Ohio State University Research News: KEY TAKE-AWAYS: This LARGEST known randomized controlled trial that included biological measures targeting Breast Cancer Survivors, however a huge take-away is that the researchers believe the results can benefit other groups who suffer from fatigue and inflammation...these days, that's just about everyone in the world due to increased stress. Researchers encouraged participants to practice at home and a secondary analysis showed that more frequent yoga practice produced larger changes in fatigue vitality and depressive symptoms as well as between an average 4 to 6 percent reduction in two of the three pro-inflammatory cytokines. The yoga group also reported significantly improved sleep compared to the control group. “Yoga has many parts to it – meditation, breathing, stretching and strengthening. We think the breathing and meditation components were really important in terms of some of the changes we were seeing,” Kiecolt-Glaser said. So what are you waiting for....get started TODAY.
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Why Meditate?
Learning to meditate has changed my life in ways one can only experience. The first level of meditation I experienced was moving meditation through asana (postures) yoga which is what is most popular in the West. Simultaneously, I learned pranayama (breathing), mantra (mental phrase repetition) and chanting (mantra singing). Meditation has helped me see who I am and has made me kinder (to myself). It is a powerful healing tool. Meditation takes us from activity into silence, giving our body a very deep level of rest. Rest is how the body heals itself, which it does by throwing off the stress, fatigue, and toxins accumulated during our daily life. The silence of pure awareness is extremely refreshing to the mind, which finds it increasingly easy not to cling to old thought-patterns; rigid habits of thinking and feeling begin to fall away of their own accord. When this happens, the mind is actually learning to heal itself. The physical and emotional health benefits of meditation include stress reduction, better sleep, lower blood pressure, decreased depression and anxiety, improved cardiovascular function, and strengthened immunity. Perhaps even more exciting, a growing body of studies is finding that when people meditate on a regular basis, they influence the activity of their genes, helping to "turn on" the good genes and "turn off" the bad ones. Beyond these significant health benefits, the greatest gift of meditation is the sense of calm and inner peace it brings into our daily life. When we meditate, we go beyond the mind's noisy chatter into an entirely different place: the silence of a mind that is not imprisoned by the past or the future. Meditation brings us home to the peace of present moment awareness. How Does Meditation Work? We are all engaged in a continuous internal dialogue in which the meaning and emotional associations of one thought trigger the next, usually without our being consciously aware of the process. Yoga philosophy describes this process as samskara, which can be seen as grooves in the mind that makes flow thoughts in the same direction. Our personal samskaras are created from the memories of our past and can force us to react in the same limited way over and over again. Most people build up an identity on the basis of samskaras without even realizing they are doing this. In meditation we disrupt the unconscious repetition of thoughts and emotions by focusing on a new object of attention. Meditation is one of the best ways to loosen the grip of sticky emotions and connect to our true self, which isn't limited, angry, or fearful, but is infinite, pure consciousness. It gives us a direct experience of our Spirit and in the process dissolves the impurities which are preventing Spirit from shining forth in our lives. Adapted from personal experience and The Chopra Center |
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