mark the tree planting.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British Embassy in Berne in collaboration with World Radio Switzerland asked people across Switzerland to nominate people who have made outstanding contributions to the lives of others within Switzerland for "The Platinum Champions Awards". The awardees were invited to the "Cheers for Volunteers" jubilee picnic, held at the Ambassador's Residence on 5 June.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: A light display was projected onto four Bernese Alps mountains, including the Eiger. The massive image of the jubilee crown emblem and a silhouette of the Queen were submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records as the "largest light art composition".


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 3 and 4 June, the Dubai-based "Queen Elizabeth 2" hosted gala dinners, variety shows, pub quizzes, afternoon tea and tours of the ship.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On the Queen's 96th birthday, American toy manufacturing company Mattel released a Barbie doll bearing the Queen's likeness. The doll is fitted with an elegant ivory gown and blue ribbon adorned with decorations of order.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 2 June, the jubilee was celebrated on the front steps of 'Iolani Palace, Hawaii. Events included musical performances, the lighting of two beacons, and signing guest books. The relationship between the Hawaiian monarchs and the British royal family, formed in the 19th century, was also highlighted.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: A 14-tune concert took place in front of the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg on 2 June, after which a formal ceremony with trumpet fanfare, "A Song for the Commonwealth", lighting of jubilee beacons, and three tunes on bagpipes and drums took place in front of the Wren Building at the College of William & Mary. From 2 June to 4 June, the Historical Society of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, held a toy soldier display of more than 500 pieces depicting the Trooping the Colour.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: A platinum jubilee evensong and reception took place on 5 June at Christ Church in Greenville, South Carolina.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: A series of events celebrating the jubilee were held in Washington, New York, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Minneapolis.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 15 March, the British Embassy in Montevideo launched "The Queen's Dessert" contest in which entrants had to make a dessert that would be the "perfect accompaniment" to afternoon tea, or to serve after the main course. The desserts were evaluated by Uruguayan chefs, Sergio Puglia, Hugo Soca, Lucía Soria, the chef of the residence and Ambassador Faye O'Connor. On June 2, a dinner was held at the Embassy residence, with attendees including Vice President Beatriz Argimón, Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo, First Lady Lorena Ponce De León, and former President Luis Alberto Lacalle. The winning dish was served as dessert.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: Pope Francis telegrammed his good wishes to the Queen. He also donated a Cedar of Lebanon to the Queen's Green Canopy initiative.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In May 2022, jubilee-themed emojis and stickers were released on social media, including Twitter and Instagram.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: Research on Google Search's trend data found that the UK, US, Canada, and Australia were the global hotspots for the word "Jubilee" from 2 June to 5 June. During the jubilee central weekend, Canada saw 227,000 searches for the word "jubilee" on Google, while over 200,000 were recorded in Australia. In the US, a total of 1.9 million searches for the word "jubilee" was made on Google.


title: Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 8 September 2022, the Queen died at the age of 96 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. At the time of her death, the Queen had reigned for 70 years and 214 days, the longest of any monarch in British history. She is the longest reigning female monarch in history and the second-longest reigning monarch in history, behind Louis XIV.


title: Straight edge

text: Straight edge (sometimes abbreviated sXe or signified by XXX or X) is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and other recreational drugs, in reaction to the excesses of punk subculture. For some, this extends to refraining from engaging in promiscuous sex, to following a vegetarian or vegan diet, and to not using caffeine or prescription drugs. The term "straight edge" was adopted from the 1981 song "Straight Edge" by the hardcore punk band Minor Threat.


title: Straight edge

text: The straight edge subculture emerged amid the early-1980s hardcore punk scene. Since then, a wide variety of beliefs and ideas have been associated with the movement, including vegetarianism and animal rights. While the commonly expressed aspects of the straight edge subculture have been abstinence from alcohol, nicotine, and illegal drugs, there have been considerable variations. Disagreements often arise as to the primary reasons for living straight edge. Although straight edge politics vary, from explicitly revolutionary to conservative, the latter has mostly dominated . Left-leaning activists have often approached straight edge with skepticism, ridicule or even outright hostility in part due to what they perceived as the straight edge movement's self-righteous militancy.


title: Straight edge

text: In 1999, William Tsitsos wrote that straight edge had gone through three eras since its founding in the early 1980s. Bent edge began as a counter-movement to straight edge by members of the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene who were frustrated by the rigidity and intolerance in the scene. During the youth crew era, which started in the mid-1980s, the influence of music on the straight edge scene was at an all-time high. By the early 1990s, militant straight edge was a well-known part of the wider punk scene. In the early to mid-1990s, straight edge spread from the United States to Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America. By the beginning of the 2000s, militant straight edge punks had largely left the broader straight edge culture and movement.


title: Straight edge

text: In the 1970s, the punk subculture was associated with the use of intoxicative inhalants, substances such as model airplane glue that were inhaled for the intoxicating effect. In 1999, William Tsitsos wrote that straight edge had gone through three eras since its founding in the early 1980s. Later analysts have identified another era that has taken place since Tsitsos's writing. Straight edge grew out of hardcore punk in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was partly characterized by shouted rather than sung vocals. Straight edge individuals of this early era often associated with the original punk ideals such as individualism, disdain for work and school, and live-for-the-moment attitudes. The movement was influenced by the political and social climate of its origin, around the time of the "Just Say No" campaign and a rise in conservative viewpoints. The discipline of the subculture came from a mix of leftist radicalism and conservative influences.


title: Straight edge

text: Straight edge sentiments can be found in songs by the early 1980s band Minor Threat. This anti-inebriation movement had been developing in punk prior to Minor Threat, but their song "Straight Edge" was influential in giving the scene a name, and something of a (somewhat unwilling) figurehead. Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye is often credited with birthing the straight edge name and movement and in later years has often spoken out about how he never intended it to be a movement.


title: Straight edge

text: Straight edge sentiments can also be found in the song "Keep it Clean" by English punk band The Vibrators, and the 1970s Modern Lovers song "I'm Straight" (which rejected drug use). As one of the few prominent 1970s hard rock icons to explicitly eschew alcohol and other drug use, Ted Nugent was also a key influence on the straight edge ideology.


title: Straight edge

text: Straight edge started on the East Coast of the United States in Washington, D.C., and quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada. By the 1980s, bands on the West Coast, such as America's Hardcore, Stalag 13, Justice League, and Uniform Choice, were gaining popularity. In the early stages of this subculture's history, concerts often consisted of both punk bands and straight edge bands. Circumstances soon changed and the early 1980s would eventually be viewed as the time "before the two scenes separated". Other early straight edge bands include: State of Alert, Government Issue, Teen Idles, The Faith, 7 Seconds, SSD, DYS, and Negative FX.


title: Straight edge

text: Bent edge originated as a counter-movement to straight edge among members of the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene who were frustrated by the rigidity and intolerance of the scene. This idea spread, and on Minor Threat's first tour in 1982, people would come up to the band to identify themselves as bent, crooked, or curved edge. The counter-movement was short-lived, and it faded away by the end of the 1990s.


title: Straight edge

text: During the youth crew era, which started in the mid-1980s, the influence of music on the straight edge scene seemed to be at an all-time high. The new branches of straight edge that came about during this era seemed to originate from ideas presented in songs, and many youth crew bands had a strong heavy metal influence. Notable youth crew bands included: Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, Judge, Bold, Chain of Strength, Turning Point, Uniform Choice, and Slapshot.


title: Straight edge

text: In the mid-1980s, the band Youth of Today became associated with the straight edge movement, and their song "Youth Crew" expressed a desire to unite the scene into a movement. Vegetarianism became an important theme in straight edge during this era, starting with Youth of Today's 1988 song "No More", which contained lyrics condemning the consumption of meat. This catalyzed a trend towards animal rights and veganism within the straight edge movement that would reach its peak in the 1990s.


title: Straight edge

text: By the early 1990s, straight edge became a well-known part of the wider punk and DIY scene and underwent musical and political shifts. In the early part of the decade, a number of straight edge punks and their bands picked up on the vegetarian and other social justice politics of the mid-1980s and began more comprehensively advocating for social justice, animal liberation, veganism, and straight edge itself. During this period, the straight edge scene birthed two major offshoots: the more conservative hardline and the religiously influenced Krishna Consciousness. While the majority of straight edge punks and Hare Krishna converts were pacifists, those influenced by hardline showed a willingness to resort to violence in order to promote their subculture. Musically, the straight edge scene was increasingly drawing from heavy metal and was a founding influence on metalcore.


title: Straight edge

text: By the beginning of the 2000s, only small groups of militant straight edge individuals remained. Contrary to news reports that portrayed straight edge as a gang, several studies have shown that straight edge individuals as a whole are mostly peaceful people. In the 2000s, there was a growing amount of tolerance of people who do not follow the straight edge lifestyle by straight edge individuals. In this incarnation of straight edge, the musical styles of the bands involved are more varied, ranging from a youth crew revival style to metalcore to posicore. Straight edge bands from the 2000s include Allegiance, Champion, Down to Nothing, Embrace Today, Have Heart, and Throwdown.


