What's New
May 31st 2010A Botox gap in understanding emotion
By Siri Carpenter, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Botox may be famous for erasing frown lines, but it also may disrupt an important chain of communication between the face and the brain.
Not only do our facial expressions reflect our emotional ups and downs, they appear to send crucial feedback to our brain, suggests a growing body of research. Without that full feedback loop, our ability to understand — and be understood — might be constrained.
In a recent study of women undergoing cosmetic treatment with Botox, researchers found that the treatment, which blocks facial nerve impulses, seemed to slow the ability to comprehend emotional language.
"We know that language moves us emotionally," said the lead author, David Havas, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "What this study shows is that that's partly because it moves us physically."
Those findings, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, complement earlier research showing that mimicking emotional expression triggers a matching emotional response, says Fritz Strack, a psychologist who was not involved in the research and who studies emotion and cognition at the University of Würzburg in Germany.
He cited, as an example, the response elicited by holding a pen in one's teeth, activating the muscles used in smiling. In studies using this pen-in-mouth procedure, which Strack and his colleagues pioneered, people actually feel happier and respond more positively to stimuli such as cartoons when they hold a pen between their teeth than when they hold it between their lips, which forces a frown.
In a study published in 2007, Havas and colleagues built upon those findings. They found that participants holding a pen in the "smile" position read happy sentences — such as "Finally, you reach the summit of the tall mountain" — more quickly than they did while holding the pen in the "frown" position. In contrast, participants read sad sentences — such as "You hold back your tears as you enter the funeral home" — more quickly when holding a pen in the "frown" position.
Similarly, research using electromyography, or EMG, to measure fine muscle activity indicates that written materials' emotional meaning triggers activity in specific facial muscles. For example, reading words such as "murder" or "fight" activates the corrugator supercilii, a muscle anchored above the nose that spreads outward across the brow. This muscle is responsible for the parallel, vertical furrows produced when a person frowns.
Frown line links
Such findings have raised the question of whether emotional expression is itself necessary for fluid processing of emotional language, Havas says.
In the new study, he and colleagues investigated whether temporarily paralyzing the corrugator muscle blocked people's ability to process negative emotional language.
The researchers asked 40 women waiting to receive first-time Botox injections to read a series of 60 sentences on a computer, pressing a key when they understood each sentence. To make sure participants were actually reading the sentences, the researchers periodically checked their reading comprehension. Participants repeated the test, using a fresh set of questions, two weeks later when the Botox treatment's paralyzing effect was at its height.
After treatment, participants were slower to understand sentences conveying sadness or anger than they had been before treatment. There was no such change for happy sentences. Mood analyses ruled out the possibility that the women were simply happier after receiving Botox, making them quicker to comprehend happier material.
The results indicate that our own facial expressions help the brain make sense of the social world, Havas says.
"Our facial expressions reveal social context by mirroring expressions of those around us, giving us insight into their emotions, states of mind, and future actions," he says. The Botox study, he says, suggests that our facial expressions also guide how we interpret language.
When the face's ability to provide feedback is disabled, as in Botox treatment, our understanding is hindered.
The new findings fit with the increasingly accepted theory that aspects of higher thought, such as language, judgment, and memory, are shaped by our bodily sensations and movements, says Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist at Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and a leading scholar on the role of the body in emotion. According to this "embodied" view of cognition, which has gained popularity over the last decade or so, the brain makes sense of the world at least partly by simulating action.
In keeping with this view, some researchers suspect emotional language triggers the same neural systems used in real emotional experiences — including those brain signals produced by our own facial expressions.
This idea finds support in neuroscience. Last year, scientists in Germany used neuroimaging to study people's brain activity while they were imitating emotional facial expressions such as anger. They found that Botox treatment of frown muscles blunted neural activity in brain areas that are involved in emotional responding.
Useful muscles
It might be tempting to conclude, from such results, that getting Botox could help blot out unhappiness. But Niedenthal cautions that the opposite is true. "There are about 20 muscles of the face that produce the major expressions of emotion," she says. "We are supposed to use them in order to understand and communicate subtle meaning in social life."
In the new study, Botox-induced paralysis only slowed down participants' response to angry and sad sentences by about a tenth of a second, on average. But such effects can snowball when communicating with others. "Language is highly interactive, and we're very, very sensitive to all kinds of cues that happen on the order of milliseconds," says Arizona State University psychologist Arthur Glenberg, one of the study's authors.
Timing is crucial, for example, in the ritual of taking turns during conversation. Let's say that, in a marital disagreement, your spouse is repeatedly just a tenth of a second too slow in responding, leaving the mounting impression of disinterest or failure to comprehend. If such delays were chronic, Glenberg says, "That's enough time for a person to get really pissed off."
On the Verge of ‘Vital Exhaustion’?
By BENEDICT CAREY
Decades ago modern medicine all but stamped out the nervous breakdown, hitting it with a combination of new diagnoses, new psychiatric drugs and a strong dose of professional scorn. The phrase was overused and near meaningless, a self-serving term from an era unwilling to talk about mental distress openly.
But like a stubborn virus, the phrase has mutated.
In recent years, psychiatrists in Europe have been diagnosing what they call “burnout syndrome,” the signs of which include “vital exhaustion.” A paper published last year defined three types: “frenetic,” “underchallenged,” and “worn out” (“exasperated” and “bitter” did not make the cut).
This is the latest umbrella term for the kind of emotional collapses that have plagued humanity for ages, stemming at times from severe mental difficulties and more often from mild ones. There have been plenty of others. In the early decades of the 20th century, many people simply referred to a crackup, including “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1936 collection of essays describing his own. And before that there was neurasthenia, a widely diagnosed and undefined nerve affliction causing just about any symptom people cared to add.
Yet medical historians say that, for versatility and descriptive power, it may be hard to improve upon the “nervous breakdown.” Coined around 1900, the phrase peaked in usage during the middle of the 20th century and echoes still. One recent study found that 26 percent of respondents to a national survey in 1996 reported that they had experienced an “impending nervous breakdown,” compared with 19 percent from the same survey in 1957.
“ ‘Nervous breakdown’ is one of those sturdy old terms, like ‘melancholia’ and ‘nervous illness,’ that haven’t really been surpassed, although they sound antiquated,” the historian Edward Shorter, co-author with Max Fink of the book “Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia,” said in an e-mail message.
Never a proper psychiatric diagnosis, the phrase always struck most doctors as inexact, pseudoscientific and often misleading. But those were precisely the qualities that gave it such a lasting place in the popular culture, some scholars say. “It had just enough medical sanction to be useful, but did not depend on medical sanction to be used,” said Peter N. Stearns, a historian at George Mason University near Washington, D.C.
A nervous breakdown was no small thing in the 1950s or ’60s, at least by the time a person arrived at a doctor’s office. Psychiatrists today say that, most often, it was code for an episode of severe depression — or psychosis, the delusions that often signal schizophrenia.
“I don’t remember people who got that label ever using it as their own complaint — it was very much stigmatized,” said Dr. Nada L. Stotland, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association and a professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago, who began practicing in the 1960s. “Whether it was ‘nervous exhaustion’ or ‘nervous breakdown,’ anything that sounded psychiatric was stigmatized at that time. It was shameful, humiliating.”
The vagueness of the phrase made it impossible to survey the prevalence of any specific mental problem: It could mean anything from depression to mania or drunkenness; it might be the cause of a bitter divorce or the result of a split. And glossing over those details left people who suffered from what are now well-known afflictions, like postpartum depression, entirely in the dark, wondering if they were alone in their misery.
But that same imprecision allowed the speaker, not medical professionals, to control its meaning. People might be on the verge of, or close to, a nervous breakdown; and it was common enough to have had “something like” a nervous breakdown, or a mild one. The phrase allowed a person to disclose as much, or as little, detail about a “crackup” as he or she saw fit. Vagueness preserves privacy.
Dr. Shorter said that the term “nervous” has traditionally been a “weasel word” for mental troubles, implying that the cause was something physical beyond the person’s control — their damaged nerves, not their mind. And a breakdown, after all, is something that happens to cars. It’s a temporary problem; or at least, not necessarily chronic.
Through the ages, every generation has attributed its own catchall diagnosis to larger cultural changes. Industrialization. Modernization. The digital age. The 19th-century philosopher William James reportedly called neurasthenia, from which he claimed to suffer himself, “Americanitis,” in part the result of the accelerating pace of American life. So it was with breakdowns. The causes were largely external — and recovery a matter of better managing life’s demands.
“People accepted the notion of nervous breakdown often because it was construed as a category that could handled without professional help,” concluded a 2000 analysis by Dr. Stearns, Megan Barke and Rebecca Fribush. The popularity of the phrase, they wrote, revealed “a longstanding need to keep some distance from purely professional diagnoses and treatments.”
Many did just that, and returned to work and family. Others did not. They needed a more specific diagnosis, and targeted treatment. By the 1970s, more psychiatric drugs were available, and doctors directly attacked the idea that people could effectively manage breakdowns on their own.
Psychiatrists proceeded to slice problems like depression and anxiety into dozens of categories, and public perceptions shifted, too. In 1976, 26 percent of people admitted seeking professional help, up from 14 percent in 1947, according to Dr. Stearns’s analysis. And “nervous breakdown” began to fade from use.
The same fate may or may not await “burnout syndrome,” which for now has backing from some doctors and medical researchers. But it has another 30 years to outlast the classic “breakdown.”
