Archive for the 'Meditation' Category

A recent study found that individuals who are well-trained in the  Zen meditation practice appear to be less sensitive to moderate pain.

Researchers studied individuals who were healthy and who were already experienced in meditation.

The longer the amount of time that study participants had been practicing meditation, the more the meditative state allowed them freedom from pain.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, identifies four qualities common among different forms of meditation:

1. Placing oneself in a quiet environment
2. Assuming a specifically prescribed, yet comfortable posture
3. Focusing on an object, word, breath, etc. to promote relaxation and calmness
4. Allowing thoughts and distractions to flow away

Researchers believed that the combination of relaxation and concentration achieved by those who meditate was what enabled them to get through the experiments without registering pain.

Previous studies have suggested that meditation techniques might allow the release of endorphins, chemicals in the body known to help relieve pain.

It seems clear that learning to relax, particularly in the face of pain or painful medical procedures, may be an effective tool for managing pain, good news for those who face chronic pain and are seeking non-drug alternatives.

We live fast lives today. It has made us quite irritable and restless. Much of what we eat is synthesized or purely junk.

This plays with our body metabolism. Our brain does not get sufficient oxygen and thus our power to focus and memory suffers.

This brings us to a paradox as today is the age when you need these powers the most. You lead hectic office life and have many kinds of duties on your shoulder.

How can you plan to do it without the right concentration and unobstructed memory? This is where meditation comes to the rescue.

Meditation is the process by which you go deep inside your subconscious and try to get tranquility and peace which can fight the friction of everyday life.

The idea is to get in unison with your soul and create mental and spiritual channels through which you can reach to your inner light.

Simply put, meditation brings you closer to the superhuman that resides within all of us. Once, you start doing meditation techniques, you automatically become a lot calmer, you get your energies back in some while [Meditation benefits].

The main cause of heart attacks and strokes, which hits a large part of the population each year, is largely due to accumulated stress and the polluted environment in which we live.

Our society has put aside the well-balanced lifestyle of healthy diets, exercise and those essential moments in which to recuperate during the stressful day.

The working hours have lengthened; there is continual discord and expectations both within our households and at our working places.

Excess drinking and smoking are also major causes of heart disease as is the use of illegal drugs.

All these external and psychological factors contribute to destroy our overall well being, and the more we feel disrupted the more we search for drug remedies, that will on the contrary help to contaminate our system further.

The focal problem lies in the stress; all things psychological can cause actual physical diseases, it is therefore important to start healing the mind.

Meditation is an effective remedy, which will help us, let out all the negative sensations that are accumulated in our body.

Transcendental meditation or TM is believed to alleviate disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity in children, as well as improving and altering other body functions, such as hormone regulation, nervous system and breathing.

This technique is relatively simple; the patient is made at ease, with his eyes closed, while repeating a sentence or word in his mind over and over again, in order to appease his mind and body.

Researchers have found that children can easily apply this meditation technique and that it is very effective in improving their attention, memory and general behaviour.

During a study researchers taught a group of children with problems in language and learning, how to apply the TM technique. Twice a day, every day for a period of ten minutes they meditated using this technique, resulting in an improved level of stress and anxiety.

The teachers also found a remarkable improvement during classes, and were able to teach with less interference.

Larger studies must be carried out to determine whether TM can be effectively used as a cure for ADHD patients, either as the only therapy or in conjunction with other regular treatments.

Want to create positive changes in your life? Then breathwork is a powerful and effective way that includes the use of definite styles of breathing along with meditative processes and deep relaxation.

This mainly refers to various types of conscious alteration of breathing, such as hyperventilation or connecting the exhale and inhale when used within meditation or psychotherapy.

Various specific breathing exercises teach you to breath in a systematic and conscious way, with definite purpose in your mind.

The therapy includes various techniques, such as yoga breathing, chi gong (Chinese breathing exercises), tai chi, rebirthing, holotropic breathwork and some other techniques. Breathwork mainly aims to signify the entire spectrum of breathwork practices in an equal and impartial way.

Breathwork benefits you:

• To relax, distress and resolve the nervous tension and worry of the daily grind and busy modern lives.
• To bring lasting peace, calm and clarity to troubled and busy lives.
• To establish your true direction in achieving the fullest potential.
• To spiritual development and personal growth.
• To heal childhood trauma.
• To create changes fast.
• To release, access and integrate emotions, memories and patterns that are stored in your body and mind that obstruct you to develop potential mentally, spiritually and emotionally.

The Transcendental Meditation technique may be an effective and safe non-pharmaceutical aid for treating ADHD, according to a promising new study.

The pilot study followed a group of middle school students with ADHD who were meditating twice a day in school.

After three months, researchers found over 50 percent reduction in stress and anxiety and improvements in ADHD symptoms.

Effect exceeds expectations

“The effect was much greater than we expected,” said Sarina J. Grosswald, Ed.D., a George Washington University-trained cognitive learning specialist and lead researcher on the study. “The children also showed improvements in attention, working memory, organization, and behavior regulation.”

Grosswald said that after the in-school meditation routine began, “teachers reported they were able to teach more, and students were able to learn more because they were less stressed and anxious.”

Stress interferes with the ability to learn

Prior research shows ADHD children have slower brain development and a reduced ability to cope with stress. “Stress interferes with the ability to learn—it shuts down the brain,” said William Stixrud, Ph.D., a Silver Spring, Maryland, clinical neuropsychologist and co-author of the study.

Read more at EurekAlert

Meditation is one of the best exercises which you can practice everyday.

With many health benefits involved in meditation, there are few reasons which makes you essentially practice meditation every day. Few of them include:

1. Mental clarity: If you are really experiencing stressful days, then to get inner strength and clarity in your mind and also for internal solidity meditation is perfect choice for you.
2. Improved concentration: Regular meditation practice makes you more productive at all aspects of life and helps to enhance your concentration levels.
3. Good health: Many studies believe that meditation helps to treat various illnesses. It reduces the anxiety and stress levels, which are linked with various health problems.
4. Internal inspiration: With meditation practice, one can develop self confidence and internal inspiration in achieving goals of life and makes you emotionally stubborn.
5. You can give up bad habits: Once if you’ve decided that you are struggling with bad habits and want to give them up, regular meditation can help you a lot.
6. Control of mind: Meditation can help you to get out of emotional roller coaster by focusing on your inner self and awareness.

Meditation and energy work helps you to calm the noise in your minds and attain blissful and relaxed state of self-awareness thus empowering you to solve the problems that you face in your daily life.

As a woman, you need to tolerate with the regular task of matching the demands of your family with that of your career.

Today’s hectic lifestyle only increases your stress, so you need to face with the health problems and fatigue. As a result, there is no time for yourself and your ambitions.

In order to come out of this stressful life, meditation greatly helps you. It is easy to learn meditation and it is an important factor in improving the health of your mind and body.

Every woman needs at least 3 different meditation techniques to match her moods and the needs of each day. Here are some of the important things that you need to consider before you are going to practice meditation.

• The very first thing you need to learn is how to make use of pleasurable, sensual meditation techniques along with simple movement meditations.