title: Straight edge

text: In the early stages of straight edge, its philosophy was to rebel through self-control. With the ability to control one's actions, a straight edge participant would be better suited to stand up against the mainstream. The first wave of straight edge did not impose rules on others, rather participants chose to follow the ways of self-control. With the second wave of straight edge these rules were used to control others. Additionally, the second wave experienced a change in music style. Where the first wave was influenced by hardcore punk, the second wave brought in aspects of heavy metal music which further pushed for power and control over others. The slowing down of the music reflected the focus of individuals in their journey to self control.


title: Straight edge

text: Hate Edge (also known as NS or National Socialist Straight Edge) is a neo-Nazi offshoot of the Straight Edge movement. Prominent Hate Edge groups include NS/WP and "Sober and Angry Youth", both of which are responsible for attacks on and murders of drug dealers.


title: Straight edge

text: In the early to mid-1990s, straight edge spread from the United States to Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America. It grew around the world due to the relentless touring of youth crew bands and the ease of ordering records from American record labels via mail. Fluff Fest, which has been held in the Czech Republic since 2000 and draws audiences from across Europe, is linked to straight edge through its organizers and showcases prominent straight edge bands.


title: Straight edge

text: West Flanders was home to the "H8000" (pronounced "Hate-Thousand") hardcore punk scene during the 1990s. Bands within the scene took heavily from heavy metal, and followed straight edge and vegan lifestyles. Some bands helped to pioneer the development of metalcore and then later on melodic metalcore and deathcore. Some groups from the scene include Congress, Liar, Blindfold, Shortsight, Regression and Spirit of Youth. Good Life Recordings signed and released much of the music for the scene.


title: Straight edge

text: According to NoEcho writer Ethan Stewart "the closest thing to a straight edge band for much of the [1980s] was Statement", a solo-project by the Apostles drummer Patrick "Rat" Poole. However, despite Poole being drug-free, vegan and having a massive influence on the development of hardline, he did not identify with the straight edge label at the time. Additionally, many groups from the UK punk and hardcore scene did include straight edge members, namely Napalm Death, Blitz and Heresy.


title: Straight edge

text: The first entirely straight edge band in the country was Steadfast, who formed in Durham, England, in 1988. Despite originally being formed as a vehicle to annoy the members of the anarcho punk scene, the band eventually grew into a serious band. Following this, a number of additional straight edge bands began to form including XdisciplineX, False Face, Headstong, Step One and Kickback. Nicolas Royles, drummer for Sore Throat, formed In Touch and Withstand around this time, which both morphed into No Way Out by 1990. This scene was based mostly based in North East of England and Yorkshire, and made up of musicians who became involved in the hardcore scene through skateboarding and the popularity of thrash metal. The bands were predominantly influenced by U.S. youth crew acts like Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits. Members of the existing punk and hardcore scenes in the country often reacted negatively to the straight edge bands, to the extent that on multiple occasions fights broke out between the musicians and fans.


title: Straight edge

text: Most of the first wave of UK straight edge bands had broken up by 1991. However, a second wave began in the following years. Mostly based around Subjugation and Sure Hand Records, this wave saw members of many of the first wave bands form new bands and begin to embrace influences from heavy metal. The main location for this scene was the 1 in 12 Club, an anarchist club in Bradford, West Yorkshire, as groups like Unborn, Slavearc, Vengeance of Gaia and Withdrawn performed there frequently.


title: Straight edge

text: A UK straight edge scene featuring entirely new musicians developed in the 2010s as a part of the New Wave of British Hardcore. Mostly based around Leeds, the scene produced groups like Violent Reaction, Big Cheese, Insist, Unjust, Rapture, Regiment, True Vision and Shrapnel. A number of musicians from other UK hardcore bands were straight edge at this time, including Jimmy and Alex Wizard from Higher Power.


title: Straight edge

text: The letter X is the most known symbol of straight edge, and is sometimes worn as a marking on the back of both hands, though it can be displayed on other body parts as well. Some followers of straight edge have also incorporated the symbol into clothing and pins. According to a series of interviews by journalist Michael Azerrad, the straight edge X can be traced to the Teen Idles' brief West Coast tour in 1980. The band's members were scheduled to play at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens, but when they arrived, club management discovered that they were all under the legal drinking age and would be denied entry to the club. As a compromise, management marked each of the members' hands with a large black X as a warning to the club's staff not to serve alcohol to the band.


title: Straight edge

text: Upon returning to Washington, D.C., the band suggested this same system to local clubs as a means to allow teenagers in to see musical performances without being served alcohol. The Teen Idles released a record in 1980 called "Minor Disturbance" with the cover shot being two hands with black Xs on the back. The mark soon became associated with the straight edge lifestyle. It can also be used by drinking establishments to note a patron as under the drinking age, regardless of their views towards drugs such as alcohol.


title: Straight edge

text: Later bands used the X symbol on album covers and other paraphernalia in a variety of ways. The cover of "No Apologies" by Judge shows two crossed gavels in the X formation. Other objects that have been used include shovels, baseball bats, and hockey sticks. A variation involving a trio of Xs is often used in flyers and tattoos. It can also be ironic, based on the fact that three Xs was popularized in cartoons and television shows to signify alcohol or poison. Moonshiners used an X to note how many times a particular batch of moonshine ran through the still, adding irony. The term is sometimes abbreviated by including an X with the abbreviation of the term "straight edge" to give "sXe". By analogy, hardcore punk is sometimes abbreviated to "hXc".


title: Straight edge

text: While some straight edge groups are treated as a "gang" by law enforcement officials, a 2006 study found the vast majority of people who identify as straight edge are nonviolent. While the early Washington, D.C. hardcore punk scene is often praised for its commitment to positive social change, both the youth crew movement of the 1980s and the vegan movement of the 1990s have drawn criticism. Straight edge has often been approached with skepticism and hostility, despite the ideologically less dogmatic and more multifaceted character of contemporary straight edge.


title: Straight edge

text: By the late 1990s, many straight edge participants gave veganism the same degree of importance as abstinence from intoxicants, and some groups styled themselves "vegan straight edge", sometimes abbreviated "xVx". Bands such as Earth Crisis and Vegan Reich emphasized animal rights and environmentalism as social justice issues. Perhaps owing to the "DIY" ethic of the punk subculture, some advocated direct action, and became associated with the radical groups Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. The California band Vegan Reich is most associated with the "Hardline" subculture, which espouses the sanctity of life, and draws connections between animal rights and anti-abortion activism. Members of the Hardline movement have been described as espousing Old Testament-style spirituality, militancy, and violence. Violent activism has been described as an "extreme minority" within the vegan straight edge movement.


title: Straight edge

text: Haenfler writes that straight edge participants see veganism as an extension of the movement's emphasis on positivity, much like its preference to reserve sex for emotionally meaningful relationships. They tend to focus more on personal responsibility and focus less on confronting systemic issues in society. However, veganism is not seen as a matter of personal purity, rather, it is rooted in a strong belief in animal rights, and it is also a means of personally rejecting the exploitation of animals. Some hold that veganism is "true straight edge", and their promotion of veganism and animal liberation has been described as evangelistic.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation is practiced in numerous religious traditions. The earliest records of meditation ("dhyana") are found in the Upanishads, and meditation plays a salient role in the contemplative repertoire of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Since the 19th century, Asian meditative techniques have spread to other cultures where they have also found application in non-spiritual contexts, such as business and health.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation may significantly reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and pain, and enhance peace, perception, self-concept, and well-being. Research is ongoing to better understand the effects of meditation on health (psychological, neurological, and cardiovascular) and other areas.


title: Meditation

text: The English "meditation" is derived from Old French "meditacioun", in turn from Latin "meditatio" from a verb "meditari", meaning "to think, contemplate, devise, ponder". In the Catholic tradition, the use of the term "meditatio" as part of a formal, stepwise process of meditation goes back to at least the 12th century monk Guigo II, before which the Greek word Theoria was used for the same purpose.


title: Meditation

text: Apart from its historical usage, the term "meditation" was introduced as a translation for Eastern spiritual practices, referred to as "dhyāna" in Hinduism and Buddhism and which comes from the Sanskrit root "dhyai", meaning to contemplate or meditate. The term "meditation" in English may also refer to practices from Islamic Sufism, or other traditions such as Jewish Kabbalah and Christian Hesychasm.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation has proven difficult to define as it covers a wide range of dissimilar practices in different traditions. In popular usage, the word "meditation" and the phrase "meditative practice" are often used imprecisely to designate practices found across many cultures. These can include almost anything that is claimed to train the attention of mind or to teach calm or compassion. There remains no definition of necessary and sufficient criteria for meditation that has achieved universal or widespread acceptance within the modern scientific community. In 1971, Claudio Naranjo noted that "The word 'meditation' has been used to designate a variety of practices that differ enough from one another so that we may find trouble in defining what "meditation" is." A 2009 study noted a "persistent lack of consensus in the literature" and a "seeming intractability of defining meditation".