Meditation may be the Future of Anti-Aging, Part I
(NaturalNews) According to the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, 90% of all adult illness is due to the degenerative processes of aging. Anti-aging medicine, aiming for longevity and optimal health, is most certainly the 'specialty' of the future and is based on the early detection, prevention and reversal of age-related disease. While science continues to search for answers, research has already revealed that meditation is a potent anti-aging practice that can take years off your physiological age.
STRESS = AGING
Aging is most certainly a complex issue with many factors coming into play, but one thing that researchers do agree on is that stress (mental, emotional, and physical) causes us to age.
Eva Selhub, MD, Medical Director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute says, "If we can affect the stress response, we can affect the aging process." She says "There`s a reason why experienced meditators live so long and look so young." (The Anti-Aging Effects of Meditation; http://www.more.com/2025/2674-the-a...)
In a recent interview with CNN, Dan Buettner, author of "The Blue Zones" and researcher into longevity hotspots around the world, suggests small lifestyle changes can add up to 10 years to most people`s lives. He says aging is 10% genetic and 90% lifestyle. Buettner stated that having mechanisms to shed stress, like prayer and meditation, was of high importance in the longevity hotspots he studied and a major factor in long-term health and aging.
Dr. Robert Keith Wallace was one of the first scientists to study the effects of meditation on aging and he published his findings in the International Journal of Neuroscience (16: 53 58, 1982). His research was based on the practice of Transcendental Meditation.
Dr. Wallace found that subjects with an average chronological age of 50 years, who had been practicing Transcendental Meditation for over 5 years, had a biological age 12 years younger than their chronological age. That means a 55-year-old meditator had the physiology of a 43-year-old.
Several of the subjects in the study were found to have a biological age 27 years younger than their chronological age. This study has since been replicated several times. Other studies have also shown the beneficial effects of Transcendental Meditation on the aging process. (The Transcendental Meditation Program; http://www.tmprogram.com.au/book/ch... )
History reveals many examples of seemingly `ageless` saints, dedicated to the practice of meditation, whose lives have demonstrated the enormous capacity of the human body to live much longer than today`s average life span.
Yes, these `ageless` saints and yogis practically dedicated their whole lives to meditation but even we, as average householders, can potentially live much longer, healthier lives. Meditation has revealed itself to be one of the most beneficial practices to relieve some of the stress related to aging.
Bernard Siegel, M.D., Professor, Yale University School of Medicine, wrote in Love, Medicine and Miracles (New York: Harper and Row, 1986): "Other doctors` scientific research and my own day-to-day clinical experience have convinced me that the state of the mind changes the state of the body by working through the central nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system. Peace of mind sends the body a `live` message, while depression, fear and unresolved conflict give it a `die` message."
"The physical benefits of meditation have recently been well documented by Western medical researchers," says Dr. Siegel. "Meditation also raises the pain threshold and reduces one`s biological age... In short, it reduces wear and tear on both body and mind, helping people live longer and better." (Paramahansa Yogananda. 1995. The Bhagavad Gita, p 379-380)
Kate McGarrigle dies at 63; Canadian folk singer and songwriter
Kate McGarrigle, the Canadian singer and songwriter who, with her sister Anna, recorded a string of critically acclaimed albums of literate and wistfully romantic homespun songs and then became the proud matriarch of an extended folk-rock-pop musical family, died Monday after battling cancer in recent years. She was 63.
McGarrigle died at her home in Montreal surrounded by Anna and their older sister, Jane, as well as Kate's children, singer-songwriters Rufus and Martha Wainwright.
"There were a lot of people in the living room when she went," Rufus Wainwright said Tuesday. "There certainly was an audience. We all sang songs. . . . It was really a beautiful and very mystical thing."
McGarrigle had been diagnosed with cancer in 2006 but with treatment had continued performing periodically. She accompanied Rufus on piano during his 2007 salute to Judy Garland at the Hollywood Bowl, then joined Martha on stage during her daughter's headlining gig the following night at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. Rufus recently postponed an upcoming tour, citing an illness in the family when his mother's condition started deteriorating in December.
Elton John on Tuesday called her death "a sad moment for music and for the Wainwright and McGarrigle families."
Numerous artists recorded songs written by the McGarrigles, including Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Maria Muldaur. Ronstadt's 1974 album "Heart Like a Wheel," which became her first No. 1 album, took its title from the Anna McGarrigle song she recorded on that collection.
A few years later, Ronstadt recorded what became one of Kate's best-known songs, "Talk to Me of Mendocino."
"They were like nothing else," Ronstadt said Tuesday. "Nobody sounded like that, nobody wrote like that. She was a complete original. . . . She had this kind of bravery to her. She was absolutely unabashed -- she made no apologies for the most unbridled sentimentality. But what she wrote was beautifully said, and it had an intelligent and subtle nature to it." The sisters wrote and sang songs plumbing the deepest crevasses of human relationships. Ronstadt said it took her several years after first hearing "Talk To Me of Mendocino" before she felt ready to record Kate's plea to a loved one who is far removed:
Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes, I hear the sea
Must I wait, must I follow?
Won't you say "Come with me?"
"The first time I heard it I was in my car, and I had to pull over to the side of the road and really boo-hoo," Ronstadt said. "There are only a few songs that have affected me like that."
The siblings were given a lifetime achievement award for songwriting in 2005 by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
For most of their careers, they handled their own business affairs, avoiding a professional manager and other industry handlers that might have helped elevate them from their status as cult favorites to broader commercial acceptance. But they both had young children at the time and chose to focus more on raising their children than advancing their careers.
"We don't have a plan," Kate told the Ottawa Citizen in 2005. "We never had a plan. It's worked out, and it hasn't worked out."
Kate McGarrigle was born Feb. 6, 1946, in Montreal, 14 months after Anna, and was raised in St. Sauveur in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec. Their parents, Frank and Gaby, grew up accustomed to music being played at home, before recorded music was widely available. They passed that tradition to their children, who took piano lessons from nuns in the neighborhood. The sisters also became fluent in French, which later yielded two albums sung in French.
Kate and Anna began singing in local coffeehouses and clubs while they were in college, where Kate studied engineering at McGill University. As a following grew for their amalgam of folk, rock, art and theater songs and cabaret, they began playing folk clubs across the border in the United States, and word of their distinctive songwriting and harmonizing began to spread. Singer Maria Muldaur included two of their songs on her debut album and further championed their music among her circle of musician friends at the time.
In recent years, Kate and Anna recorded two albums as "The McGarrigle Family," bringing in their children, siblings and even Kate's former husband, singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, who is Rufus' and Martha's father.
Their albums and concerts often projected an intimacy that their small but loyal audiences prized.
"They had a vibe when you went to see them," Ronstadt said. "You felt privileged that you were invited into their living room -- it wasn't like they had gone on stage and they were performing. It was like you were invited inside this secret world they shared together. It felt like they were just continuing the conversation they'd started while they were doing the breakfast dishes that morning."
McGarrigle is survived by sisters Anna and Jane and children Rufus and Martha Wainwright.
Jan 5th 2010Reduce Stress, Extend Your Life, Thanks to DNA's 'Life-Expectancy' Gene
We've heard for years about the benefits of reducing stress, and how we should make time for activities like meditation, yoga, and plain old relaxation. Now scientific evidence suggests that one of those benefits may actually be a longer life.
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have discovered an enzyme that plays a key role in normal cell function, as well as in cell aging and most cancers. It's called telomerase, and it produces tiny units of DNA that seal off the ends of chromosomes, which contain the body's genes.
The DNA units are called telomeres, and among other things they work to protect the quality of the gene, and how often a cell divides which determines the lifespan of the cells. What's exciting about this discovery is the notion that telomeres can be lengthened to prolong cell life — and along the way treat age-related diseases like blindness, cardiovascular problems and neurodegenerative disorders.
So how can telomeres be lengthened?
The answer could be easier said than done depending upon who you are and your lifestyle. Stress reduction in this era is almost an oxymoron, but if your life depends on it, you might start to prioritize things differently.
To get the best example, UCSF researches chose to study women caring for gravely ill children with chronic illnesses and disabilities. They found that women who were the most traumatized by their situation had significantly shorter telomeres. They reached that conclusion by comparing that group to women with decidedly more normal levels of stress.
The hope is that these eliminating the stressors in these women's daily lives may lengthen their telomeres and prolong their own overall lives.
Getting de-stressed takes work and determination, however. For some it will involve a change in lifestyle and they way they view stress and hardships — think yoga instead of sitting around worrying. The next time you have an extra ten minutes, consider stealing it for meditation … it could do wonders for your health and longevity.
The USCF Research is considered groundbreaking, and the team who discovered the telomere won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology. Hopefully they're on to something
Scientists propose Israelis meditate for peace - Zimbabwe Star
The word "deterrence" comes from the Latin root meaning "fear."
In theory, war is deterred by instilling fear in potential enemies. To this end, Israel is said to have amassed tremendous destructive potential - allegedly 200 nuclear warheads. While this arsenal may incite fear in potential foes, the same fear encourages other countries like Iran to acquire nuclear weapons as well, further inflaming regional tensions and hatred. For this reason, no country committed to defense solely through destructive power is likely to generate a trust-based, peaceful atmosphere.
Diplomacy and economic sanctions likewise have not been sufficient to resolve the fear crisis - which is driven by human behavioral dynamics that cannot be controlled by such methods alone.
War and conflict are human problems requiring human solutions. The underlying cause of conflict is accumulated social stress. Therefore, neutralizing this collective stress would reduce the probability of hostilities by easing tensions between competing factions. A technology that accomplished such an outcome would have historic importance.
Today the military of Israel has an opportunity to address this fundamental cause of war by deploying a new, scientifically verified technology of defense beyond nuclear weapons.
