Tag Archives: meditation as a cure for mental illness

Behavioral Science, Health, meditation, mental health

The kind of meditation that healing

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The kind of meditation that healing can bring comes from inside. For individuals who exercise it as an everyday ritual, meditation can reap a variety of benefits. Here are just some of the many improvements in your life that meditation can have.

Inner peace is one of the most significant advantages that meditation can provide in the life of a human. A lot of people today would like to find more inner harmony in their lives in this chaotic world that we live in. At times, inner harmony can appear impossible, because life has been too hectic in modern times.

It is through meditation where we can be shown how this active and stressful life can turn off the noise of the mind brought on. We are taught by meditation not to dwell on all the different moving thoughts that clutter our mind. Meditation can show people how to acquire a clear state of mind. And the trick to feeling true inner happiness can be done through this.

Reference
“Meditation for Healing – Gaiam.” https://www.gaiam.com/blogs/discover/meditation-for-healing. Accessed 5 Nov. 2020.

Behavioral Science, meditation, mental health, positive thinking

Meditation and Discomfort

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Any person who has heard about the expression in regards to the power of mind over matter will readily comprehend the benefit of meditation on individuals suffering from various other technological, physical pain.

This document will cope with several methods which serve meditation can help in alleviating one’s condition.

Concentration techniques in meditation should help in easing someone’s suffering by keeping his/her mind a little distance from way to obtain the pain. Usually, the pain is magnified because people opt to pay attention to it.

If their attention is trained elsewhere, the suffering
becomes more secure.

Another method is called mindfulness meditation. This
involves being aware of one’s present condition and
accepting it, therefore. Any time a person accepts he/she is currently managing, managing it is certainly much less complicated.

Then there’s visualization. It would be thought to be some self-hypnosis. It has been produced by creating an image of the discomfort and imagining it moving further from the body.

As suggested by these methods, they would not get rid of the pain that is caused by the person. Instead, they design coping with the suffering much less complicated.

This is also the sole reason why methods like those mentioned should be paired with useful medical advice. The fact is, consulting one’s doctor is strongly advised before even testing the meditation exercises out.

Otherwise, there will be a risk of overlooking tougher
case could well be inducing the pain. Along with the
proper high quality, meditation will enhance an individual’s tolerance for pain.

Author Resource Box:
Meditation and Pain. https://theworldofkungfu.com/meditation/meditation-and-pain/

Health, meditation

Can Meditation Cure Disease?

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Can the power of the mind help humans self-heal? That such a category of scientists is hoping to help determine by studying a Tibetan lama who believes he cured himself of gangrene through meditation.

When Tibetan Lama Phakyab Rinpoche immigrated towards the United States in 2003, joe a 37-year-old refugee with diabetes and Pott’s Disease, his afflictions make so bad that his right foot and leg had developed gangrene. He cannot be charged with illegal trespass hospitalized and examined by three different doctors in Ny city who all gave the very same treatment recommendation: amputate.

Few people might go against such a professional, but Rinpoche (pronounced Rin-Poh-Chey) is sadly no average person. He was born in 1966 in Kham, Tibet, joe ordained from the age of 13 and named the Eighth Incarnation of the Phakyab Rinpoche by the Dalai Lama himself when he was working toward the highest level of Tibetan Buddhist study, the Geshe degree, in 1993. A profoundly spiritual man who has devoted his life towards the teachings of Buddhism, finally, it was only natural he should reach out to his mentor, His Holiness the Dalai Lama when deciding either to allow his leg to get interrupted.

The Dalai Lama’s response was shocking: Do not amputate. Instead, Lama Rinpoche says, the Tibetan spiritual leader advised his protégé to use his virtuoso skills at Tsa Lung meditation — heal himself, and after that teach others the value of considering the ancient tradition. He sent notice prescribing new mantras, for example, the Hayagriva, which, at the beginning of the latest endeavors, is said to clear obstacles and provide protection in their tradition.

It was a call that would require an incomprehensible leap of faith. But Rinpoche says there is a little question within him. Though doctors had got it clear, he could die, joe not afraid. “As a Buddhist, what exactly is the worst thing that could happen if I die?” he told The Daily Beast with a translator. “I could well be reborn again. But to lose a leg available as one lifetime given the fact that i didn’t attempt to put it aside made little sense.”