title: Meditation

text: Some of the difficulty in precisely defining meditation has been in recognizing the particularities of the many various traditions; and theories and practice can differ within a tradition. Taylor noted that even within a faith such as "Hindu" or "Buddhist", schools and individual teachers may teach distinct types of meditation.


title: Meditation

text: Ornstein noted that "Most techniques of meditation do not exist as solitary practices but are only artificially separable from an entire system of practice and belief." For instance, while monks meditate as part of their everyday lives, they also engage the codified rules and live together in monasteries in specific cultural settings that go along with their meditative practices.


title: Meditation

text: Dictionaries give both the original Latin meaning of "think[ing] deeply about (something)"; as well as the popular usage of "focusing one's mind for a period of time", "the act of giving your attention to only one thing, either as a religious activity or as a way of becoming calm and relaxed", and "to engage in mental exercise (such as concentrating on one's breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness."


title: Meditation

text: In modern psychological research, meditation has been defined and characterized in various ways. Many of these emphasize the role of attention and characterize the practice of meditation as attempts to get beyond the reflexive, "discursive thinking" or "logic" mind to achieve a deeper, more devout, or more relaxed state.


title: Meditation

text: Bond et al. (2009) identified criteria for defining a practice as meditation "for use in a comprehensive systematic review of the therapeutic use of meditation", using "a 5-round Delphi study with a panel of 7 experts in meditation research" who were also trained in diverse but empirically highly studied (Eastern-derived or clinical) forms of meditation:


title: Meditation

text: Several other definitions of meditation have been used by influential modern reviews of research on meditation across multiple traditions:


title: Meditation

text: In the West, meditation techniques have often been classified in two broad categories, which in actual practice are often combined: focused (or concentrative) meditation and open monitoring (or mindfulness) meditation:


title: Meditation

text: Focused methods include paying attention to the breath, to an idea or feeling (such as mettā (loving-kindness)), to a kōan, or to a mantra (such as in transcendental meditation), and single point meditation. Open monitoring methods include mindfulness, shikantaza and other awareness states.


title: Meditation

text: Another typology divides meditation approaches into concentrative, generative, receptive and reflective practices:


title: Meditation

text: The Buddhist tradition often divides meditative practice into samatha, or calm abiding, and vipassana, insight. Mindfulness of breathing, a form of focused attention, calms down the mind; this calmed mind can then investigate the nature of reality, by monitoring the fleeting and ever-changing constituents of experience, by reflective investigation, or by "turning back the radiance," focusing awareness on awareness itself and discerning the true nature of mind as awareness itself.


title: Meditation

text: Matko and Sedlmeier (2019) "call into question the common division into “focused attention” and “open-monitoring” practices." They argue for "two orthogonal dimensions along which meditation techniques could be classified," namely "activation" and "amount of body orientation," proposing seven clusters of techniques: "mindful observation, body-centered meditation, visual concentration, contemplation, affect-centered meditation, mantra meditation, and meditation with movement."


title: Meditation

text: Jonathan Shear argues that transcendental meditation is an "automatic self-transcending" technique, different from focused attention and open monitoring. In this kind of practice, "there is no attempt to sustain any particular condition at all. Practices of this kind, once started, are reported to automatically “transcend” their own activity and disappear, to be started up again later if appropriate." Yet, Shear also states that "automatic self-transcending" also applies to the way other techniques such as from Zen and Qigong are practiced by experienced meditators "once they had become effortless and automatic through years of practice."


title: Meditation

text: Asanas and positions such as the full-lotus, half-lotus, Burmese, Seiza, and kneeling positions are popular in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, although other postures such as sitting, supine (lying), and standing are also used. Meditation is also sometimes done while walking, known as kinhin, while doing a simple task mindfully, known as samu, or while lying down, known as savasana. Postures involve focus attention and move body coordinately or hold still with rhythmic inhalation and exhalation.


title: Meditation

text: The Transcendental Meditation technique recommends practice of 20 minutes twice per day. Some techniques suggest less time, especially when starting meditation, and Richard Davidson has quoted research saying benefits can be achieved with a practice of only 8 minutes per day. Research shows improvement in meditation time with simple oral and video training. Some meditators practice for much longer, particularly when on a course or retreat. Some meditators find practice best in the hours before dawn.


title: Meditation

text: Some religions have traditions of using prayer beads as tools in devotional meditation. Most prayer beads and Christian rosaries consist of pearls or beads linked together by a thread. The Roman Catholic rosary is a string of beads containing five sets with ten small beads. The Hindu japa mala has 108 beads (the figure 108 in itself having spiritual significance), as well as those used in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the Hare Krishna tradition, Jainism and Buddhist prayer beads. Each bead is counted once as a person recites a mantra until the person has gone all the way around the mala. The Muslim misbaha has 99 beads. There is also quite a variance when it comes to materials used for beads. Beads made from seeds of rudraksha trees are considered sacred by devotees of Shiva, while followers of Vishnu revere the wood that comes from the tulsi plant.


title: Meditation

text: The Buddhist literature has many stories of Enlightenment being attained through disciples being struck by their masters. According to T. Griffith Foulk, the encouragement stick was an integral part of the Zen practice:


title: Meditation

text: Neuroscientist and long-time meditator Richard Davidson has expressed the view that having a narrative can help the maintenance of daily practice. For instance he himself prostrates to the teachings, and meditates "not primarily for my benefit, but for the benefit of others".


title: Meditation

text: The history of meditation is intimately bound up with the religious context within which it was practiced. Rossano has suggested that the emergence of the capacity for focused attention, an element of many methods of meditation, may have contributed to the latest phases of human biological evolution. Some of the earliest references to meditation, as well as proto-Samkhya, are found in the Upanishads of India. The earliest clear references to meditation are in the middle Upanishads and the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad Gita). According to Gavin Flood, the earlier Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is describing meditation when it states that "having become calm and concentrated, one perceives the self ("ātman") within oneself" (BU 4.4.23).


title: Meditation

text: Jain meditation and spiritual practices system were referred to as salvation-path. It has three parts called the "Ratnatraya" "Three Jewels": right perception and faith, right knowledge and right conduct. Meditation in Jainism aims at realizing the self, attaining salvation, and taking the soul to complete freedom. It aims to reach and to remain in the pure state of soul which is believed to be pure consciousness, beyond any attachment or aversion. The practitioner strives to be just a knower-seer (Gyata-Drashta). Jain meditation can be broadly categorized to "Dharmya Dhyana" and "Shukla Dhyana".


title: Meditation

text: Jainism uses meditation techniques such as "pindāstha-dhyāna, padāstha-dhyāna, rūpāstha-dhyāna, rūpātita-dhyāna, and savīrya-dhyāna". In "padāstha dhyāna" one focuses on a mantra. A mantra could be either a combination of core letters or words on deity or themes. There is a rich tradition of Mantra in Jainism. All Jain followers irrespective of their sect, whether Digambara or Svetambara, practice mantra. Mantra chanting is an important part of daily lives of Jain monks and followers. Mantra chanting can be done either loudly or silently in mind.


title: Meditation

text: Contemplation is a very old and important meditation technique. The practitioner meditates deeply on subtle facts. In "agnya vichāya", one contemplates on seven facts – life and non-life, the inflow, bondage, stoppage and removal of "karmas", and the final accomplishment of liberation. In "apaya vichāya", one contemplates on the incorrect insights one indulges, which eventually develops right insight. In "vipaka vichāya", one reflects on the eight causes or basic types of "karma". In "sansathan vichāya", one thinks about the vastness of the universe and the loneliness of the soul.


title: Meditation

text: Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward awakening and nirvana. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are "bhāvanā" ("development"), and the core practices of body contemplations (repulsiveness and cemetery contemplations) and anapanasati (mindfulness of in-&-out breathing) culminating in "jhāna"/"dhyāna" or "samādhi".


title: Meditation

text: While most classical and contemporary Buddhist meditation guides are school-specific, the root meditative practices of various body recollections and breath meditation have been preserved and transmitted in almost all Buddhist traditions, through Buddhist texts like the Satipatthana Sutta and the Dhyana sutras, and through oral teacher-student transmissions. These ancient practices are supplemented with various distinct interpretations of, and developments in, these practices.


title: Meditation

text: The Theravāda tradition stresses the development of samatha and vipassana, postulating over fifty methods for developing mindfulness based on the Satipatthana Sutta, and forty for developing concentration based on the Visuddhimagga.


title: Meditation

text: The Tibetan tradition incorporated Sarvastivada and Tantric practices, wedded with Madhyamaka philosophy, and developed thousands of visualization meditations.