A proven new technology of defense is now available, called Invincible Defense Technology (IDT). This is a technology of national security, fully capable of defending Israel from any destructive technology, including nuclear weapons. The militaries of Mozambique and Ecuador have already applied IDT in order to defuse and eliminate conflict. It was applied by a civilian group in Israel to reduce warfare in Lebanon. Extensive research has confirmed its effectiveness. This new technology is easily implemented, highly cost-effective, and can prevent disruption and attack from outside or from within the country.
This new technology of defense is based upon the latest discoveries in the fields of physics, neuroscience, and physiology. Ultimately, IDT is based on the discovery of the unified field of all the laws of nature - the most fundamental and powerful level of nature's dynamics. Technologies based upon this unified field of natural law have such concentrated power that they can render obsolete and irrelevant every objective technology and destructive means of defense.
Modern science has probed deeper levels of nature's functioning, from the macroscopic world of classical physics to the world of the atom, then to the underlying field of the atomic nucleus, and then to the subnuclear levels. This exploration has culminated in the description of the unified field, the unified source of the diversified laws of nature governing the universe. From its purely self-interacting dynamics, the unified field creates from within itself all the particles and forces that compose the universe, and all the diversified streams of natural law governing the nuclear, atomic, molecular, and macroscopic levels. Because the unified field is vastly more powerful concentrated energy than any other level of nature's dynamics, any technology of defense based upon the unified field is of historic importance.
Some might worry that IDT could be unsafe. The development of nuclear power has threatened humankind with nuclear conflagration and has cast a shadow over the safety and security of the whole world. Fortunately, there is no danger to humankind from IDT, which is a technology of the unified field. A technology of the unified field operates at the basis of the laws of nature governing the universe - a completely unified and holistic level of nature's functioning. Because this level of natural law is holistic, it is naturally free of the negative, unanticipated side effects that accompany technologies based upon fragmented levels of natural law, such as nuclear weaponry.
The discovery of the unified field is a scientific development of the foremost order - a rigorous mathematical development based upon the Lagrangian of Superstring Field Theory, a highly compact mathematical formula that describes the self-interacting dynamics of unity at the basis of all the diverse laws of nature governing the universe. A technology based upon this complete, most comprehensive level of nature's functioning is completely different from and vastly more powerful than defensive technologies based upon diversified levels of natural law - nuclear technologies, chemical technologies, biological technologies, electronic technologies - because these all utilize specific laws of nature in isolation. The nature of the unified field and it technologies reveals that invincibility in nature is available only at this superunified level.
The more fundamental levels of nature’s functioning offer technologies that are increasingly powerful. For example, a country armed only with conventional weaponry, such as explosives, cannot deter a nation equipped with nuclear weaponry. The principle here is that an invincible structure at one level of technology can be overwhelmed by a more fundamental level of technology. The ultimate application of this basic principle is that the unified field, at the superunified scale - the Planck scale of nature's functioning - yields complete invincibility. Any less fundamental level of technology, including all current technologies of defense, is rendered obsolete through a technology of the unified field. And it is just such a technology that Israel needs to deploy today.
Since the unified field is the source of the objective world, its power cannot be harnessed through objective technologies. A new approach is needed - one that draws upon the world's subjective traditions of meditation. Properly understood and properly practiced, meditation throughout the ages has been a systematic technology to turn human awareness within to experience and explore finer levels of thought. The experience of these deeper levels of human intelligence corresponds to the experience of deeper levels of intelligence in nature. This inward exploration of consciousness culminates in the direct experience of the deepest level of consciousness - the simplest, silent, settled state of human awareness, sometimes called the state of pure consciousness - in which the human mind identifies with the unified field. By turning the attention systematically within, human awareness experiences and explores deeper levels of nature's functioning and directly experiences the unified field at the source of thought - the field of unity at the basis of mind and matter.
This approach of direct experience of the unified field is both ancient and modern. The Vedic tradition of knowledge, from ancient India, is the most complete and highly developed tradition of meditation in the world. This ancient approach of gaining knowledge and experience of natural law, the unified field, has become the focus of intense scientific research over the past 50 years. The late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi revived, from the ancient Vedic science of consciousness, systematic technologies for experiencing the unified field, including the Transcendental Meditation program and its advanced techniques. The military application of these meditation practices is known as IDT. They have been successfully used by members of many faiths to eliminate conflict in the recent past. If Israel were to apply this human resource-based technology, which is non-lethal and non-destructive, it could reduce the collective societal stress that is fueling the rising tensions between Iran and Israel.
People from all religious backgrounds practice the Transcendental Meditation program and appreciate how it has enhanced their faith.
Rabbi Michael Shevack of the Bucks County Free Synagogue in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, commented on his experience of the TM program with reference to his practice of Judaism:
"There is a common misconception amongst many different 'western' religions, mainly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that Transcendental Meditation is a form of some kind of Hindu worship and is therefore pagan. Based on my direct experience with the TM technique, I can clearly say that this idea is a misunderstanding and is simply not true.
"In fact, my experience as a TM practitioner, since the age of 17 (I am now 55) has proven just the opposite. At first I was attracted to TM as a way to reduce stress, and was very excited by the hundreds of studies that demonstrated it having a positive effect on lowering stress, blood pressure and improving generally well-being, both mental and physical. However, as I practiced TM, I found that these benefits were actually mere 'byproducts' of the experience.
"I found that I was opening, day after day, meditation after meditation, to what I considered to be a deep spiritual experience. Such an experience was not 'other worldly,’ nor did it belong to 'another religion.’ Such an experience was deeply rooted in the practical day to day experiences of life, and as such, became deeply integrated with the practice of my day to day Judaism. I found that TM opened me up to intuitive insights and understandings which helped 'make sense’ of my Jewish practice; it made the observance of my own faith increasingly alive and spiritually vibrant…Based on my experience, I can say that there is nothing to fear about TM. If you are Christian, it will make you more Christian. If you are Jewish, it will make you more Jewish. If you are Muslim, it will make you more Muslim. Due to the growing appreciation of one's own faith through TM, one does not seek out other religions; one becomes fulfilled in one's own.
"Lastly, as a leader in inter-religious dialogue, who has worked with many of the world's noble religions, I believe that TM can provide a doorway to a common spiritual understanding and experience that can help bring about, and speed, the development of mutual respect and understanding of the world's religions, by deepening and enlivening the universal spiritual foundation upon which they are all based.
"In short, it is a fast, effective, universal approach to peace.
According to extensive scientific research, the size of the group of IDT experts needed to reduce social stress and create peace in a given population must be at least the square root of one percent of the population. To calculate this number, multiply the population size by 0.01, and then take the square root of this number. For instance, Israel has a population of approximately 7.5 million, and 7,500,000 x 0.01 = 75,000. The square root of 75,000 is approximately 274, so a group of at least 274 IDT experts is needed.
Studies show that when the required threshold of IDT experts is crossed, crime goes down in the affected population, quality of life indices go up, and war and terrorism decrease. Scientists have named this phenomenon the Maharishi Effect in honor of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who first predicted it over 30 years ago.
For instance, in 1993, a two-month Maharishi Effect intervention was implemented and studied in Washington, DC (particpants pictured). Predictions of specific drops in crime and other indices were lodged in advance with government leaders and newspapers. The research protocol was approved by an independent Project Review Board. The findings showed that crime fell 24 percent below the predicted level when the peace-creating group reached its maximum size. Temperature, weekend effects, or previous trends in the data failed to account for changes. This research was published in the peer-reviewed Social Indicators Research (1999, vol. 47, 153-201).
Over 50 studies have shown that IDT works. The causal mechanism has been postulated to be a field effect of consciousness-a spillover effect on the level of the unified field from the peace-creating group into the larger population. On this basis, a study published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality (2005, vol. 17, 285-338) offers an explanation of a proposed causality of IDT in biological terms. The neurotransmitter serotonin produces feelings of contentment, happiness and even euphoria. Low levels of serotonin, according to research, correlate with violence, aggression, and poor emotional moods. The IDT study showed that higher numbers of IDT experts practicing in groups correlated with a marked increase in serotonin production among other community members who were neither participating in the IDT group nor aware of the study. These results were statistically significant and followed the attendance figures in the IDT group. This finding offers a plausible neurophysiologic mechanism to explain reduced hostility and aggression in society at large.
The Maharishi Effect has also been documented on a global scale in a study published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation (2003, vol. 36, 283-302). When large assemblies of IDT experts exceeded the Maharishi Effect threshold for the world (about 7,000 at that time) during the years 1983–1985, terrorism globally decreased 72%, international conflict decreased 32%, and violence was reduced in other nations without intrusion by other governments. This study used data provided by the Rand Corporation.
This approach utilizes large groups of peace-creating experts practicing ancient technologies of consciousness that harness the most powerful level of nature’s functioning - the unified field described by superstring theory. Research published in peer-reviewed journals indicates that such groups can effectively defuse and prevent social problems like crime, war and terrorism.
Today, the only way to assure national security and invincibility is to be a nation without enemies. Conventional means of defense cannot fully protect a nation against modern destructive technologies: weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, long-range push-button electronic missile technologies, or terrorism. The most effective defense is to prevent the birth of an enemy. This can be achieved, in a scientific way, by targeting and neutralizing the enmity in a potential adversary so that no enemies arise.
On the left, an external magnetic field penetrates an ordinary conductor whose electrons behave in a chaotic or disorderly way. On the right, the external magnetic field is excluded from the interior of a super-conductor whose electrons function in a coherent collective manner - invincibility. The Maharishi Effect creates invincible "national armor" that cannot be penetrated by the collective negativity of other countries.
