Meditation, Prayer and Yoga… New Study Just Released!
Good morning! I want to share something exciting with you this week: A
new study from Harvard confirms that prayer, meditation and yoga can
rebuild the brain’s grey matter in just eight weeks. It’s the very first
study to document that meditation produces such changes.
When it comes to “prayer” or “distant healing” — directing human
attention on physical systems — significant results warrant further
investigation. Scientists at the Heart Math Institute have demonstrated
that when a person is feeling really good and is full of positive
emotions such as love, gratitude and appreciation, his/her heart beats
out a different message that’s encoded in its electromagnetic field
which, in turn, has positive overall health effects.
Meditation, yoga and prayer are all grouped into a category the medical
community calls “relaxation-response techniques.” Studies show that these
techniques directly affect physiologic factors such as heart rate, blood
pressure, stress, anxiety, oxygen consumption and more.
Based on data from 4,000 people who participated in the BHI Relaxation
Response Resiliency Program over the past eight years, and comparing it
with 14,000 participants engaging in the relationship program, there was
an average reduction of 43% in regular healthcare services in the year
following their participation in the project.
Something to
Think About
Herbert Benson, founder and director emeritus of the BHI and co-author of
the current study, had this to say: “I think of it this way: There are
many gates to wellness, but not everyone is ready to walk through a
particular gate at a given time. From a public health perspective, it is
better to be prepared to offer these tools to people in their customary
settings than to wait for them to seek out these interventions. For that
reason, we feel that mind-body interventions – which are both low-cost
and essentially risk-free – should perhaps be incorporated into regular
preventive care.” Ask yourself: Are you willing to walk through that
gate?
Weekly Challenge
This is a special and important message for those you love. Grey matter
contains most of the brain's neuronal cell bodies. It includes regions of
the brain involved in muscle control and sensory perception such as
seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision-making and
self-control. Do you know someone suffering in any of these areas? With
meditation, yoga and/or prayer, they can start to see improvement in just
eight weeks. That’s amazing!
Words of Wisdom
“Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts,
unguarded.” – Buddha
“It feels good. Kinda like when you have to shut your computer down, just
sometimes when it goes crazy, you just shut it down and when you turn it
on, it’s okay again. That’s what meditation is to me.” – Ellen DeGeneres
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes a day, unless you are
too busy — then you should sit for an hour.” – Author Unknown
“Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God.” –
Author Unknown
“Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak.” – Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
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