title: Meditation

text: Via the Dhyana sutras, which are based on the Sarvastivada-tradition, the Zen-tradition incorporated mindfulness and breath-meditation. Downplaying the "petty complexities" of satipatthana and the body-recollections (but maintaining the awareness of immanent death), the early Chan-tradition developed the notions or practices of "wu nian" ("no thought, no "fixation on thought, such as one's own views, experiences, and knowledge") and "fēi sīliàng" (非思量, Japanese: "hishiryō", "nonthinking"); and "kanxin" ("observing the mind") and "shou-i pu i" (守一不移, "maintaining the one without wavering," turning the attention from the objects of experience, to the nature of mind, the perceiving subject itself, which is equated with Buddha-nature.


title: Meditation

text: The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism introduced meditation to other Asian countries, reaching China in the 2nd century CE, and Japan in the 6th century CE. In the modern era, Buddhist meditation techniques have become popular in the wider world, due to the influence of Buddhist modernism on Asian Buddhism, and western lay interest in Zen and the Vipassana movement, with many non-Buddhists taking-up meditative practices. The modernized concept of mindfulness (based on the Buddhist term "sati") and related meditative practices have in turn led to mindfulness based therapies.


title: Meditation

text: Dhyana may have been an original contribution of Gautama Buddha (5th cent. BCE), the founder of Buddhism. While often presented as a form of focused attention or concentration, as in Buddhagosa's Theravada classic the Visuddhimagga ("Path of purification, 5th c. CE), according to a number contemporary scholars and scholar-practitioners, it is actually a description of the development of perfected equanimity and mindfulness, apparently induced by satipatthana, an open monitoring of the breath, without trying to regulate it. The same description, in a different formula, can be found in the bojjhanga, the "seven factors of awakening," and may therefor refer to the core program of early Buddhist "bhavana". According to Vetter, dhyana seems to be a natural development from the sense-restraint and moral constrictions prescribed by the Buddhist tradition.


title: Meditation

text: The Buddha identified two paramount mental qualities that arise from wholesome meditative practice or "bhavana", namely "samatha" ("calm," "serenity" "tranquility") and "vipassana" (insight). As the developing tradition started to emphasize the value of liberating insight, and "dhyana" came to be understood as concentration, "samatha" and "vipassana" were understood as two distinct meditative techniques. In this understanding, "samatha" steadies, composes, unifies and concentrates the mind, while "vipassana" enables one to see, explore and discern "formations" (conditioned phenomena based on the five aggregates).


title: Meditation

text: According to this understanding, which is central to Theravada orthodoxy but also plays a role in Tibetan Buddhism, through the meditative development of serenity, one is able to weaken the obscuring hindrances and bring the mind to a collected, pliant, and still state (samadhi). This quality of mind then supports the development of insight and wisdom (Prajñā) which is the quality of mind that can "clearly see" ("vi-passana") the nature of phenomena. What exactly is to be seen varies within the Buddhist traditions. In Theravada, all phenomena are to be seen as impermanent, suffering, not-self and empty. When this happens, one develops dispassion ("viraga") for all phenomena, including all negative qualities and hindrances and lets them go. It is through the release of the hindrances and ending of craving through the meditative development of insight that one gains liberation.


title: Meditation

text: There are many schools and styles of meditation within Hinduism. In pre-modern and traditional Hinduism, "Yoga" and "Dhyana" are practised to recognize 'pure awareness', or 'pure consciousness', undisturbed by the workings of the mind, as one's eternal self. In Advaita Vedanta "jivatman", individual self, is recognized as illusory, and in Reality identical with the omnipresent and non-dual Ātman-Brahman. In the dualistic Yoga school and Samkhya, the Self is called Purusha, a pure consciousness undisturbed by Prakriti, 'nature'. Depending on the tradition, the liberative event is named moksha, vimukti or kaivalya.


title: Meditation

text: One of the most influential texts of classical Hindu Yoga is Patañjali's Yoga sutras (c. 400 CE), a text associated with Yoga and Samkhya, which outlines eight limbs leading to kaivalya ("aloneness"). These are ethical discipline (yamas), rules (niyamas), physical postures (āsanas), breath control (prāṇāyama), withdrawal from the senses (pratyāhāra), one-pointedness of mind (dhāraṇā), meditation (dhyāna), and finally samādhi.


title: Meditation

text: Later developments in Hindu meditation include the compilation of Hatha Yoga (forceful yoga) compendiums like the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the development of Bhakti yoga as a major form of meditation, and Tantra. Another important Hindu yoga text is the Yoga Yajnavalkya, which makes use of Hatha Yoga and Vedanta Philosophy.


title: Meditation

text: In Sikhism, simran (meditation) and good deeds are both necessary to achieve the devotee's Spiritual goals; without good deeds meditation is futile. When Sikhs meditate, they aim to feel God's presence and emerge in the divine light. It is only God's divine will or order that allows a devotee to desire to begin to meditate. Nām Japnā involves focusing one's attention on the names or great attributes of God.


title: Meditation

text: Taoist meditation has developed techniques including concentration, visualization, "qi" cultivation, contemplation, and mindfulness meditations in its long history. Traditional Daoist meditative practices were influenced by Chinese Buddhism from around the 5th century and influenced Traditional Chinese medicine and the Chinese martial arts.


title: Meditation

text: Livia Kohn distinguishes three basic types of Taoist meditation: "concentrative", "insight", and "visualization". "Ding" 定 (literally means "decide; settle; stabilize") refers to "deep concentration", "intent contemplation", or "perfect absorption". "Guan" 觀 (lit. "watch; observe; view") meditation seeks to merge and attain unity with the Dao. It was developed by Tang Dynasty (618–907) Taoist masters based upon the "Tiantai" Buddhist practice of "Vipassanā" "insight" or "wisdom" meditation. "Cun" 存 (lit. "exist; be present; survive") has a sense of "to cause to exist; to make present" in the meditation techniques popularized by the Taoist Shangqing and Lingbao Schools. A meditator visualizes or actualizes solar and lunar essences, lights, and deities within their body, which supposedly results in health and longevity, even "xian" 仙/仚/僊, "immortality".


title: Meditation

text: The (late 4th century BCE) "Guanzi" essay "Neiye" "Inward training" is the oldest received writing on the subject of "qi" cultivation and breath-control meditation techniques. For instance, "When you enlarge your mind and let go of it, when you relax your vital breath and expand it, when your body is calm and unmoving: And you can maintain the One and discard the myriad disturbances. ... This is called "revolving the vital breath": Your thoughts and deeds seem heavenly."


title: Meditation

text: The (c. 3rd century BCE) Taoist "Zhuangzi" records "zuowang" or "sitting forgetting" meditation. Confucius asked his disciple Yan Hui to explain what "sit and forget" means: "I slough off my limbs and trunk, dim my intelligence, depart from my form, leave knowledge behind, and become identical with the Transformational Thoroughfare."


title: Meditation

text: Taoist meditation practices are central to Chinese martial arts (and some Japanese martial arts), especially the "qi"-related "neijia" "internal martial arts". Some well-known examples are "daoyin" "guiding and pulling", "qigong" "life-energy exercises", "neigong" "internal exercises", "neidan" "internal alchemy", and "taijiquan" "great ultimate boxing", which is thought of as moving meditation. One common explanation contrasts "movement in stillness" referring to energetic visualization of "qi" circulation in "qigong" and "zuochan" "seated meditation", versus "stillness in movement" referring to a state of meditative calm in "taijiquan" forms. Also the unification or middle road forms such as Wuxingheqidao that seeks the unification of internal alchemical forms with more external forms.


title: Meditation

text: Judaism has made use of meditative practices for thousands of years. For instance, in the Torah, the patriarch Isaac is described as going ""לשוח"" ("lasuach") in the field – a term understood by all commentators as some type of meditative practice (Genesis 24:63). Similarly, there are indications throughout the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) that the prophets meditated. In the Old Testament, there are two Hebrew words for meditation: "hāgâ" (), "to sigh" or "murmur", but also "to meditate", and "sîḥâ" (), "to muse", or "rehearse in one's mind".


title: Meditation

text: Classical Jewish texts espouse a wide range of meditative practices, often associated with the cultivation of "kavanah" or intention. The first layer of rabbinic law, the Mishnah, describes ancient sages "waiting" for an hour before their prayers, "in order to direct their hearts to the Omnipresent One (Mishnah Berakhot 5:1). Other early rabbinic texts include instructions for visualizing the Divine Presence (B. Talmud Sanhedrin 22a) and breathing with conscious gratitude for every breath (Genesis Rabba 14:9).