Through this revitalization of the technology of the unified field and through intense scientific scrutiny of its deep principles, Maharishi has revived a technology of invincibility at a time of enormous global vulnerability. Now it is possible, through this most advanced technology of defense - IDT - to prevent war on a scientific basis, and to safeguard the youth of the country who, if they simply utilize this technology, will never have to face the devastation of war. This technology can prevent the birth of an enemy, and can create a family of nations that is harmonious and peaceful, each nation invincibly strong within itself.
The military of Israel is charged with the responsibility to defend the country. It can now succeed in this mission simply by creating a Prevention Wing of the Military - a coherence-creating group of IDT experts equaling or exceeding the square root of 1% of the population of Israel. The rest of the military can continue to do exactly what they already do and can continue to receive exactly the same training that they conventionally receive. Only a Prevention Wing of the Military needs to be trained in these additional technologies for invincibility - the science and technology of consciousness, the technology of the unified field. That small group can prevent war on a scientific basis and produce such indomitable coherence and invincibility that none of the other soldiers will ever have to face the devastation of war. In addition, these technologies powerfully improve and benefit the lives of the soldiers themselves, developing their full brain potential, robust health, dynamism, imperviousness to the stress of the battlefield, and many other benefits, as scientific research has confirmed.
Application of this technology is extremely easy and cost-effective because no expensive equipment or machinery or weaponry is required. All that is needed is the human nervous system - an extraordinarily sophisticated and refined machinery - which can be trained and put immediately to this purpose of accessing and harnessing the almost limitless power of the unified field. A small group of soldiers can achieve true national security and invincibility, whereas previously thousands of soldiers could not.
Only a small percent of the military is needed. There is no risk to the military - nothing to lose and everything to gain. In addition to national security and invincibility - which are, of course, the foremost goal - this approach also generates side benefits, such as economic growth, improvement of health throughout Israel, and improvement of educational standards in the country. When the national mood is bolstered and buoyed by growing positivity and coherence in collective consciousness, as generated by the IDT group, then the confidence of the nation's citizens increases and the economy improves.
All areas of society are simultaneously enriched by this holistically life-supporting, life-benefiting technology. It is effective and cost-effective, and the results are immediate. All that is necessary is to provide the proper training for a group of military personnel - or indeed, any large group within the country. Israel has the opportunity today through IDT to create true national security and invincibility.
(John Hagelin, Ph.D. is the Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, an organization in the United States that advocates scientifically proven, prevention-oriented solutions to critical global problems. He is a Harvard-trained quantum physicist who won the prestigious Kilby Award, which recognizes scientists who have made "major contributions to society through their applied research in the fields of science and technology." Dr. Hagelin also serves as the Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense and as International Director of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace).
(David Leffler, Ph.D. a US Air Force veteran, is the Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS) at ISTPP. Dr. Leffler received his Ph.D. from The Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio where he did his doctoral research on the topic of IDT. He serves on the Board of Editors for the Journal of Management & Social Sciences (JMSS) Institute of Business & Technology BIZTEK in Pakistan. David served as an Associate of the Proteus Management Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College and is a member of the U.S. Naval Institute).
Cleaning for a Reason-free cleaning service for cancer patients
If you know any woman currently undergoing Chemo, please pass the word to her that there is a cleaning service that provides FREE housecleaning - 1 time per month for 4 months while she is in treatment.
All she has to do is sign up and have her doctor fax a note confirming the treatment. Cleaning for a Reason will have a participating maid service in her zip code area arrange for the service. Visit their website at: cleaningforareason.org
Please pass this information on to bless a woman going through Breast Cancer treatment. This organization serves the entire USA and currently has 547 partners to help these women. It’s our job to pass the word and let them know that there are people out there that care. Be a blessing to someone and pass this information along.
Regimens: Meditation, for the Mind and the Heart - NY Times
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Could the mental relaxation produced by transcendental meditation have physiological benefits? A study presented last week at the American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Fla., suggests that it may, at least in the case of people with established coronary artery disease.
Researchers followed about 200 high-risk patients for an average of five years. Among the 100 who meditated, there were 20 heart attacks, strokes and deaths; in the comparison group, there were 32. The meditators tended to remain disease-free longer and also reduced their systolic blood pressure.
“We found reduced blood pressure that was significant — that was probably one important mediator,” said Dr. Robert Schneider, director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, a research institute based at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, who presented the findings.
The study was conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, in collaboration with the institute.
The participants found transcendental meditation easy to learn and practice, Dr. Schneider said. He suggested that the stress reduction produced by the meditation could cause changes in the brain that cut stress hormones like cortisol and dampen the inflammatory processes associated with atherosclerosis.
The Impossible Project Inspires Polaroid To Re-Launch Instant Cameras
The Impossible Project Inspires Polaroid To Re-Launch Instant Cameras
from "The Impossible Project" website.
We are pleased to herewith announce a history making cooperation between Polaroid and The Impossible Project:
As we have created quite some buzz about Analog Instant Photography over the past 12 months, the Polaroid licensee - The Summit Global Group - now can't resist any longer and announced at a press conference on October 13th in Hongkong that they will re-launch some of the most famous Polaroid Instant Cameras.
Therefore they are commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.
The Impossible Project is proud and excited that its ambitions and all the relentless work that has already been invested are now becoming the foundation for Polaroid's comeback as a producer of Instant Cameras.
Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project's new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 - with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first colour films to follow in the course of the year.
Marshall Gilkes trombone solo
Click here.
Sheryl Crow - On Meditation
LA TIMES MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 2009
EVERY DAY IS A WINDING ROAD
Sheryl Crow
The Grammy winner has learned to take life's turns as they come--and finds well-being is the destination
interview by Carol Wolper
(the original story, with photos, can be found here)
She is a natural storyteller. Whether writing a song or having a conversation, Sheryl Crow has a way of communicating profound points with a light touch. Even the most skeptical readers or listeners will be lured into sticking around—and be glad they did. Recently, Crow spoke to us about surviving cancer, becoming healthy, growing wiser and getting better.
On Having a Motto
My dad said something to me years ago, which may sound cliché but has resonated particularly in the last few years: “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” It has really served me, more than any other phrase, because there are so many things you can obsess on, especially if you have a personality like mine where you want to fix things and make everything good. Certain things are not that important—most things aren’t important when considered against your health and well-being.
On Getting it Wrong
The mythology I created for myself as a kid was if I took care of everybody, then everybody would love me. If I made myself without needs, they would love me more. I think that’s where I was fragmented all the years before my cancer diagnosis. I think I perfected the art of being right with everyone, earning people’s love by taking care of them and never demanding anything.
On Self-Love
Putting yourself first is not a selfish act. It’s a selfless act. In fact, it’s very challenging to say to other people, “No, I’m not always free of need 100 percent of the time,” and therefore give them the opportunity to show up—to actually be a participant in your life.
On the Big Lesson
Since my cancer diagnosis, I can be in an airport, and before I even get to my gate, I’ll have a handful of women come up and say, “I’m a survivor” or “I’ve just been diagnosed.” It’s a conversation that goes on between strangers and creates an instant familiarity, an instant sisterhood. And one of the stories I hear over and over from these women is that there’s a metaphysical correlation between their breast cancer and their lack of ability to let other people nurture them.
On Spirituality
People in tune with the link between the physical and spiritual will tell you the left breast symbolizes nourishment coming in, and the right breast is nourishment going out. My cancer was in my left breast, and that was very thought provoking. Whether or not I can fully attest to a belief that that’s the way it is, it certainly created a concept for me as to how to live my life.
On Getting Through It
Every day when I went into radiation, I was already in despair because my personal life had taken a crash, and I realized I was being forced to show up for myself in a way I never had to before. I couldn’t have someone else do the radiation for me. I couldn’t have a man come in and save me, save my health, prop me up and make me better. It was me who had to lay there on a metal table with this giant alien-looking machine shooting a beam into my chest. And to lay there and think that this was less about the high-tech machinery, although that was scary, and more about my ability to handle the moment—that was empowering. It definitely jerked me into the reality that we come into this world with an incredible strength, and we learn how to be a victim, or we learn how to approach things from the standpoint that, really, things just happen, and there’s an opportunity in every challenge.
On Her Go-To Guys
I’m lucky. I’m surrounded by amazing people who have been consistent as my life coaches—or as I call it, emotional chiropractors. I sometimes need someone to tell me the way I’m looking at it is not the only way to look at something. My manager is probably my closest friend and my confidant but also one of the wisest people I’ve ever known. The other guy is Abdi Assadi, a healer. He’s an acupuncturist in New York who wrote this amazing book, Shadows on the Path.
On Meditation
One of the things—and this comes from someone who was highly self-critical and a type-A personality—that has changed my life is meditating. The simple act of making my brain shut off for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night may not seem like much, but what ends up happening, besides creating space in your day, is your awake posture begins to replicate your meditative posture.
On Her Turning Point
The moment I said I’m just going to let go of the picture of what my life was supposed to look like and give in—not give up, give in—and let go and see what comes my way, that’s when the real blessings came, when my life opened up in ways I could never begin to verbalize.
On Aging
My 39th year was my worst. I dreaded turning 40. The moment I embraced turning 40 was the night of my fortieth birthday. I threw myself a big party, had all my friends up onstage, and we played and had an after-party. It went on for 24 hours. It was like a wake. But out of that wake came the best year of my life. I think there’s a wisdom that you cannot have in your twenties. You can be an old soul, but some life experiences you just can’t get until you get them.
Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop
Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop
By NATALIE ANGIER
If after a few months’ exposure to our David Lynch economy, in which housing markets spontaneously combust, coworkers mysteriously disappear and the stifled moans of dying 401(k) plans can be heard through the floorboards, you have the awful sensation that your body’s stress response has taken on a self-replicating and ultimately self-defeating life of its own, congratulations. You are very perceptive. It has.
As though it weren’t bad enough that chronic stress has been shown to raise blood pressure, stiffen arteries, suppress the immune system, heighten the risk of diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s disease and make one a very undesirable dinner companion, now researchers have discovered that the sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence.
Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.
Moreover, the rats’ behavioral perturbations were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry. On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.
In other words, the rodents were now cognitively predisposed to keep doing the same things over and over, to run laps in the same dead-ended rat race rather than seek a pipeline to greener sewers. “Behaviors become habitual faster in stressed animals than in the controls, and worse, the stressed animals can’t shift back to goal-directed behaviors when that would be the better approach,” Dr. Sousa said. “I call this a vicious circle.”
Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist who studies stress at Stanford University School of Medicine, said, “This is a great model for understanding why we end up in a rut, and then dig ourselves deeper and deeper into that rut.”
The truth is, Dr. Sapolsky said, “we’re lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren’t working. Our response is usually to do it five times more, instead of thinking, maybe it’s time to try something new.”
And though perseverance can be an admirable trait and is essential for all success in life, when taken too far it becomes perseveration — uncontrollable repetition — or simple perversity. “If I were to try to break into the world of modern dance, after the first few rejections the logical response might be, practice even more,” said Dr. Sapolsky, the author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” among other books. “But after the 12,000th rejection, maybe I should realize this isn’t a viable career option.”
Happily, the stress-induced changes in behavior and brain appear to be reversible. To rattle the rats to the point where their stress response remained demonstrably hyperactive, the researchers exposed the animals to four weeks of varying stressors: moderate electric shocks, being encaged with dominant rats, prolonged dunks in water. Those chronically stressed animals were then compared with nonstressed peers. The stressed rats had no trouble learning a task like pressing a bar to get a food pellet or a squirt of sugar water, but they had difficulty deciding when to stop pressing the bar, as normal rats easily did.
But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar. Atrophied synaptic connections in the decisive regions of the prefrontal cortex resprouted, while the overgrown dendritic vines of the habit-prone sensorimotor striatum retreated.
According to Bruce S. McEwen, head of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at Rockefeller University, the new findings offer a particularly elegant demonstration of a principle that researchers have just begun to grasp. “The brain is a very resilient and plastic organ,” he said. “Dendrites and synapses retract and reform, and reversible remodeling can occur throughout life.”
Stress may be most readily associated with the attosecond pace of postindustrial society, but the body’s stress response is one of our oldest possessions. Its basic architecture, its linked network of neural and endocrine organs that spit out stimulatory and inhibitory hormones and other factors as needed, looks pretty much the same in a goldfish or a red-spotted newt as it does in us.
The stress response is essential for maneuvering through a dynamic world — for dodging a predator or chasing down prey, swinging through the trees or fighting off disease — and it is itself dynamic. As we go about our days, Dr. McEwen said, the biochemical mediators of the stress response rise and fall, flutter and flare. “Cortisol and adrenaline go up and down,” he said. “Our inflammatory cytokines go up and down.”
The target organs of stress hormones likewise dance to the beat: blood pressure climbs and drops, the heart races and slows, the intestines constrict and relax. This system of so-called allostasis, of maintaining control through constant change, stands in contrast to the mechanisms of homeostasis that keep the pH level and oxygen concentration in the blood within a narrow and invariant range.
Unfortunately, the dynamism of our stress response makes it vulnerable to disruption, especially when the system is treated too roughly and not according to instructions. In most animals, a serious threat provokes a serious activation of the stimulatory, sympathetic, “fight or flight” side of the stress response. But when the danger has passed, the calming parasympathetic circuitry tamps everything back down to baseline flickering.
In humans, though, the brain can think too much, extracting phantom threats from every staff meeting or high school dance, and over time the constant hyperactivation of the stress response can unbalance the entire feedback loop. Reactions that are desirable in limited, targeted quantities become hazardous in promiscuous excess. You need a spike in blood pressure if you’re going to run, to speedily deliver oxygen to your muscles. But chronically elevated blood pressure is a source of multiple medical miseries.
Why should the stressed brain be prone to habit formation? Perhaps to help shunt as many behaviors as possible over to automatic pilot, the better to focus on the crisis at hand. Yet habits can become ruts, and as the novelist Ellen Glasgow observed, “The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.”
It’s still August. Time to relax, rewind and remodel the brain.
Faith rites boost brains, even for atheists: book
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns boost their brain power through meditation and prayer, but even atheists can enjoy the mental benefits that believers derive from faith, according to a popular neuroscience author.
The key, Andrew Newberg argues in his new book "How God Changes Your Brain," lies in the concentrating and calming effects that meditation or intense prayer have inside our heads.
Brain scanners show that intense meditation alters our gray matter, strengthening regions that focus the mind and foster compassion while calming those linked to fear and anger.
Whether the meditator believes in the supernatural or is an atheist repeating a mantra, he says, the outcome can be the same - a growth in the compassion that virtually every religion teaches and a decline in negative feelings and emotions.
"In essence, when you think about the really big questions in life -- be they religious, scientific or psychological -- your brain is going to grow," says Newberg, head of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania.
"It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a Jew, a Muslim or a Hindu, or an agnostic or an atheist," he writes in the book written with Mark Robert Waldman, a therapist at the Center.
NEUROTHEOLOGY
In his office at the University of Pennsylvania's hospital, Newberg told Reuters that "neurotheology" - the study of the brain's role in religious belief - is starting to shed light on what happens in believers' heads when they contemplate God.
Science and religion are often seen as opposites, to the point where some in each camp openly reject the other, but this medical doctor and professor of radiology, psychology and religious studies sees no reason not to study them together.
"The two most powerful forces in all of human history have been religion and science," he said. "These are the two things that help us organize our world and understand it. Why not try to bring them together to address each other and ultimately our world in a more effective way?"
Atheists often see scanner images tracking blood flows in brains of meditating monks and nuns lost in prayer as proof that faith is an illusion. Newberg warns against simple conclusions:
"If you see a brain scan of a nun who's perceiving God's presence in a room, all it tells you is what was happening in her brain when she perceived God's presence in a room.
"It may be just the brain doing it, but it may be the brain being the receiver of spiritual phenomena," said Newberg, whose research shows the short prayers most believers say leave little trace on the brain because they are not as intense as meditation.
"I'm not trying to say religion is bad or it's not real," he added. "I say people are religious and let's try to understand how it affects them."
Another notion Newberg debunks is the idea there is a single "God spot" in the brain responsible for religious belief: "It's not like there's a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God."
Instead, religious experiences fire neurons in several different parts of the brain, just like other events do. Locating them does not explain them, but gives pointers to how these phenomena occur and what they might mean.
In their book, Newberg and Waldman sketch out some of the "God circuits" in the brain and their effects, especially if trained through meditation as muscles are through exercise.
Meditation both activates the frontal lobe, which "creates and integrates all of your ideas about God," and calms down the amygdala, the emotional region that can create images of an authoritative deity and fog our logical thinking.
The parietal-frontal circuit gives us a sense of the space around us and our place in it. Meditation suppresses this sense, giving rise to a serene feeling of unity with God or the world.
"Even 10 to 15 minutes of meditation appear to have significantly positive effects on cognition, relaxation and psychological health," the authors declare in the book.
Newberg, who grew up in a Reform Jewish family and has studied many religions, said his work might help both believers and atheists understand religious feelings, which he said were "among the most powerful and complex experiences people have."
But he cautioned against expecting "neurotheology" to come up with surprising insights soon: "As good as our techniques are, they are still incredibly crude. We have a long way to go."
Krishna Janmashtami brings celebrations
Published by: Priyanka Ahlawat
Published: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 at 11:10 IST
Janmashtami celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna on the Ashtami of Krishna Paksh or the 8th day of the dark fortnight in the month of Bhadon, in the whole of north India.
People light up their houses and temples to rejoice on the occasion of Krishna's birth at midnight. They visit the temples with their families the whole day; sing songs and bhajans in the praise of their lord. The festival is mainly celebrated in the North India with lot of pomp and show.
According to mythology the birth of Lord Krishna took place to end the evil rule of King Kansa of Mathura. Kansa was Krishna's uncle who treated the people of Mathura with an evil hand. Kansa was told in his dream that the birth of Devaki's (Kansa's sister) child would result in his death. The dream did come true; Krishna killed Kansa later in a wrestling tournament.
The celebrations for the day are very simple. The priests chant holy mantras and bathe the idol with Gangajal, milk, ghee, oil and honey pouring all these from a conch shell. After the ceremony is over, the devotees break their daylong fast. In Janmashtami, the devotees keep awake and sing bhajans till midnight, the moment when Krishna was born. People fast all day and eat only after the midnight birth ceremony. Several songs or bhajans are sung in praise of Sri Krishna. Poems of Mirabai and Surdas are still sung and recited by devotees of the lord. Even the films have adopted the culture of Janmashtami to celebrate the birth of Krishna. The songs of old films like ‘More panghat par nand lala' from film Mughaleazam is still popular.
People devote two days to celebrate the occasion of Janmashtami.
Brahmamuhurta: The best time for meditation
The mind is like a blank sheet of paper, free from worldly samskaras or impressions. Raga-dvesha currents have not yet deeply entered the mind. The mind can be moulded easily. You can infuse it with divine thoughts.
