Meditation
I recently read an article in the latest Scientific American Mind magazine discussing the cell mechanisms underlying meditative states. The author briefly mentioned the fact that expert meditators were able to avoid the attentional blink that lay people are prone to experiencing when barraged with rapidly presented visual stimuli.
Heart rate variability, a sign of a healthy heart, has been shown to be higher in yoga practitioners than in non-practitioners, according to research to be published in a forthcoming issue of the <
Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the previous 12 months, according to a 2007 government survey1. CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products such as herbal supplements, meditation, chiropractic, and acupuncture that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine.
As we learn more about the power of the human brain it is more common to hear about ideas regarding our ability to guide our future, intuition, and premonition. Given that the brain is an electrical, magnetic, and chemical system we should not be too surprised by such ideas.
WESTCHESTER, Ill. -- Meditation may be an effective behavioral intervention in the treatment of insomnia, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Tuesday, June 9, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies
Push-ups, crunches, gyms, personal trainers -- people have many strategies for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But what can one do to build a bigger brain?
Meditate.
Meditation has been practiced for centuries, as a way to calm the soul and bring about inner peace.
Our brains appear wired to adopt a belief about our milieu, consecrate it, then bar the door to our consciousness against any competing belief. If a different belief gets past our mental bouncer, the result is conflict, sometimes labeled cognitive dissonance. This process should be familiar to most of us, yet how likely is it to reflect some objective quality of our universe? The transcendent achievements of our brains help to blind us to their concomitant evolved limitations. There appears to be little circuitry in the brain encouraging it to adopt a critical posture towards itself.
Spirituality has many meanings and it may mean something different to different people. I am referring to spirituality as one means of turning inward to a peaceful existence and to remove oneself from the hurried society that is modern life. Prayer/worship, meditation, and relaxation procedures are just three examples of spirituality.
(Boston) - The Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights (BCRHHR) at Boston Medical Center recently treated many of the large number of Tibetan refugee monks who fled violent religious persecution. These individuals arrived in Boston suffering from symptoms of traumatic stress, interfering with their meditative practice.
A recent study found that meditation may slow the progression of AIDS in just a few weeks. Researchers believe that meditation may help boost the immune system in combating the progression of the disease.
The world economic situation is fertile ground for anxiety, some realistic and other perpetuated from misinformation and personal agendas. According to the National Sleep Foundation, One-third of Americans are losing sleep over the state of the U.S. economy and other personal financial concerns.
Twenty minutes of daily meditation helped middle schoolers lower their blood pressure and heart rate, a new study from the state of Georgia concludes. Students who used a simple concentration-based breathing mediation technique significantly reduced their resting and ''active'' blood pressure, according to Frank A. Treiber, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Medical College of Georgia. Their findings appear in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
A Medical College of Georgia pilot study using meditation to help lower blood pressure in teens was so successful that the project has been extended to five high schools and a middle school. Dr. Vernon Barnes, a physiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute with over 30 years of experience in teaching and applying meditation techniques, conducted the pilot five years ago, teaching meditation to students with high-normal blood pressure at a Richmond County high school. The results, published in a 1999 edition of Psychosomatic Medicine, cited lower blood pressure and other improvements among participants. The success spurred the GPI to expand the project to include 156 high school students and 80 middle school students in Richmond County. The study is funded by the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health.