Consequently, he commenced meditating. Rinpoche says he took no medicine, and his diet was a regular one. He would break for meals—when the lama that was transpiring existing with came home from my place of employment, they might have dinner and luxuriate in conversation—. Still, then he would return meditating before obtaining a quality night’s sleep in the end. Morning, he would awake and return to his routine.

When I started this ritual, Lama Rinpoche remembers, the putrid ooze from his leg ran black; several weeks later, it turned cloudy; he stated and bruising appeared. The swelling increased, and it also was more painful. The odor was sickening; he recalls. But still he felt no doubt.

The progression of the degradation wasn’t naturally halted—his leg was back the dead causes that.

Then, after nine months, he says something started happening that many Americans would consider a miracle. The liquid leaking from his injured leg would run clear. The swelling went down. Soon he could put some weight on it. At ten months, he could walk again, first with crutches. A while later, he was down to one crutch, after which, before also a year had passed, that was transpiring walking by himself.

The progression of a given degradation wasn’t naturally halted—his leg was back beginning with the dead. His diabetes and complicating Tuberculosis have disappeared today too.

Now, a grouping of doctors at Big apple University has begun studying Rinpoche—specifically, his brain. Practitioners of Tsa Lung meditation like Rinpoche visualize a wind (or “lung,” or “prana”) that is consisting of states and cities one’s mental state, moving down the center channel of the bodies, clearing blockages and impurities before next to ever-smaller channels.

“This is a cognitive-behavioral practice that present East-West science suggests might be more effective than any existing strictly Western medical treatment,” says Dr. William C. Bushell, an MIT-affiliated researcher in medical anthropology and director of East-West Research for Tibet House in NY. Gangrene is not curable by current medical treatment once past some point in its progression, except by amputation.

This month, Dr. Bushell and NYU neuroscientist Zoran Josipovic, Ph.D., won Lama Rinpoche’s cooperation in suffering from a functional MRI scan of his brain while meditated seated in the scanner at NYU’s Center for Brain Imaging. In this first scan, the Rinpoche took part in a continuous study of the effects of different meditations on anti-correlated networks inside the brain that Dr. Josipovic has been conducting at NYU.

Bushell wrote a scientific by analyzing and examining the processes occurring inside the same meditation used by Rinpoche inside a letter to Joshua Lederberg, Nobel Prize winner in medicine, some a decade ago. Dr. Lederberg was possibly one giant in the modern age of science, father of molecular biology, infectious disease medicine, and modern genetics. His foundation published the letter which is an adaptation of a scientific paper, posthumously on his website. It speaks of one’s mild-to-moderate hyperthermia result of the ability, which kills bacteria and aids the human body in healing.

“It is not entirely clear coming from a Western science perspective what the winds are, but the scientific evidence suggests to me yet others that this meditative process involving winds includes an increased local flow of blood, the metabolism, and oxygenation,” Bushell explains. “The original scientific model I developed (that’s largely within a theoretical state) was based on, and other things, the pioneering work of Thomas K Hunt, MD, on the antibiotic properties of oxygenation within the bloodstream and surrounding tissues, which resulted in being harmed sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, Calif. Research shows mental imagery introduced to sites of a body, both superficial besides deeper tissues, can in time eventually bring about increased local improve blood flow, metabolism, and oxygenation. Such increases could in principle combat even powerful bacteria, for instance, Staphylococcus aureus, which not only can easily cause gangrene but has grown to be often proof against antibiotics.”

Dr. Bushell’s colleague Dr. Josipovic was also very fascinated about Rinpoche’s abilities and, particularly, regarding the way they may have affected the functional and structural organization of his brain. The early results of the examination are significant again first glance, he avers. They show changes within the vast network of brain areas mediating attention and awareness. The team will publish their findings year after year.