Yogis, Paramahamsas, Sannyasins, aspirants and Rishis start their meditation during the Brahma muhurta; sending their vibrations throughout the world, benefiting all. Meditation will come by itself without any effort.
In the winter it is not necessary that you should take a cold bath. A mental bath will suffice. Imagine and feel, "I am taking a bath now in the sacred Triveni at Prayag or Manikarnika at Benares." Remember the pure Atman. Repeat the formula, "I am the ever pure Soul." This is the most powerful wisdom-bath in Jnana-Ganga. This is highly purifying. It burns all sins. Answer the calls of nature quickly. Clean your teeth. Do not waste much time in morning ablutions. The Brahma muhurta will pass away quickly. You must utilise this precious time in Japa and meditation. Sit in Siddha, Padma or Sukha Asana. Try to climb the supreme height of Brahmn, the peak of divine glory and splendour.
If you are not in the habit of getting up early, use an alarm timepiece. Once the habit is established, there will be no difficulty. The subconscious mind will become your willing and obedient servant to wake you up at the particular time.
Cultivate the habit of answering the calls of nature as soon as you get up from bed. If you suffer from constipation do meditation as soon as you get up. You can answer the calls of nature after finishing your morning meditation with the help of a cup of hot milk.
As soon as you get up from bed, do Japa and meditation. This is important. After finishing your Japa and meditation you can take to the practice of Asana, Pranayama and study of Gita and other religious books.
Every Sandhya time, or dusk, is also favourable for meditation. During Brahma muhurta and dusk, the Sushumna Nadi flows readily. You will enter into deep meditation and Samadhi without much effort when Sushumna Nadi flows. That is the reason why rishis, yogis and scriptures speak very highly of these two periods of time. When the breath flows through both nostrils, know that the Sushumna is working. Whenever the Sushumna functions, sit for meditation and enjoy the inner peace of Atman or soul.
Repeat some divine stotras, hymns or guru stotras or chant OM 12 times, or do kirtan for five minutes before you start your Japa and meditation. This will quickly elevate you mind and drive off laziness and sleepiness. Do sirshasana or Sarvangasana or any other asana for five minutes. Do pranayama for five minutes. This also will make you quite fit for the practice of meditation and remove laziness and sleepy condition.
It is Brahma muhurta now! Do not snore. Do not roll in the bed. Throw away the blanket. Get up, start your meditation vigorously, and enjoy the eternal bliss of the Inner Self.
The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticism by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
For much of the 20th century, mainstream science shied away from studying spirituality.
Sigmund
Freud declared God to be a delusion, and others maintained that God, if
there is such a thing, is beyond the tools of science to measure.
But
now, some researchers are using new technologies to try to understand
spiritual experience. They're peering into our brains and studying our
bodies to look for circumstantial evidence of a spiritual world. The
search is in its infancy, and scientists doubt they will ever be able
to prove — or disprove — the existence of God.
I spent a year exploring the emerging science of spirituality for my book, Fingerprints of God. One of the questions raised by my reporting: Is an encounter with God merely a chemical reaction?
Peyote Healing
The search for that answer led me to my first peyote ceremony, on a mountaintop on the Navajo reservation at Lukachukai, Ariz.
While
Fred Harvey, an 87-year-old roadman, or high priest, warmed up his
voice, members of his family prepared the peyote, a cactus that induces
visions when ingested. Using peyote to touch the spiritual world has
been central to the Navajo religion for hundreds of years.
Andy Harvey, a ceremony participant, said peyote serves as a mediator between the human world and the divine.
"Sometimes
we ask the peyote to help us cleanse the illnesses away and cleanse our
mental being, our spiritual being," he said. "And we believe that's
what peyote does, too. That's why we call it a sacrament, a sacred
herb."
At 9 p.m., 32 of us crawled into the teepee; for the
next 11 hours, the young men drummed, the roadman prayed, and everyone
but me ingested a lot of peyote. Sometime around midnight, the subject
of the ceremony — a Navajo woman named Mary Ann — spoke up.
"I want to confess to the fire," she said.
She
said she had suffered from shingles for the past two months, and she
needed the peyote to heal her. She said she believed she had harmed a
man some 20 years earlier, and his spirit had been plaguing her ever
since.
"I need him to forgive me," she cried. "I know I'm in pain because he hasn't forgiven me."
Two more hours had passed when Mary Ann suddenly cried, "The shingles are gone! The peyote has healed me!"
After
the ceremony, Mary Ann said she was, in her words, "too peyoted up" to
talk. I called her on the phone two months later. She said while in the
teepee, she saw the spirit of the man she had harmed and asked him for
forgiveness.
"He came in front of me, and he just left me," she said. "And that's when my pain stopped. He forgave me."
Perhaps. Or perhaps the trinity of prayer, drumming and drug relieved her stress — and her shingles.
Lessons From The '60s
Scientists
have long been intrigued by mystical experiences like Mary Ann's. A
person prays and gets better. A car crash victim feels himself floating
above his body. For years, scientists have wondered why these things
occur — or even if they're real. So they're taking drugs like peyote
out of the teepee and into the laboratory to find out more.
The
first major rigorous study of psychedelics and spirituality occurred on
Good Friday in 1962. In the basement of Marsh Chapel at Boston
University, researchers from Harvard gave 10 divinity students LSD to
see if the sacred setting, combined with drugs, would spark a mystical
experience. It did. Soon afterward, researchers at other prominent
universities began administering psychedelic drugs to volunteers in
controlled settings.
By the end of the 1960s, the U.S.
government had had enough of Timothy Leary's call to "turn on, tune in,
drop out" and were concerned that a generation was conducting its own
uncontrolled experiments with drugs and spirituality. In the early
'70s, the experiments ended.
Until now.
A couple of
months after the peyote ceremony, I follow Roland Griffiths into his
mushroom mecca in the middle of Johns Hopkins University Medical Center
in Baltimore.
The lighting is low, the carpeting plush. There's
a cross on the wall, a statue of Buddha, a Shinto shrine. In the middle
of the room is a sofa where volunteers can lie down after they've
ingested a capsule of psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in
mushrooms. Griffiths, a neuropharmacologist, is the lead investigator
in the first major study of drugs and spirituality since the 1970s.
Why, I ask, would he launch such controversial research?
"I was just curious," Griffiths says simply.
Finding The Mystical In A Mushroom Trip
Actually, Griffiths says that when he took up meditation 15 years ago, he began thinking differently about the nature of reality. He wondered: What if he could study what happens to the brain when people enjoy spiritual experiences? Griffiths recruited 36 people. They were all middle-aged and stable, had an active spiritual practice — whether Christian, Jewish or other — and were willing to take the trip of their lives. Among them was 56-year-old Karin Sokel.
"They asked me to lay down with headphones and the most powerful music I've ever heard," Sokel recalls. "I was blindfolded, and I began to have my experience."
Sokel was involved in five sessions, and she describes them as the most profound experiences of her life.
"I
know that I had a merging with what I call oneness, I am," she says.
"There was a time that I was being gently pulled into it, and I saw it
as light. … It isn't even describable. It's not just light; it's love."
Sokel's words echo those of mystics through the ages, who talked
of a physical union with God, a peek into eternity or an out-of-body
experience. Griffiths says 70 percent of the subjects had full-blown
mystical experiences, which Griffiths calls "remarkable."
Griffiths' research offers clues about the mechanics of spiritual mystery, says neuroscientist Solomon Snyder.
Serotonin And The Mechanism Of Mysticism
"If
we assume that the psychedelic, drug-induced state is very much like
the mystical state," Snyder says, "then if we find out the molecular
mechanism of the action of the drug, then you could say that we have
some insight into what's going on in the brains of mystics."
Snyder,
who is chairman of the neuroscience department at Johns Hopkins and was
not involved in the study, says scientists suspect that a key player in
mystical experience is the serotonin system. The neurotransmitter
serotonin affects the parts of the brain that relate to emotions and
perceptions. Chemically, peyote, LSD and other psychedelics look a lot
like serotonin, and they activate the same receptor.
Think of
that serotonin receptor as a bouncer at a nightclub. The party's a bit
tame, and when the bouncer spots the fun chemical — the active
ingredient in psilocybin — he lets Mr. Fun into the club. Suddenly, the
party picks up and the brain chemicals are burning up the floor.
Let the spiritual experience begin.
New Avenues To Study Spirituality In The Brain
Of course, it's more complicated than that. There are other chemicals and receptors at play, and, of course, mystical experience happens without drugs — through prayer, meditation, chanting and fasting.
But
Griffiths says this study will open new vistas into the science of
spirituality. Until now, he says, we couldn't systematically study
mystical states.
"You can't just say, 'Well, come into the
laboratory and pray for two hours, and then we're going to image your
brain because we know you'll have a mystical experience then!' " he
says. "We're talking about rates of experience that may occur once in a
lifetime or once every year or two."
But if you can chemically
induce the equivalent of a spiritual experience, he says, you can slide
a person into a brain scanner and observe which parts of the brain
light up and what neural networks are used.
LSD And Life After Death
Griffiths has now launched other studies that pick up work begun a half-century ago.
In
the 1950s and '60s, researchers studied the effect of LSD trips on
patients with end-stage cancer. Many of those who enjoyed mystical
experiences, researchers found, returned from their trips believing
that life continues after death, and with reduced pain — or at least a
different perspective on pain. Griffiths is now recruiting patients to test whether a synthetic spiritual experience might aid them in any way.
Still,
Griffiths says all the studies in the world can't answer his central
question about spirituality: "Why does that occur? Why has the human
organism been engineered, if you will, for this experience?"
It's a question that haunts other scientists, as well. They want to know: Is there a sweet spot for spirituality in the brain?
