| Dr. Jai Maharaj 2006-01-08, 11:42 am |
| MEDITATION BEATS HOLIDAY STRESS
Forwarded message from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaVegans
[ Subject: Meditation beats holiday stress
[ From: "Fidyl" <fidyl@yahoo.com>
[ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005
Meditation beats holiday stress
When life gets chaotic, meditation comes in handy
By Breuse Hickman
Florida Today
December 6, 2005
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pb.../512060310/1005
Try this at home
Here are basic meditation tips to help you relax:
Pick a word, short phrase or prayer that is firmly rooted in your
belief system that will help you focus. Try words like "peace," "one"
or a religious word or phrase.
Sit quietly in a comfortable position. Some prefer yoga positions as
practiced in the East. Others prefer a more Western stance: Sit in a
chair where your spine is straight and your feet are comfortably flat
on the floor. Hands should face upward on your lap.
Close or lower your eyes.
Breathe slowly. Exhale through your mouth and inhale through your
nose.
Other thoughts may cross your mind, but it doesn't mean your session
needs to end. Say to yourself "later" and return to your breathing
and/or visualization.
Try to meditate for 5 to 20 minutes, preferably twice a day.
Meditation is a discipline. So try to practice it at the same time
every day.
Holiday to-do list:
Buy and wrap gifts
Send greeting cards
Bake cookies
Decorate Christmas tree
Light the menorah
Visit family
Entertain relatives.
Oh, cripes, the kids need to be picked up from
soccer/basketball/French horn practice, and the post office closes at
5 p.m.
Long lines at the store aren't helping matters, and it's going to
take more than watered down eggnog to take the edge off. Maybe what
you need is to just stop the world, have a comfortable seat and catch
a few ohmms.
That's right. Want to feel better and maybe chase some of that
negative inner dialogue away? Meditate. Two decades' worth of
research suggests meditating -- be it visualization, prayer or
shutting yourself off from your surroundings -- can significantly
reduce stress levels.
A busy lifestyle is no excuse. In fact, meditators say that's why you
need to do it.
"If you take the time to meditate, you actually create more time in
your life," says Cheri Eplett owner of Indialantic's Aquarian Dreams,
which specializes in books and CDs about meditation. "You are more
efficient because you're less stressed. So meditation is a good
investment of time."
Perhaps the biggest meditation motivator lies in a recent, small
scientific study that suggests locating the ohhhm can make you live
longer.
Last month, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital released a
study showing areas of the cerebral cortex -- the outer layer of the
brain -- were thicker in the participants who regularly meditated.
The study, which appeared in a recent article in NeuroReport,
described results from 20 people who meditated regularly.
These people had four regions of cortex -- the part of the brain,
associated with higher functions like memory and decision making --
that were thicker than in 15 subjects who didn't meditate.
In addition, researchers found signs that one area of the cortex
seemed to have aged less quickly than it did in the folks who didn't
meditate. Researchers are doing follow-up studies to see how
meditation might effect behavior.
Dr.Wasim Niazi, a neurologist at Wuesthoff Rockledge, says more
research needs to be done to confirm meditation's anatomical changes
on the brain.
But he does agree mediation results in relaxation, which has been
proven to reduce stress and help people focus better during their
waking hours -- and sleep better at night.
"But all modalities of meditation have something in common in that
they are about disconnecting yourself from the impulses you are
receiving -- the noise and the worries," Niazi says. "Consider that
100 impulses reach the brain every per second and most are
subconscious."
Al Rapaport, founder of Melbourne's Open Mind Zen Center says it's
such impulses that "make us subject to a monkey mind," he says.
"Meditation helps us slow down that internal dialogue."
But meditation practitioners say studies only reinforce what they
already know.
"We've known for nearly 20 years that meditation effects the
physiology of brain chemistry and this (Massachusetts study) is the
first one I've seen in which meditation directly effects the brain,"
says Rapaport, who also is author of the book "Open Mind Zen: A Guide
to Meditation." "But for meditators, the laboratory is our own body
and mind. We get the results through our experiences."
The Zen center specializes in group meditation, but Rapaport
encourages people to meditate at home as well.
"All the techniques are designed to help focus the mind," Rapaport
says.
Eplet prefers to use visualization techniques and sit in a
comfortable position, feet flat on the floor, her palms upward in a
receiving position. Others prefer to focus on breathing.
The goal is to practice daily -- but don't worry about being perfect
at it.
"A lot of people don't meditate because they are under the impression
they must clear their mind and think of nothing for 20 minutes," says
Andrea de Michaelis, who publishes the Brevard County-based Horizons.
She meditates twice a day. And she gets better at it each time, she
says.
"When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is make myself
sit when my mind is still in that foggy place," de Michaelis says.
"Once I start the process with the breathing, the cobwebs start to
clear. If a concrete thought or worry crosses my mind I can release
the thought by saying the word 'later,' which satisfies the concrete
mind that wants to hang on to something.
Don't worry if you can't schedule a 10 or 20 minute stop-action
timeframe.
"Meditating for three minutes is better than nothing," she says. "For
people with kids, it can be a matter of locking yourself in the
bathroom and take a bath -- and hope you won't be interrupted more
than 30 times."
Contact Hickman at 242-3789 or bhickman@flatoday.net
End of forwarded message from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaVegans
Jai Maharaj
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The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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