“Overtimes past decade research into ramification meditation on the brain continues to be gaining unprecedented public and scientific attention,” Dr. Josipovic explains. “What these studies have proven is it is feasible to optimize one’s life experience through the cultivation of mental cognitive states generated through meditation, and also that these would be associated with changes inside the anatomical structure of the mental performance or neuroplasticity. But what soon became clear was that one’s good deal of meditation techniques and states of consciousness they engender, pose an amazing challenge for understanding them concerning the established constructs of Western science.”

Dr. Josipovic says that the significant discovery concerning neuroscience that of spontaneously fluctuating resting-state networks among the brain delivers the ways to shed some light on this issue. “On a world level, our brain feels like organized into two large-scale networks: extrinsic, and task-positive system, comprises our brain areas that are active when we are focused on some task or external environment, and the intrinsic, or ‘default’ network, comprises the areas which get active when we reflect on ourselves and own experience.”

These networks are usually anti-correlated within their activity—that is, when a person is “up,” the additional is “down,” he describes. “While this antagonism serves some healthy functions, for example, of helping us pay attention to an activity and not be distracted by daydreaming or irrelevant concerns, we suspect it may also underlie some unhealthy aspects of our everyday experience, which can include excessive fragmentation between self/other and internal/external— the ‘dualistic mind’ several contemplative traditions see as the reason behind our suffering.”

Author Resource Box:

Can Meditation Cure Disease? – The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-meditation-cure-disease

Health, meditation, mental health

Meditation Can Help in Managing Illness

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Meditation is the practice of thinking deeply or focusing one’s mind on getting a period when using the goal of evoking feelings of relaxation and inner peace.

It’s an ancient practice that’s been around for hundreds of years but has gained a resurgence in recent years, as researchers study it to determine its effects on health.

A range of studies has established several benefits to Meditation, including using it for being a tool in managing chronic illnesses.

Meditation and Mental Health

Considering Meditation is targeted on calming the brain, it may be natural to assume that this strategy can assist reduce warning signs of depression and anxiety.

While it is not a universal cure, many individuals suffering from these mental illnesses find some relief in practicing Meditation. And there’s scientific proof to back the benefits.

A meta-analysis published in March 2014 within the journal JAMA Internal Medicine discovered that mindful meditation programs over eight weeks could help ease warning signs of depression and anxiety. (1) Researchers from Johns Hopkins reviewed greater than 18,000 studies and realized 47 trials met their criteria for well-designed research. Overall, data on 3,515 participants were collected.

Another study, published in June 2016 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, showed that mindfulness-based therapy was as effective in preventing depression relapse as antidepressants for all those with recurrent depression. (2) Yet the authors note that the findings were dependent on a limited range of trials and could use to get replicated. Furthermore, there is no way to share with yet which patients may be helped by mindful Meditation, and that may respond better to medication.

If you’re on antidepressants, One must confer with one’s doctor before making any changes to one’s treatment plan. The health care provider can also assist One in determining if Meditation is a proper tool that will help One manage a mental health condition.

Meditation and Heart-healthy living

Lately, there’s been an increasing interest in the effects of Meditation on heart-healthy life. Lowering the intensity of one’s stress, which Meditation can aid with, can assist keep blood pressure in check, and help the heart.

Research published in September 2014 inside the American Journal of Hypertension showed that people who practiced yoga, which contains aspects of Meditation for eight weeks, saw a very slight drop in blood flow compared with those who don’t. (3) Still, while it’s suspected which the benefits were because of both physical activity and stress reduction, there was no way to separate each to measure the impression of each.

Mladen Golubic, MD, Ph.D., a health care professional at the Center for Lifestyle Management at the Cleveland Clinic in Lyndhurst, Ohio, points to more research, published in the American Journal of Hypertension, that found transcendental Meditation may have the possibility and this reduces arterial pressure. (4) “Even in patients with difficult-to-control arterial pressure who likely will be two or three medications, randomized clinical control trials have showed that after they learn and practice transcendental meditation, they could improve their blood flow and in reality, a few of them could get off medications sometimes.”

How Integrative Therapy May help Drop one’s Systolic pressure

In 2017, the American Heart Association (AHA) issued its first-ever statement on Meditation, saying the procedure may reduce the likelihood of cardiac disease. (5) Previous to producing the report, a committee of experts analyzed 57 studies on different “sitting meditations,” namely mindful Meditation and transcendental Meditation. The people don’t look at Meditation that incorporated physical workouts, such as yoga, since exercise itself has been confirmed to benefit one’s heart muscle.