Part 2 of this series looks at the search for the God spot.
To listen to this series, click here.
UCLA study confirms that meditating strengthens brain
By Melissa Evans Staff Writer
From THE DAILY BREEZE
Posted: 05/12/2009 05:45:10 PM PDT
A new UCLA study confirms what meditators say they have known for years: Sitting quietly and focusing the mind on a regular basis beefs up the brain's muscles.
In a study published today in the journal Neurolmage, researchers found that areas of the brain controlling emotion - the hippocampus, the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus - were larger among meditators than those in a control group.
Eileen Luders, lead author of the study, said looking at specific areas of the brain using an MRI gives researchers clues as to why meditators seem to cultivate positive emotions, maintain emotional stability and engage in more mindful behavior than others.
Because certain areas of the brain are closely linked to emotion, "these might be the neuronal underpinnings that give meditators the outstanding ability to regulate their emotions and allow for well-adjusted responses to whatever life throws their way," Luders said.
Turiya Moore, founder and director of Ananda Meditation Center in Torrance, said he wasn't surprised by the results of the study.
"Modern science is validating things that we have already known in ancient traditions," he said. "It's not news to us at all."
The study examined 44 people. Half of the participants practiced various forms of meditation, including zazen, samatha and vipassana. The amount of time they had been meditating varied, but the average was 24 years.
Deep concentration was a central focus of their practice, and most meditated 10 to 90 minutes every day.
Using a high-resolution, three-dimensional form of MRI, researchers divided the brain into several regions of interest and tissue types as a basis for comparison. They found significantly larger measurements in the brains of meditators; there were no areas of the brain in which the control group participants had larger measurements.
There were some limitations to the study, researchers noted. It is not known whether the meditators had larger neurons, or whether the particular "wiring" pattern was different among meditators.
The study also was not longitudinal, meaning it didn't track brain size before the meditators began their daily practice. It is possible that they had larger brains to begin with, Luders said.
She noted, however, that previous studies have mapped the brain's plasticity, looking at how other environmental factors can improve its performance.
Moore said practitioners typically report feeling less moody, less attached to material things and less negative after meditating regularly.
"You can feel that happening," he said. "You're taking energy away from certain parts of the brain and redirecting it to other parts. It's like watering the good plants."
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
"We are not responding to this instant if we are judging any aspect of it. The ego looks for what to criticize. This always involves comparing with the past. But love looks upon the world peacefully and accepts. The ego searches for shortcomings and weaknesses. Love watches for any sign of strength. It sees how far each one has come and not how far he has to go. How simple it is to love, and exhausting it is to always find fault, for every time we see a fault we think something needs to be done about it. Love knows that nothing is ever needed but more love. It is what we do with our hearts that affects others most deeply. It is not the movements of our body or the words within our minds that transmits love. We love from heart to heart." Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Stressed men more likely to suffer stroke: study
HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Japanese study conducted over 11 years has found that job stress can significantly increase the risk of stroke in men.
The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, involved 3,190 men and 3,363 women, aged 65 and younger. They were first interviewed between 1992 and 1995 and were then monitored over the next 11 years.
They came from a variety of occupational backgrounds and included managers, professionals, technicians, clerks, salespeople, farmers, craftsmen and laborers, and were classified into four groups:
* low job demand and high job control - low strain
* high job demand and high job control - active job
* low job demand and low job control - passive job
* high job demand and low job control - high strain
Over the course of the next 11 years, 147 strokes occurred -- to 91 men and 56 women.
"Men with high strain jobs had a more than two-fold higher risk of total stroke than did men with low-strain jobs," the Japanese researchers wrote.
However, while women in high-strain jobs appeared to have a higher risk of stroke than women with low-strain jobs, the difference was not statistically significant.
(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
(link to article)
Meditation cuts ADHD symptoms in kids - from THE TIMES of INDIA
WASHINGTON: Just 10 minutes of transcendental meditation can help reduce attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in kids, according to a study by the George Washington University.
During the study, the researchers followed a group of middle school students with ADHD who were meditating twice a day in school for 10 minutes.
After three months, they found over 50 percent reduction in stress and anxiety and improvements in ADHD symptoms in the students.
"The effect was much greater than we expected," said Sarina J. Grosswald, Ed.D., a George Washington University-trained cognitive learning specialist and lead researcher on the study.
"The children also showed improvements in attention, working memory, organization, and behaviour regulation," she added.
Grosswald said that after the in-school meditation routine began, "teachers reported they were able to teach more, and students were able to learn more because they were less stressed and anxious."
The study involved 10 students between 11-14 years, who had pre-existing diagnoses of ADHD.
"Stress interferes with the ability to learn-it shuts down the brain," said William Stixrud, Ph.D., a Silver Spring, Maryland, clinical neuropsychologist and co-author of the study.
"Medication for ADHD is very effective for some children, but it is marginally or not effective for others.
"Even for those children who show improved symptoms with the medication, the improvement is often insufficient or accompanied by troubling side effects.
"Virtually everyone finds it difficult to pay attention, organize themselves and get things done when they're under stress. So it stands to reason that the transcendental meditation technique which reduces stress and organizes brain function would reduce ADHD symptoms," Stixrud added.
New Year's Eve Meditation
Meditate in the New Year
On New Year's Eve, we will once again celebrate with Indian sweets, the company of other meditators, a special ceremony to offer up our desires for the new year and a group meditation to ease our way into 2009.
We begin at 10:00 p.m., and finish up some time after midnight.
All meditators in our tradition are welcome. Please RSVP to Adele by email or phone: 818.907.8767
School sees quiet gains as its students meditate - By Rhonda Bodfield, ARIZONA DAILY STAR
School sees quiet gains as its students meditate
By Rhonda Bodfield
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.02.2008
For 10 to 20 minutes twice a day, some students and teachers at alternative education programs in the Tucson Unified School District close their eyes and shush their minds.
There are no chants or incense sticks or burning candles, although some will use a mantra — a phrase repeated over and over to themselves — to help slow their thoughts.
Despite its simplicity, the practitioners report they're seeing significant benefits from Transcendental Meditation, the trademarked technique created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi more than 50 years ago.
Priscilla Ramos, an 18-year-old senior at Project MORE High School, said she was only passing some classes before. Now, even though she's carrying 10 classes in an attempt to graduate on time, she's focused and making A's and B's.
Favian Marquez, a 17-year-old at MORE, said he used to "blow up really fast." Last month, some guy picked a fight with him on the bus, he said, shoving him and ultimately punching him in the face. "I got mad, but I controlled myself. I just said, 'It isn't worth it.' It's just helped me with my anger a lot."
David Tran, 16, said he immediately felt the calming effects after his first session, even though he'd scoffed at it beforehand. Even his mother noticed he was less anxious and sleeping better, he said; she even asked him if he was feverish.
The director of the district's alternative education department, Robert Mackay, acknowledges it all sounded a bit far-fetched to him when a teacher came back from a conference talking it up.
Mackay said the students who come to him often are troubled, some with severe family and academic issues. In some cases, his programs are their last hope of graduating.
"I had grave doubts because I had never seen some of these kids ever stop moving or talking. I expected that we'd have a 15-minute discussion and that would be it," he said.
Instead, he heard the pitch, including testimonials from schools around the nation using it with populations no less difficult than his.
Mackay went through the training first in fall 2006, along with his teachers. His blood pressure dropped so much that it was the equivalent of what he would see with a prescription pill. His teachers have been known to ask before launching into a discussion if he's done his meditation for the day — and if the answer is no, will postpone the discussion for another time.
As for the students, he found them less aggressive, less anxious, even happier. And they didn't go right back into wild mode after it was over, either.
The program was offered as an elective last year, and 40 MORE students signed up. This year, because of a new focus on academics, it can't be fit into the school day, but there are still more than 20 students who regularly come before and after school to meditate. "That's saying something," Mackay said. "It's hard to keep a kid here. When the bill rings, you almost have to get out of the way."
Meditation also is being offered as an elective at the Museum School for the Visual Arts, with about 20 students enrolled.
In January, the Drake Alternative Middle School will begin the program schoolwide, and staffs at the TeenAge Parent School and the Broadway Bridge alternative schools are both getting training.
Dynah Oviedo Lim, a TUSD number-cruncher, said preliminary achievement results with only one year of data are inconclusive. But some of the findings on its social aspects are encouraging, she said. The meditators began the year with higher anxiety than a control group of students but ended with lower anxiety. Their happiness increased from mildly happy to pretty happy, while the control group reported no change in happiness levels. They also reported higher self-esteem.
The program is voluntary. Students who don't want to participate can spend quiet time doing something else.
And it's free to the district, which has received about $150,000 in grants from the David Lynch Foundation. Lynch, a director known for his unconventional work, which includes the "Twin Peaks" television series, has credited the practice with transforming his own life and career, and has donated millions to share it with students nationwide.
Research studies, including some funded by the National Institutes of Health, have linked meditation with a host of benefits, including stronger creativity, better academic performance and reduced stress.
But some critics, such as Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, have expressed concern about the practice, saying it's rooted in ancient Eastern religious traditions.
"It has no place in public schools," Lynn said. "There are other meditation exercises that schools could use that do not have this connection to a religious group, but no one's coming and promoting them to educators," he said.
"The risk is that it helps to promote one religious philosophy over others. In the long run, this is just a bad idea."
Denise Denniston Gerace, who is working with TUSD on the training, said there is a growing awareness of alternative paths to mental and physical wellness. But even with Eastern practices such as yoga taking off in this country, some misperceptions linger. And the big one, she said, is that Transcendental Meditation is religious-based.
