The Michigan basketball team has battled its share of shooting slumps this season.

Consider:

• Sophomore guard Tim Hardaway Jr. has made 13 of his last 47 shots (27.7 percent).
• Junior guard Matt Vogrich’s shooting percentage of 37.0 is the lowest of his career.
• Sophomore forward Evan Smotrycz went 4-for-25 in a four-game stretch in January.

Michigan coach John Beilein’s best solution for each slump has been continued repetition, forcing each player to shoot his way out of a funk. His secondary solution?

That’d be meditation.

“We (meditate) throughout the year, and we try to teach them some things about how to relax,” Beilein said Friday. “A lot …

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Christina Shockley: For 2012, we’re going to talk with people who are standing apart from the crowd, being and making the kind of change they want to see in the state. Throughout the year you’ll hear from people making waves and going against the grain. We’ll ask them why they’re working so hard on their projects, and try to see things from their perspective. This morning we speak with Reverend Sokuzan Robert Brown. He teaches meditation in Michigan prisons.

Shockley: What do the prisoners say to you when you lead these teachings? What is this experience like?

Brown: Oh, my. They’re all different …

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Ben Harris: Practicing Buddhism is more of a lifestyle than a religion for Don Socha and Brigitte Bechtold.

Socha, a lecturer at Central Michigan University, has been formally practicing Buddhism since 2000. He said he met a monk who taught in CMU’s Spanish department who introduced him to groups in Montreal where he went for meditation sessions.

He was ordained Bodhisattva in 2002. He said a Bodhisattva is someone who has devoted his or her life to the Buddhist precepts, such as not stealing and not lying.

“In a sense, we’re trying to alleviate suffering in the world. It’s one of the Four Noble Truths,” he …

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Recently, FOX 2 sat in on a group meditation session. You could almost feel the stress slipping away, which is good for the mind and body.

“So, what happens when we have elevated stress levels is the stress hormones in the body are produced in excess and there is a chronic elevation of those hormones. Those actually cause damage to the vascular walls, to the heart and to the other organs, and that is what raises the blood pressure,” said Beaumont [Mich.] Cardiologist Kavitha Chinnaiyan, M.D.

To mediate, all you really need is a quite place and the ability to still your mind. Dr. Chinnaiyan said just a …

If asked about the Zen Buddhist Temple on Packard Street in Ann Arbor, most people would probably think of the wall that separates the temple from the street.

“The wall is there not to separate us from the rest of the town,” said senior member Catherine Brown of Ann Arbor.

It serves, instead, as noise barrier. Silence plays a key role in a Zen Buddhist service.

Upon entering the temple, those in attendance sit in quiet meditation for about 20 minutes. This is repeated at the end of service.

Meditation is integral to the Zen Buddhist belief system. Meditation is how Siddharta Gautama reached enlightenment to …