Even though the research suggested there appears to become a link between Meditation and decreased danger of cardiac disease, the AHA emphasizes that further research requires done. People should highlight proven lifestyle modifications to reduce heart condition risk, to include a healthy eating regimen, workouts, smoking cessation, arterial pressure control, and managing cholesterol levels. At this point, Meditation should be viewed as a further boost toward cardiovascular health, the AHA says.

Meditation as a Treatment for Chronic Pain

Just like the nation continues to be afflicted by the opioid epidemic, researchers want alternate strategies to help patients find relief from chronic pain. One technique they usually have used is mindfulness meditation, and there’s some research to suggest it will probably help.

Research published in March 2016 within the Journal of one’s American Medical Association found mindful-based stress-relief therapy helped improve symptoms into adults with chronic lower back pain. (6)

Another study, published in March 2016 among The Journal of Neuroscience discovered that mindful Meditation could help ease chronic pain by applying a different pathway in the human body than just that addictive opioid painkillers use that. (7)

Dr. Golubic notes that meditation practice, besides yoga, seems to decrease inflammation in white blood cells.

“The higher inflammation One will have, the better pain One have,” he says. “How aspirin, ibuprofen, each one of other NSAIDs, work is they inhibit those pain mediators which get inflammatory.”

If Meditation reduces inflammation, this will likely function as the mechanism that reduces pain, he explains.

More studies must on the old Meditation on chronic pain, but researchers say it is encouraging that it literally could be an alternative or supplementary therapy.

Meditation and Cancer

There’s a reason to believe Meditation can assist cancer patients. Some research implies that Meditation can even change one’s body upon the cellular level. Studies published in November 2014 among the journal Cancer revealed that the telomeres — the protein caps by the end of DNA strands that protect chromosomes — of breast cancer patients who practiced mindfulness meditation stayed the same length over the three-month study period. (8)

In comparison, participants who did not mediate had shorter telomeres over now. While scientists still are looking to learn about the health impact of telomere length, they think longer ones have protective benefits against disease.

Meditation might also help cancer survivors have to cope with the emotional distress that always accompanies the condition. Research published in April 2015 among the journal Cancer found that mindfulness meditation reduced stressed and slightly reduced problems of depression in breast cancer patients. (9)

“Just being diagnosed with cancer is stressful enough, but then going through most of the treatments as well going through all the tests and worrying if

 cancer seems to reappear back, that’s all additional stress,” Golubic says.

How Meditation Can change Sleep

Meditation promotes relaxation, so it seems logical that practicing it would encourage good Sleep. And there’s a scientific research that backs claiming up, too.

Studies published in April 2015 among the journal JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that participants who practiced mindfulness meditation had less insomnia, fatigue, and warning signs of depression at the end of a six-week program than individuals that doesn’t practice mindfulness meditation. (10)

As stated by the National Sleep Foundation, Meditation has been known to decrease the utilization of the help of sleeping pills. Furthermore, combining Meditation with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) shows up to improve Sleep faster than CBT-I alone. (11)

Meditation plus the Gut

While researchers are still attempting to comprehend better the relationship connecting the mind and the gut, they believe there is a connection where one plays a vital role in the other.

Stress seems to exacerbate symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and irritable bowel diseases (IBDs), like Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. Diarrhea, abdominal pain, and fatigue that can include both conditions can also cause stress, so scientists are functioning to locate techniques to help break this vicious cycle. One particular way is Meditation.

An account published in August 2015 within the journal PLoS ONE found that the relief response that comes from engaging in such activities as meditation, yoga, and repetitive prayer significantly improved symptoms of both IBS and IBD, reduced anxiety, and improved overall standard of living. (12)

Similarly, a study published in April 2017 in inside the journal Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics showed that people with ulcerative colitis who practiced yoga meditation reported a rise in energy levels and overall health and reduces in disease activity. (13)

Author Resource Box:

How Meditation Can Help Manage Illness | Everyday Health. https://www.everydayhealth.com/meditation/manage-illness/