title: Meditation

text: One of the best-known types of meditation in early Jewish mysticism was the work of the Merkabah, from the root /R-K-B/ meaning "chariot" (of God). Some meditative traditions have been encouraged in Kabbalah, and some Jews have described Kabbalah as an inherently meditative field of study. Kabbalistic meditation often involves the mental visualization of the supernal realms. Aryeh Kaplan has argued that the ultimate purpose of Kabbalistic meditation is to understand and cleave to the Divine.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation has been of interest to a wide variety of modern Jews. In modern Jewish practice, one of the best known meditative practices is called ""hitbodedut"" ("התבודדות", alternatively transliterated as "hisbodedus"), and is explained in Kabbalistic, Hasidic, and Mussar writings, especially the Hasidic method of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav. The word derives from the Hebrew word "boded" (בודד), meaning the state of being alone. Another Hasidic system is the Habad method of "hisbonenus", related to the Sephirah of "Binah", Hebrew for understanding. This practice is the analytical reflective process of making oneself understand a mystical concept well, that follows and internalises its study in Hasidic writings. The Musar Movement, founded by Rabbi Israel Salanter in the middle of the nineteenth-century, emphasized meditative practices of introspection and visualization that could help to improve moral character. Conservative rabbi Alan Lew has emphasized meditation playing an important role in the process of "teshuvah" (repentance). Jewish Buddhists have adopted Buddhist styles of meditation.


title: Meditation

text: Christian meditation is a term for a form of prayer in which a structured attempt is made to get in touch with and deliberately reflect upon the revelations of God. In the Roman Empire, by 20 BCE Philo of Alexandria had written on some form of "spiritual exercises" involving attention (prosoche) and concentration and by the 3rd century Plotinus had developed meditative techniques. The word meditation comes from the Latin word "meditatum", which means to "concentrate" or "to ponder". Monk Guigo II introduced this terminology for the first time in the 12th century AD. Christian meditation is the process of deliberately focusing on specific thoughts (e.g. a biblical scene involving Jesus and the Virgin Mary) and reflecting on their meaning in the context of the love of God. Christian meditation is sometimes taken to mean the middle level in a broad three-stage characterization of prayer: it then involves more reflection than first level vocal prayer, but is more structured than the multiple layers of contemplation in Christianity.


title: Meditation

text: Between the 10th and 14th centuries, hesychasm was developed, particularly on Mount Athos in Greece, and involves the repetition of the Jesus prayer. Interactions with Indians or the Sufis may have influenced the Eastern Christian meditation approach to hesychasm, but this is unproven.


title: Meditation

text: Western Christian meditation contrasts with most other approaches in that it does not involve the repetition of any phrase or action and requires no specific posture. Western Christian meditation progressed from the 6th century practice of Bible reading among Benedictine monks called Lectio Divina, i.e. divine reading. Its four formal steps as a "ladder" were defined by the monk Guigo II in the 12th century with the Latin terms "lectio", "meditatio", "oratio", and "contemplatio" (i.e. read, ponder, pray, contemplate). Western Christian meditation was further developed by saints such as Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Avila in the 16th century.


title: Meditation

text: In Catholic Christianity, the Rosary is a devotion for the meditation of the mysteries of Jesus and Mary. “The gentle repetition of its prayers makes it an excellent means to moving into deeper meditation. It gives us an opportunity to open ourselves to God’s word, to refine our interior gaze by turning our minds to the life of Christ. The first principle is that meditation is learned through practice. Many people who practice rosary meditation begin very simply and gradually develop a more sophisticated meditation. The meditator learns to hear an interior voice, the voice of God. Similarly, the chotki of the Eastern Orthodox denomination, the Wreath of Christ of the Lutheran faith, and the Anglican prayer beads of the Episcopalian tradition are used for Christian prayer and meditation.


title: Meditation

text: According to Edmund P. Clowney, Christian meditation contrasts with Eastern forms of meditation as radically as the portrayal of God the Father in the Bible contrasts with depictions of Krishna or Brahman in Indian teachings. Unlike some Eastern styles, most styles of Christian meditation do not rely on the repeated use of mantras, and yet are also intended to stimulate thought and deepen meaning. Christian meditation aims to heighten the personal relationship based on the love of God that marks Christian communion. In "Aspects of Christian meditation", the Catholic Church warned of potential incompatibilities in mixing Christian and Eastern styles of meditation. In 2003, in "A Christian reflection on the New Age" the Vatican announced that the "Church avoids any concept that is close to those of the New Age".


title: Meditation

text: Salah is a mandatory act of devotion performed by Muslims five times per day. The body goes through sets of different postures, as the mind attains a level of concentration called "khushu".


title: Meditation

text: A second optional type of meditation, called dhikr, meaning remembering and mentioning God, involved the repetition of the 99 Names of God since the 8th or 9th century. It is interpreted in different meditative techniques in Sufism or Islamic mysticism. This became one of the essential elements of Sufism as it was systematized traditionally. It is juxtaposed with "fikr" (thinking) which leads to knowledge. By the 12th century, the practice of Sufism included specific meditative techniques, and its followers practiced breathing controls and the repetition of holy words.


title: Meditation

text: Sufism uses a meditative procedure like Buddhist concentration, involving high-intensity and sharply focused introspection. In the Oveyssi-Shahmaghsoudi Sufi order, for example, muraqabah takes the form of tamarkoz, "concentration" in Persian.


title: Meditation

text: "Tafakkur" or "tadabbur" in Sufism literally means "reflection upon the universe": this is considered to permit access to a form of cognitive and emotional development that can emanate only from the higher level, i.e. from God. The sensation of receiving divine inspiration awakens and liberates both heart and intellect, permitting such inner growth that the apparently mundane actually takes on the quality of the infinite. Muslim teachings embrace life as a test of one's submission to God.


title: Meditation

text: In the teachings of the Baháʼí Faith, meditation is a primary tool for spiritual development, involving reflection on the words of God. While prayer and meditation are linked, where meditation happens generally in a prayerful attitude, prayer is seen specifically as turning toward God, and meditation is seen as a communion with one's self where one focuses on the divine.


title: Meditation

text: In Baháʼí teachings the purpose of meditation is to strengthen one's understanding of the words of God, and to make one's soul more susceptible to their potentially transformative power, more receptive to the need for both prayer and meditation to bring about and maintain a spiritual communion with God.


title: Meditation

text: Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the religion, never specified any particular form of meditation, and thus each person is free to choose their own form. However, he did state that Baháʼís should read a passage of the Baháʼí writings twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening, and meditate on it. He also encouraged people to reflect on one's actions and worth at the end of each day. During the Nineteen Day Fast, a period of the year during which Baháʼís adhere to a sunrise-to-sunset fast, they meditate and pray to reinvigorate their spiritual forces.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation has spread in the West since the late 19th century, accompanying increased travel and communication among cultures worldwide. Most prominent has been the transmission of Asian-derived practices to the West. In addition, interest in some Western-based meditative practices has been revived, and these have been disseminated to a limited extent to Asian countries.


title: Meditation

text: Ideas about Eastern meditation had begun "seeping into American popular culture even before the American Revolution through the various sects of European occult Christianity", and such ideas "came pouring in [to America] during the era of the transcendentalists, especially between the 1840s and the 1880s." The following decades saw further spread of these ideas to America:


title: Meditation

text: More recently, in the 1960s, another surge in Western interest in meditative practices began. The rise of communist political power in Asia led to many Asian spiritual teachers taking refuge in Western countries, oftentimes as refugees. In addition to spiritual forms of meditation, secular forms of meditation have taken root. Rather than focusing on spiritual growth, secular meditation emphasizes stress reduction, relaxation and self-improvement.


title: Meditation

text: The 2012 US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) (34,525 subjects) found 8% of US adults used meditation, with lifetime and 12-month prevalence of meditation use of 5.2% and 4.1% respectively. In the 2017 NHIS survey, meditation use among workers was 10% (up from 8% in 2002).


title: Meditation

text: Mantra meditation, with the use of a japa mala and especially with focus on the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, is a central practice of the Gaudiya Vaishnava faith tradition and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), also known as the Hare Krishna movement. Other popular New Religious Movements include the Ramakrishna Mission, Vedanta Society, Divine Light Mission, Chinmaya Mission, Osho, Sahaja Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, Oneness University, Brahma Kumaris, Vihangam Yoga and Heartfulness Meditation (Sahaj Marg).


title: Meditation

text: New Age meditations are often influenced by Eastern philosophy, mysticism, yoga, Hinduism and Buddhism, yet may contain some degree of Western influence. In the West, meditation found its mainstream roots through the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when many of the youth of the day rebelled against traditional religion as a reaction against what some perceived as the failure of Christianity to provide spiritual and ethical guidance.


title: Meditation

text: New Age meditation as practised by the early hippies is regarded for its techniques of blanking out the mind and releasing oneself from conscious thinking. This is often aided by repetitive chanting of a mantra, or focusing on an object. New Age meditation evolved into a range of purposes and practices, from serenity and balance to access to other realms of consciousness to the concentration of energy in group meditation to the supreme goal of samadhi, as in the ancient yogic practice of meditation.


title: Meditation

text: Guided meditation is a form of meditation which uses a number of different techniques to achieve or enhance the meditative state. It may simply be meditation done under the guidance of a trained practitioner or teacher, or it may be through the use of imagery, music, and other techniques. The session can be either in person, via media comprising music or verbal instruction, or a combination of both. The most common form is a combination of meditation music and receptive music therapy, guided imagery, relaxation, mindfulness, and journaling.


