With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body.
A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation.
Stress is part of everyday life and can be beneficial. But high levels over a long period can be seriously bad for our health.
What creates the mind's inner chatter? For lack of a better term, "The Narrator" is created by the language loop of the brain's left hemisphere (a circuit of fibers that connect Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the frontal cortex to the temporal cortex). Developmental psychologists like Lev Vygotsky suggested that the formation of inner talk in childhood begins as a self-regulating tool, a way to internalize the instructive voices of our caretakers for occasions when we are alone in the world, or caught in circumstances we cannot interact verbally to seek guidance.
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Science shows why it’s healthy and how it spreads, By Emma Seppala
Decades of clinical research has focused and shed light on the psychology of human suffering. That suffering, as unpleasant as it is, often also has a bright side to which research has paid less attention: compassion. Human suffering is often accompanied by beautiful acts of compassion by others wishing to help relieve it. What led 26.5 percent of Americans to volunteer in 2012 (according to statistics from the US Department of Labor)? What propels someone to serve food at a homeless shelter, pull over on the highway in the rain to help someone with a broken down vehicle, or feed a stray cat?
Scientists have now discovered how mindfulness meditation can give patients control over levels of
Rick Hanson PhD, Jul 15, 2013
Five Ways to Make Mindfulness More Manly
In Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel.”
From the moment you are conceived, right up until the moment you take your last breath, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
When I talk to people about how much they experience joy, most say, “Not so much.” Joy is not a frequent visitor, and when it does appear, it’s fleeting.
Joy arises when we are open to both the beauty and suffering inherent in living. Like a great sky that includes all different types of weather, joy is an expansive quality of presence. It says “Yes to life, no matter what!” Yet it’s infrequency lets us know our more habitual posture: resisting what’s happening, saying “No” to the life that is here and now. We tend to override our innate capacity for joy with our incessant inner dialogue, our chronic attempts to avoid unpleasantness and to hold on to pleasure. Rather than joy in the present moment, we are trying to get somewhere else, to experience something that is better, different.
The great French writer, André Gide, said:
Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter that acts as a hormone. Often considered a major player in the regulation of trust and morality, its study is revealing fascinating information about human behavior and relationships. Oxytocin is released in the body when we feel safe and connected and tells the brain, “Everything is all right.” Dr. Paul Zak has determined that the human brain naturally produces oxytocin during breast-feeding, orgasm, hugs, snuggling, holding hands, partner dance, massage, bodywork, and prayer.
Relaxed and Contented: Activating the Parasympathetic Wing of Your Nervous System, © Rick Hanson, PhD, 2007
It’s remarkable but true: part of your nervous system exists to you feel peaceful and alright. Its formal title is: “the parasympathetic wing of the autonomic nervous
system” or PNS, for short.
You can trigger the PNS at will, which immediately lowers your sense of stress, brings health benefits like reducing blood pressure and strengthening the immune system,
and lifts your mood. This gives you more control over your inner landscape – a nice thing at times when the outer world seems driven by forces that are beyond your
Overcoming what some researchers are calling “mental defeat” is viewed as a means to help someone with chronic pain regain control over their life. Experts say the relatively new concept of mental defeat has previously been associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers define mental defeat as a state in which someone with chronic pain views it as an “enemy” which takes over his or her life, eroding autonomy and identity.
Bodhipaksa Mar 16, 2013
Research into benefits of meditation on mental health The following is a summary, compiled by Breathing Space, LBC London, of recent research into the positive effects of meditation on mental health.
1. Introduction
What is unfolding when nothing much of anything is going on with you? I encourage you to check out for yourself what is going on at such times. For most of us, usually it is thinking. Thinking is going on. It takes lots of different forms.
