Do you meditate? If not, have you ever wondered whether taping into this ancient practice might be of benefit to you?
Daily meditation has been shown to:
- Help you enter into a deep and very satisfying state of relaxation.
- Reduce stress.
- Rejuvenate your body and your soul.
- Reconnect your mind with your body in a profound way.
- Empowers you to make positive healthy changes.
- Opens you up for inspiration and creative energy.
- Allows you to become more compassionate.
- Improves sexual and spiritual intimacy with others.
- Helps you attract more money and more success.
- Gives you a better understanding of your inner most desires and how to achieve them.
I see this list and immediately think this is too good to be true. I have always believed in the power of positive thinking but this seems far-fetched to my scientific mind. But then I began reading the science behind these claims and it appears that meditation causes physiological and physical changes that are measurable and scientifically documented.
A “Mindfulness/Meditation” study at Duke University Research Center in 2008, states:
Objective: To briefly review the effects of mindfulness on the mind, the brain, the body, and behavior. A total of 52 exemplars of empirical and theoretical work were selected for review. Both basic and clinical research indicate that cultivating a more mindful way of being is associated with less emotional distress, more positive states of mind, and better quality of life. In addition, mindfulness practice can influence the brain, the autonomic nervous system, stress hormones, the immune system, and health behaviors, including eating, sleeping, and substance use, in salutary ways. The application of cutting-edge technology toward understanding mindfulness— an “inner technology”—is elucidating new ways in which attention, awareness, acceptance, and compassion may promote optimal health—in mind, body, relationships, and spirit. (1)
Reviewing other studies showing the correlation between meditation and physical health, I was equally impressed by the statistics.
In a research study of health insurance data, meditators had 87% less hospitalizations for heart disease, 55% fewer for tumors and 30% fewer for infectious diseases. The meditators had more than 50% fewer doctor visits than did non-meditators. (2) Meditation increases circulation in beginning meditators by 30% and in experienced meditators by as much as 65%. (3)
So how does meditation actually work on our physical being? There are Brain Wave Frequency’s that are measured in cps (cycles per second) and when you sit down to meditate your brain waves shift and allow you to enter a deeper level of consciousness.
|
Brain Wave Frequency (cycles per seconds) |
|||
| Beta14-21 cps and higher.Walking state, the five senses. Perception of time and spaces. | Alpha7-14 cps.Light sleep, meditation, intuition. No time and space limitation. | Theta4-7 cps.Deep sleep, meditation. | Delta0-4 cps.Deeper sleep. You are unconscious at Delta. |
Further advancements in using meditation to help in our physical and spiritual well-being have certainly become main stream. Physicist, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered binaural beats which are specially engineered sounds that affect these brain wave patterns to produce the desired positive effects. These benefits include better focus, increased creativity, greater problem solving, better pain management and even greater learning abilities. This was in 1839 and there are now entire teams of bio-engineers that work on improving these technological advances.
Join us tomorrow when we discuss “How to meditate”!
Until then, Healthy Blessings,
Sandy Scherschligt
Want to super charge your meditation abilities or learn how to meditate, check out this FREE sample from Omharmonics. I use this program and found it has really helped!
Sources:
1 http://chp.sagepub.com/content/14/1/10.short
2 D. Orme-Johnson, Pschosomatic Medicine 49 (1987): 493-507.
3 Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan, The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation (Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1997).