title: Meditation

text: Because of the different combinations used under the one term, it can be difficult to attribute positive or negative outcomes to any of the various techniques. Furthermore, the term is frequently used interchangeably with "guided imagery" and sometimes with "creative visualization" in popular psychology and self-help literature. It is less commonly used in scholarly and scientific publications. Consequently, guided meditation cannot be understood as a single technique but rather multiple techniques that are integral to its practice.


title: Meditation

text: Guided meditation as an aggregate or synthesis of techniques includes meditation music, receptive music therapy, guided imagery, relaxation, meditative praxis, and self-reflective diary-keeping or journaling. All of which have been shown to have therapeutic benefits when employed as an adjunct to primary strategies. Benefits include lower levels of stress, reducing asthmatic episodes, physical pain, insomnia, episodic anger, negative or irrational thinking,


title: Meditation

text: Carl Jung (1875–1961) was an early western explorer of eastern religious practices. He clearly advocated ways to increase the conscious awareness of an individual. Yet he expressed some caution concerning a westerner's direct immersion in eastern practices without some prior appreciation of the differing spiritual and cultural contexts. Also Erich Fromm (1900–1980) later explored spiritual practices of the east.


title: Meditation

text: The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states that ""Meditation is a mind and body practice that has a long history of use for increasing calmness and physical relaxation, improving psychological balance, coping with illness, and enhancing overall health and well-being."" A 2014 review found that practice of mindfulness meditation for two to six months by people undergoing long-term psychiatric or medical therapy could produce small improvements in anxiety, pain, or depression. In 2017, the American Heart Association issued a scientific statement that meditation may be a reasonable adjunct practice to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, with the qualification that meditation needs to be better defined in higher-quality clinical research of these disorders. Recent findings have also found evidence of meditation affecting migraines in adults. Mindfulness meditation may allow for a decrease in migraine episodes, and a drop in migraine medication usage.


title: Meditation

text: Low-quality evidence indicates that meditation may help with irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, cognitive decline in the elderly, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers have found that participating in mindfulness meditation can aid insomnia patients by improving sleep quality and total wake time. Mindfulness meditation is not a treatment for insomnia patients, but it can provide support in addition to their treatment options.


title: Meditation

text: A 2010 review of the literature on spirituality and performance in organizations found an increase in corporate meditation programs.


title: Meditation

text: As of 2016 around a quarter of U.S. employers were using stress reduction initiatives. The goal was to help reduce stress and improve reactions to stress. Aetna now offers its program to its customers. Google also implements mindfulness, offering more than a dozen meditation courses, with the most prominent one, "Search Inside Yourself", having been implemented since 2007. General Mills offers the Mindful Leadership Program Series, a course which uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, yoga and dialogue with the intention of developing the mind's capacity to pay attention.


title: Meditation

text: Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School conducted a series of clinical tests on meditators from various disciplines, including the Transcendental Meditation technique and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1975, Benson published a book titled "The Relaxation Response" where he outlined his own version of meditation for relaxation. Also in the 1970s, the American psychologist Patricia Carrington developed a similar technique called Clinically Standardized Meditation (CSM). In Norway, another sound-based method called Acem Meditation developed a psychology of meditation and has been the subject of several scientific studies.


title: Meditation

text: Biofeedback has been used by many researchers since the 1950s in an effort to enter deeper states of mind.


title: Meditation

text: Research on the processes and effects of meditation is a subfield of neurological research. Modern scientific techniques, such as fMRI and EEG, were used to observe neurological responses during meditation. Concerns have been raised on the quality of meditation research, including the particular characteristics of individuals who tend to participate.


title: Meditation

text: Meditation lowers heart rate, oxygen consumption, breathing frequency, stress hormones, lactate levels, and sympathetic nervous system activity (associated with the fight-or-flight response), along with a modest decline in blood pressure. However, those who have meditated for two or three years were found to already have low blood pressure. During meditation, the oxygen consumption decrease averages 10 to 20 percent over the first three minutes. During sleep for example, oxygen consumption decreases around 8 percent over four or five hours. For meditators who have practiced for years, breath rate can drop to three or four breaths per minute and brain waves slow from alpha waves seen in normal relaxation to much slower delta and theta waves.


title: Meditation

text: Since the 1970s, clinical psychology and psychiatry have developed meditation techniques for numerous psychological conditions. Mindfulness practice is employed in psychology to alleviate mental and physical conditions, such as reducing depression, stress, and anxiety. Mindfulness is also used in the treatment of drug addiction, although the quality of research has been poor. Studies demonstrate that meditation has a moderate effect to reduce pain. There is insufficient evidence for any effect of meditation on positive mood, attention, eating habits, sleep, or body weight. A 2015 study, including subjective and objective reports and brain scans, has shown that meditation can improve controlling attention, as well as self-awareness.


title: Meditation

text: A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of meditation on empathy, compassion, and prosocial behaviors found that meditation practices had small to medium effects on self-reported and observable outcomes, concluding that such practices can "improve positive prosocial emotions and behaviors". However, a meta-review published on "Scientific Reports" showed that the evidence is very weak and "that the effects of meditation on compassion were only significant when compared to passive control groups suggests that other forms of active interventions (like watching a nature video) might produce similar outcomes to meditation".


title: Meditation

text: In one study, published in 2019, of 1,232 regular meditators with at least two months of meditation experience, about a quarter reported having had particularly unpleasant meditation-related experiences (such as anxiety, fear, distorted emotions or thoughts, altered sense of self or the world), which they thought may have been caused by their meditation practice. Meditators with high levels of repetitive negative thinking and those who only engage in deconstructive meditation were more likely to report unpleasant side effects. Adverse effects were less frequently reported in women and religious meditators.


title: Meditation

text: Difficult experiences encountered in meditation are mentioned in traditional sources; and some may be considered to be just an expected part of the process: for example: seven stages of purification mentioned in Theravāda Buddhism, or possible “unwholesome or frightening visions” mentioned in a practical manual on vipassanā meditation.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist protest and performance art group based in Moscow that became popular for its provocative punk rock music which later turned into a more accessible style. Founded in August 2011, it has had a membership of approximately 11 women. The group staged unauthorized, provocative guerrilla gigs in public places. These performances were filmed as music videos and posted on the internet. The group's lyrical themes included feminism, LGBT rights, opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his policies, and Putin's links to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.


title: Pussy Riot

text: The group gained global notoriety when five members of the group staged a performance inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on February 21, 2012. The group's actions were condemned as sacrilegious by the Orthodox clergy and eventually stopped by church security officials. The women said their protest was directed at the Orthodox Church leaders' support for Putin during his election campaign. On March 3, 2012, two of the group's members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were arrested and charged with hooliganism. A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was arrested on March 16. Denied bail, the three were held in custody until their trial began in late July. On August 17, 2012, Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova were all convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and each sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On October 10, following an appeal, Samutsevich was freed on probation and her sentence suspended. The sentences of the other two women were upheld.


title: Pussy Riot

text: The trial and sentence attracted considerable attention and criticism, particularly in the West. The case was taken up by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which designated the women as prisoners of conscience, and by a number of prominent entertainers. Public opinion in Russia was generally less sympathetic towards the band members. Having served 21 months, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released on December 23, 2013, after the State Duma approved an amnesty.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In February 2014, a statement was made anonymously on behalf of some Pussy Riot members that Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were no longer members. However, both were among the group that performed as Pussy Riot during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, where group members were attacked with whips and pepper spray by Cossacks employed as security guards. On March 6, 2014, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were assaulted and sprayed with green dye by local youths in Nizhny Novgorod.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Speaking as much to western European and North American audiences as to Russian ones, Pussy Riot anticipated Donald Trump's victory two weeks before the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election was declared and released "Make America Great Again", depicting a dystopian world where President Trump enforced his values through beatings, shaming, and branding by stormtroopers. In describing the video, "Rolling Stone" magazine noted that "jaunty, carefree music contrasts with the brutal events depicted on screen."


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot is a collective formed in late 2011 in response to national politics in Russia. Its name, consisting of two English-language words written in the Latin alphabet, usually appears that way in the Russian press, though it is sometimes transliterated into Cyrillic as "Пусси Райот". The group consisted of around a dozen performers and about 15 people who handled the technical work of shooting and editing videos that were posted on the Internet.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Tolokonnikova, her husband, Pyotr Verzilov, and Samutsevich were members of the anarchist art collective "Voina" from the group's early days in 2007,<ref name="openculture/2014/pussy-riot"></ref> until an acrimonious split in 2009. Following the split, they formed a separate Moscow-based group, also named "Voina", saying that they had as much right to use the name as Voina founder Oleg Vorotnikov.


title: Pussy Riot

text: The group was started by 15 women, several of whom were previously involved in Voina. While there is no official line-up and the band says anyone can join, it usually has between 10 and 20 members. The members prefer anonymity and are known for wearing brightly coloured balaclavas when performing and using aliases when giving interviews. At the start, the group was relatively unknown, but this changed following a February 2012 performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Following the performance, three women, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were publicly identified and eventually convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Two other women involved fled the country and have never been named.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Tolokonnikova is seen as the face of the group. She was born in Norilsk and studied at Moscow State University. Tolokonnikova and then-husband Pyotr Verzilov were members of Voina from 2007. They were involved in provocative art performances that included drawing a penis on a bridge and having public sex in a Moscow biological museum. Ailyokhina is a single mother, poet and previously did work as an environmental activist. She was a student at the Institute of Journalism and Creative Writing in Moscow.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Samutsevich joined Voina in 2008, at the same time as Ailyokhina. She is a computer programmer and a former member of Moscow's Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. Samutsevich's hooliganism sentence was commuted and following release, she disappeared from the public eye. During the trial, Verzilov lobbied on behalf of all three band members, but was later dismissed after it was reported that he was the band's producer. The prisoners wrote a letter saying “The only person who has the right to represent the group is a woman with a balaclava.”


title: Pussy Riot

text: Following release, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina said they were no longer members of the group, although they appeared at various events around the world using the name Pussy Riot. Other members tried to distance themselves from the two, saying that although they were glad for their release, the members were anti-capitalistic and did not support their use of Pussy Riot to make money from songs and tours. After failing to prevent them from using the Pussy Riot name, they declared the group dead.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In 2015, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina went their own ways and although they still follow similar paths and keep in touch, Pussy Riot is seen by some as more Tolokonnikova's project than the collective it started out as. Ailyokhinasai created her own show, , which recounts her life as a Russian activist, and tours various fringe festivals. During the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, members identifying with the group invaded the pitch wearing police uniforms to protest wrongful arrests. They were Verzilov, economics student Veronika Nikulshina, journalist Olga Kurachyova and Olga Pakhtusova. There is also a current member as of May 16, 2022 named Lucy Shtein who escaped house arrest by masquerading as a food delivery person detailed here Lucy Shtein Wanted After Escape.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In an interview with Gazeta.ru, a band member described their two-minute concerts as performance art, creating images of "pure protest, saying: super heroes in balaclavas and acid bright tights seize public space in Moscow." Another band member, who went by the pseudonym Garadzha, told the Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper that the group was open to women recruits with limited musical talents. She said: "You don't have to sing very well. It's punk. You just scream a lot."


title: Pussy Riot

text: The group cited British punk rock and oi! bands Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects, Sham 69 and The 4-Skins as their main musical influences. The band also cited American punk rock band Bikini Kill, performance artist Karen Finley and the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s as inspirations. They stated:


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot's performances can either be called dissident art or political action that engages art forms. Either way, our performances are a kind of civic activity amidst the repressions of a corporate political system that directs its power against basic human rights and civil and political liberties.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Costumes usually consisted of brightly colored dresses and tights, even in bitterly cold weather, with faces hidden by balaclavas. During interviews, band members used nicknames such as "Balaclava", "Cat", "Seraph", "Terminator", and "Blondie".


title: Pussy Riot

text: In an email interview with "The St. Petersburg Times", the group explained their political positions further, saying that members' perspectives ranged from anarchist to liberal left, but that all were united by feminism, anti-authoritarianism and opposition to Putin, whom members regard as continuing the "aggressive imperial politics" of the Soviet Union. Group concerns include education, health care, and the centralization of power, and the group supports regional autonomy and grass-roots organizing. Members regard unsanctioned rallies as a core principle, saying that authorities do not see rallies that they have sanctioned as a threat and simply ignore them. For this reason, all of Pussy Riot's performances were illegal and used co-opted public space. Interviewed by the BBC during rehearsals the day before the Cathedral of Christ the Savior performance, band members argued that only vivid, illegal actions brought media attention. In an interview with "Slate" in the spring of 2018 during the band's first North American tour, Tolokonnikova stated that economic inequality "is a big issue for Pussy Riot", highlighting that such inequality was a notable feature of both Russian and American society, and that discussion of inequality was absent from mainstream political discourse in both the US and Europe.


title: Pussy Riot

text: The group was organized in part due to anger over what members saw as government policies that discriminated against women, citing legislation that "placed restrictions on legal abortions". According to Tolokonnikova, Pussy Riot was "part of the global anti-capitalist movement, which consists of anarchists, Trotskyists, feminists and autonomists."


title: Pussy Riot

text: In a February 2012 interview with "Vice" magazine, Pussy Riot member "Serafima" named her major feminist influences as Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin, Emmeline Pankhurst, Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett, Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot saw themselves as feminist artists who were influenced by the riot grrrl movement and musical groups such as Bikini Kill, Oi!, Cockney Rejects and by writers, activists and artists like Alexandra Kollontai, Judith Butler, Karen Finley, Simone de Beauvoir and Vladimir Bukovsky. The media tended to overlook the meaning behind Pussy Riot's feminism; the cultural context of it was vastly different from that of Western feminism. According to Elianna Kan in the "American Reader," Pussy Riot's feminism focused on the repression of authoritarian regimes that created idealised ideas of sexism, sex and family life. Pussy Riot strove to make it clear that feminism in Russia was still an issue and that post-feminism had not been achieved.


title: Pussy Riot

text: The Russian cultural context had to be acknowledged and its feminist notions had to be seen differently from those of Western feminism because in places such as the United States, feminism evolved to general "women's issues", whereas in Russia that was not the case.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In Russia feminism was seen as something "that could destroy Russia," as said by Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot members were outspoken in their support of LGBT rights, and in a 2012 interview confirmed that the group included at least one member of a sexual minority. Both Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich participated in the banned 2011 Gay Pride rally in Moscow, and were briefly detained after the rally was broken up by police. In a 2018 interview Tolokonnikova spoke about the importance of transgender rights to the band, explaining that she rejected gender essentialism and stating that "we believe you don't actually have to have a vagina or clitoris to be a woman, and having a clitoris doesn't necessarily make you a woman... We are always saying that anybody can be in Pussy Riot, and we really mean it".


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot released seven songs and five videos. An Associated Press reporter described them as "badly recorded, based on simple riffs and scream-like singing" and stated that critics had dismissed them as "amateur, provocative and obscene". "The A.V. Club" described them as an "excellent band" with "fuzzed-out guitars and classic Riot Grrrl chants". In an opinion piece for "The New York Times", Pitchfork Media reviewer Michael Idov wrote, "judging [Pussy Riot] on artistic merit would be like chiding the Yippies because Pigasus the Immortal, the pig they ran for president in 1968, was not a viable candidate."


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot have not released any conventional albums. However, their songs are freely available for download on a number of Internet sites, collected together under the title "Ubey seksista" ("Kill the sexist").


title: Pussy Riot

text: The music video <nowiki>"My Sex"</nowiki> by Brooke Candy feat. Mykki Blanco, MNDR & Pussy Riot was nominated for Best Animation at the Berlin Music Video Awards 2019.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In 2021, Pussy Riot<nowiki>'s music video for "Panic Attack"</nowiki> received a nomination at the Berlin Music Video Awards for Best Experimental. The director behind this music video is Asad J. Malik.


title: Pussy Riot

text: On 5 August 2022, Pussy Riot's "Matriarchy Now" mixtape, was released.<ref name="nytimes.com/2022/06/30/pussy-riot"></ref><ref name="variety/1235336049"></ref><ref name="pressparty/297089"></ref>


title: Pussy Riot

text: On October 1, 2011, Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich gave a lecture on "punk feminism" as members of Voina. They played a recording of the song "Ubey seksista" ("Kill the Sexist"), billing the performers as "a new Russian punk band called Pussy Riot". This track featured extensive sampling of the Cockney Rejects' 1979 recording "I'm Not a Fool".


title: Pussy Riot

text: Their first public performance as members of Pussy Riot was in November 2011. Several masked women performed "Osvobodi Bruschatku" ("Release the Cobblestones") atop a scaffold in a Moscow subway and from the top of trolley cars, while tearing apart down feather pillows, showering feathers onto the train platform below. The song recommended that Russians protest upcoming parliamentary elections by throwing cobblestones during street clashes. "Your ballots will be used as toilet paper by the Presidential Administration", the group said on its blog. Their first video was uploaded to YouTube on November 6. The musical track once again used extensive sampling, this time from the Angelic Upstarts' 1978 recording "Police Oppression". The video of the performance quickly went viral and generated a flurry of interest from the Russian press.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Later that month the group re-emerged, with several members playing "Kropotkin Vodka" on the roof of an automobile display unit in a luxury-store district and in the windows of fashion boutiques, while another member discharged a fire extinguisher into the air. The song took its title from Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, and metaphorically concerned the assassination of "Kremlin bastards" by fatal poisoning.


title: Pussy Riot

text: On December 14, 2011, the group performed atop a garage beside the Moscow Detention Center No. 1 prison, where opposition activists were being held among the prisoners. Political activists Alexey Navalny and Ilya Yashin had been arrested one week earlier at a mass protest against the results of the State Duma elections. Pussy Riot played their song "Smert tyurme, svobodu protestu" ("Death To Prison, Freedom To Protests"), a pun on the Yugoslav Partisan World War II slogan "Death to fascism, freedom to the people", and were applauded by the prisoners watching from inside the bars of the jail cell windows.


title: Pussy Riot

text: On January 20, 2012, in what the Associated Press described as their "breakthrough performance", eight members of the group performed a song on the Lobnoye Mesto in Red Square, entitled "Putin Zassal". The title was variously translated by English language media as "Putin has Pissed Himself", "Putin Chickened Out", "Putin Got Scared" and "Putin is Wetting Himself". The song called for a popular revolt against the Russian government and an occupation of Red Square. According to a Pussy Riot member identified as "Shayba", the song was inspired by the events of December 24, 2011, during which approximately 100,000 people attended anti-Putin rallies in central Moscow. She told the "Financial Times:" "We saw how troops were moving around Moscow, there were helicopters in the sky, the military was put on alert. The regime just wet its pants on that day. And the symbol of the regime is Putin." During the performance a member ignited a smoke bomb, which led to Pussy Riot members being arrested and briefly detained on administrative charges, a Russian legal term similar to a summary offence or misdemeanor. A judge found two members of the group, Galkina and Schebleva, "guilty under article 20.2 of the Administrative Code (violation of the rules for conducting rallies and pickets) and imposed a fine of 500 rubles on each."


title: Pussy Riot

text: On February 21, 2012, as part of a protest movement against the re-election of Vladimir Putin, five women from the group entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. There was no church service in session at the time, and only a few people were in the cathedral. Removing their winter clothes, they put on colorful balaclavas, walked up the steps leading to the altar, and began to jump around, punching the air. After less than a minute, they were escorted outside the building by guards. Film of the performance was later combined with footage shot at a different church, identified by Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin as the Epiphany Cathedral in Yelokhovo, to create a video clip for the song, which they entitled "Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away".


title: Pussy Riot

text: The song, which they described as a punk "moleben" (supplicatory prayer), borrowed its opening melody and refrain from Sergei Rachmaninoff's ""Bogoroditse Devo, Raduisya"" (Ave Maria), from the All Night Vigil. In the song, they invoked the name of the Virgin Mary, urging her to get rid of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and to "become a feminist", claiming that she would support them in their protests. They alluded to close ties between the church and the KGB ("Black robes, golden epaulettes"), criticized the subservience of many Russians to the church ("Parishioners crawl bowing") and attacked the church's traditionalist views on women ("So as not to offend His Holiness, women must bear children and love"). They used the crude epithet ""Sran Gospodnya"", which has been used to translate "holy shit" in Hollywood movies, but is rarely used in idiomatic Russian; it literally translates as "shit of the Lord". They later explained "It is an idiomatic expression, related to the previous verse – about the fusion of Moscow patriarchy and the government. 'Holy shit' is our evaluation of the situation in the country." They referred to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I, as a ""suka"" (bitch) and accused him of believing more in Putin than in God.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Growing ties between church and state in Russia were a target of criticism and protest. The Russian Patriarch Kirill had openly supported Putin's 2012 re-election, calling Putin a "miracle from God", who had "rectified the crooked path of history". After the cathedral performance, members of Pussy Riot said the church was a "weapon in a dirty election campaign" and called Putin "a man who is as far as can be from God's truth". This performance led to the arrest and prosecution of three of their members.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot released a single in August 2012 as the court case against three of their members drew to a close. It was called "Putin zazhigayet kostry" ("Putin Lights Up The Fires"), and its lyrics addressed issues related to the case. Among other statements, they suggested that "seven years [imprisonment] are not enough, give us eighteen!"


title: Pussy Riot

text: Pussy Riot released their first song and video in English in February 2015. "I Can't Breathe" is named for the last words that Eric Garner said as New York City Police held him to the ground in a chokehold. In their music video for this song, band members wear Russian riot police uniforms and are slowly buried alive as they sing. They wear these specific uniforms because they are worn by Russian police during clashes between police and protesters for change, and to make the statement that illegal violence not only kills the oppressed, but slowly kills the oppressors. According to Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova, "Policemen, soldiers, agents, they become hostages and are buried with those they kill, both figuratively and literally". The symbolism behind the "Russian Spring" brand cigarettes in the video is that the brand name is the same phrase used by supporters of Russia's war with Ukraine. Pussy Riot was responsible for concept and production of the video, while vocals and lyrics were performed by two other Russian bands, Jack Wood and Scofferlane. With this song, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova begin to show the parallels between police brutality and state oppression in Russia and the United States.


title: Pussy Riot

text: On 2015 the Anti-Corruption Foundation released "Chaika" about Yury Chaika and his family. On February 3, 2016 Pussy Riot released a satirical music video titled "Chaika", alluding to Navalny's findings.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In response to Donald Trump's candidacy, Pussy Riot released the song and video "Make America Great Again" in October 2016. The video depicts a dystopian world where Trump, played by one of the band members, is the president. Trump enforces his values through beatings, shaming, and branding of victims delivered by stormtroopers. As the thugs torture their victims, Pussy Riot sings the following lyrics: "Let other people in/ Listen to your women/ Stop killing black children/ Make America great again". Jonas Akerlund directed this video.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In March 2018 Pussy Riot, together with TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, released the single and video "Bad Apples". The song is a statement against corruption in the criminal justice system.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In December 2019, Pussy Riot, together with Vic Mensa and Junglepussy, released the song "Hangerz." The song was written in response to Alabama's anti-abortion legislation. All proceeds from the song will go towards Planned Parenthood.


title: Pussy Riot

text: In October 2020, Pussy Riot, along with the Village People, made guest appearances on the Dorian Electra single "My Agenda." Pussy Riot's lyrics in the song encourage rebellion against the Russian gay propaganda law and also make reference to similar anti-gay laws in Uganda. The song was released on Electra's album of the same name.


title: Pussy Riot

text: On June 23, 2022, Pussy Riot a made guest appearance on the Kai Whiston single "Q", composed by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Kai Whiston.<ref name="allmusic/Q"></ref><ref name="ourculturemag/2022/06/24/pussy-riot"></ref><ref name="filtermexico/2022/06/28/pussy-riot"></ref>


title: Pussy Riot

text: On February 26, 2012 a criminal case was opened against the band members who had participated in the Moscow cathedral performance on February 21. On March 3, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, two alleged members of Pussy Riot, were arrested by the Russian authorities and accused of hooliganism. Both women at first denied being members of the group and started a hunger strike in protest against being held in jail away from their young children. The defendants were held without bail. On March 16, another woman, Yekaterina Samutsevich, who had earlier been questioned as a witness in the case, was similarly arrested and charged.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Defense attorney Nikolai Polozov said that both Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich were also members of the Voina group, and both had previously staged disruptive protests in the Tagansky Court building, where they would be judged. He argued that their two previous attempts to disrupt proceedings would bias the judge, and preclude a fair outcome at that location. "I believe that the judge will certainly remember my clients, and could easily take offense to it, and therefore could not make an objective decision". The three detained members of Pussy Riot were declared political prisoners by the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners (SPP). On March 25, Amnesty International named them prisoners of conscience due to "the severity of the response of the Russian authorities".


title: Pussy Riot

text: Speaking at a liturgy in Moscow's Deposition of the Robe Church on March 21, Patriarch Kirill condemned Pussy Riot's actions as blasphemous, saying that the "Devil has laughed at all of us … We have no future if we allow mockery in front of great shrines, and if some see such mockery as a sort of bravery, an expression of political protest, an acceptable action or a harmless joke." The church's membership varied in its opinions on the case; a petition calling for the women to be forgiven was signed by approximately 5,000 lay members. Patriarch Kirill spoke of "his heart breaking with bitterness" when he heard that some Orthodox Christians sought mercy and forgiveness for the women.


title: Pussy Riot

text: Formal charges against the group were presented on June 4, the indictment running to 2,800 pages. By late June 2012, disquiet over the trio's detention without setting a trial date and concern over what was regarded as excessive and arbitrary treatment, led to the writing of an open letter. It was signed by leading opposition figures, as well as by director Fyodor Bondarchuk, a supporter of Putin, and actors Chulpan Khamatova and Yevgeny Mironov, both of whom had appeared in campaign videos supporting Putin's re-election. Singer Alla Pugachyova appealed on the women's behalf, stating that they should be ordered to perform community service rather than imprisoned. Meanwhile, Nikita Mikhalkov, head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union, stated that he would gladly sign an open letter against them.


title: Pussy Riot

text: On July 4, the defendants were informed that they would have to finish preparing their defense by July 9. They announced a hunger strike in response, saying that two working days was inadequate time to finish preparing their trial defense. On July 21, the court extended their pre-trial detention by a further six months.