"It's a mechanical technique. The idea that it's religious is left over from 50 years ago, when it was possible to disregard contributions from somewhere else by simply saying it must be a religious practice," she said.
On occasion, the critics win. Among the more high-profile cases: In 2006, parents at Terra Linda High School in California protested plans for the program and funding was withdrawn.
Mackay said he hasn't received any complaints from parents, although a few have called with questions and some have asked for training themselves.
Brisa Gutierrez can just draw on what she's seen in her own classroom.
In her fourth year of teaching English and social studies at MORE, Gutierrez tells of one student who was troublesome for years. He was unruly and disruptive. His grades were up and down. "He was out of control, actually," she said.
After he began meditation, she said, "not only did I see a radical change in his behavior, but his academic performance shot up. We're talking day and night."
The boy graduated and is now employed full time.
"This should be in schools across the nation," Gutierrez said, adding that many of her more vulnerable students are bombarded in their neighborhoods with violence and drugs.
"This just gives them a chance to quiet the brain. And just for me, anecdotally, it's amazing to see what's happening as a result."
● Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 806-7754 or at rbodfield@azstarnet.com.
from Vasishtha's Yoga
Vasishtha's Yoga is a chronicle of the future leader of the Vedic world, Rama, being taught the Vedic perspective by the sage, Vasishtha. This quote is from a wonderful translation by Swami Venkatesananda. Enjoy.
Even as heat is to fire,
whiteness is to a conch-shell,
firmness is to a mountain,
liquidity to water,
sweetness is to sugarcane,
butter is to milk,
coolness is to ice,
brightness is to illumination,
oil is to mustard seed,
flow is to a river,
sweetness is to honey,
ornament is to gold,
aroma is to a flower-
-the universe is to consciousness.
The world exists because consciousness is:
and the world is the body of consciousness.
There is no division, no difference, no distinction.
from Vasishtha’s Yoga
Effects of transcendental meditation on mental health: a before-after study
Effects of transcendental meditation on mental health: a before-after study
(reprinted from "7th Space Interactive")
Transcendental Meditation is a mental practice to put the body and mind into a state of relaxation and rest. The method was shown to reduce anxiety and stress in previous reports.
This study investigates its potential benefits in enhancing mental health of an adult Muslim population.
Methods: A before-after clinical trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of a 12-week meditation course on mental health of participants who were enrolled into the study by random sampling.
28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was administered on two occasions in conjunction with a background data sheet.
Results: Mean age of participants was 32.4; they were 70% female and 55% married. GHQ scores improved significantly after the meditation course (p value: <0.001).
The difference was also significant in all subgroups of the population studied. In subclass analysis of the GHQ results, the before-after score improvement was significant only in the areas of somatisation (p value: <0.001) and anxiety (p value: <0.001).
Conclusion: Transcendental Meditation may improve mental health of young adult population especially in the areas of somatisation and anxiety, and this effect seems to be independent of age, sex and marital status.
Author: Masud Yunesian, Afshin Aslani, Javad H Vash and Abbas Bagheri Yazdi
Credits/Source: Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health 2008, 4:25
Studies show benefits of meditation not all in your head
By Sandra Barrera, Los Angeles Daily News
LOS ANGELES
Meredith Rose had just moved to Los Angeles when the advertising saleswoman decided to give meditation a try. The reason?
"I. Was. Stressed," she says matter-of-factly.
But a few years later, that's no longer the case for the 27-year-old New York City transplant, thanks to her 20-minute, twice-daily Transcendental Meditation sessions.
Rose's experience with meditation — offering the mind something to focus on, such as her breathing, an object or a word — is hardly a unique one. Forty years after the Beatles caused a sensation with TM and their involvement with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, experts say a growing number of Westerners are turning to the technique as a means of relieving stress and illness.
"I suppose that many people who sit down to meditation think, 'I'm going to have this amazing transcendental experience, and I'll see God and colors, and my chakras will all become enlivened,' and that could happen," says Roger Nolan, a psychoanalyst who leads mindfulness meditation classes in the Los Angeles area.
But, he explains, "Most of the time it brings with it all the joys and all the other stuff that we may not want to face. And unfortunately, the stuff that we don't want to face is usually the stuff that is the cause of disease."
Help for HIV, cancer patients
It's no wonder meditation and other relaxation techniques have become the focus of many in the mental health and medical communities in recent times.
"Meditation in Western medicine has good evidence behind it to show that it improves outcomes in many stress-based illnesses like hypertension or anxiety, even Type 2 diabetes, chronic pain, migraines," says Lisa M. Schwartz, medical director of the integrative medicine program at the Roy and Patricia Disney Family Cancer Center in Burbank, set to open in the spring.
"It's not so much a part of our culture as it is in the Eastern part of the world, where it's a part of their daily routine," she says. "They understand that this is a healthy thing to do. As Americans, we've just come around to that." When the Disney center opens, treatment will include nontraditional practices such as mindfulness meditation — having an awareness of one's thoughts and actions in the present moment, without passing judgment — which has been shown to be effective in battling cancer.
More recently, researchers at UCLA have discovered that daily mindfulness meditation slows the progression of HIV.
HIV grazes on CD4 T cells, which researchers describe as the brains of the immune system, coordinating its activity when the body comes under attack. Stress makes matters worse by accelerating the process.
But mindfulness meditation stopped the decline in the study's 48 HIV-positive subjects. If the findings hold true in larger samples, meditation could become a low-cost complementary treatment for HIV, foresees lead study author David Creswell, a research scientist at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.
Studies such as Creswell's show meditation is beneficial for people whether they're suffering from an illness or stress.
Rose can vouch for the latter.
Whether at home or in the middle of a rock festival, she will stop whatever she's doing, she says, to sit with her eyes shut and repeat a looping mantra to herself.
"It's mind-boggling to me how simple the process is and how great the reward is," says Rose.
Oct 23rd 2008
Meditation gains in time of panic
Meditation gains in time of panic
Herald News Services
Published: Thursday, October 23, 2008Goldman Sachs Group Inc. supervisory board member William George is known for preaching profitability. In his spare time, he chants a different kind of mantra while reclining on his leather airplane seat.
"The very best time to meditate is on a plane," says George, 66. "I have to go to Europe a lot. If I land at 8 a.m., meditation gives me an opportunity to get deep rest and refocus before my board meeting at 10."
Like George, former Monsanto Co. chief executive Bob Shapiro also meditates regularly. They share their tranquillity with such unlikely meditation practitioners as golf champion Tiger Woods and Ford Motor Co. chairman William Ford.
An increasing number of those hitting the cushion are players in corporate America, looking to more unconventional methods to calm frayed nerves at a time when the Dow Jones Industrial Average has had its biggest drop since the Great Depression.
Aug 22nd 2008VEDA THERAPY COMES TO LOS ANGELES
For more information, and to make an appointment, email or call Adele: 818.907.8767. Veda Therapy, passed down from the ancient texts of ayurveda, is a system of health assessment and therapy which uses acupressure, yoga, massage and pranayam, among other techniques, to help one find optimal health.
Damian Haggland is a meditator from Australia who trained for more than 10 years in India before, with the blessings of his teacher, Dr. Madhusudan Ray, bringing this practice to the West. For the past five years, Damian has been treating patients in Sydney and in London, and now has moved to Los Angeles.
I most highly recommend the work Damian is doing. It is a perfect compliment to our own Vedic Meditation.
For more information, and to make an appointment, email or call Adele: 818.907.8767
www.vedatherapy.com
Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain parts: study
Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain parts: study
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Long-term heavy use of marijuana may cause two important brain structures to shrink, Australian researchers said on Monday.
Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers, the researchers said. The men had smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for on average 20 years.
The hippocampus regulates memory and emotion, while the amygdala plays a critical role in fear and aggression.
The study, published in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of General Psychiatry, also found the heavy cannabis users earned lower scores than the nonusers in a verbal learning task -- trying to recall a list of 15 words.
The marijuana users were more likely to exhibit mild signs of psychotic disorders, but not enough to be formally diagnosed with any such disorder, the researchers said.
"These findings challenge the widespread perception of cannabis as having limited or no harmful effects on (the) brain and behavior," said Murat Yucel of ORYGEN Research Centre and the University of Melbourne, who led the study.
"Like with most things, some people will experience greater problems associated with cannabis use than others," Yucel said in an e-mail. "Our findings suggest that everyone is vulnerable to potential changes in the brain, some memory problems and psychiatric symptoms if they use heavily enough and for long enough."
Among the 15 heavy marijuana users in the study, the hippocampus volume was 12 percent less and the amygdala volume was 7 percent less than in 16 men who were not marijuana users, the researchers said.
The researchers acknowledged that the study did not prove it was the marijuana and not some other factor that triggered these brain differences. But Yucel said the findings certainly suggested marijuana was the cause.
"STONED" FOR 20 YEARS
While about half of the marijuana users reported experiencing some form of paranoia and social withdrawal, only one of the nonusers reported such symptoms, Yucel said.
The heavy marijuana users, average age 40, said they had used other illicit drugs less than 10 times, the researchers said.
A U.S. group supporting legal sales and regulation of marijuana took issue with the findings, particularly because they were based on men who were such heavy, long-term users.
"These were people who were essentially stoned all day every day for 20 years," Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken said by e-mail. "This study says nothing about moderate or occasional users, who are the vast majority -- and the (study) even acknowledges this."
"The documented damage caused by comparably heavy use of alcohol or tobacco is just off-the-charts more serious, and you don't need high-tech scans to find it," Mirken added.
Yucel said the researchers have begun new research on the effects of both short-term and long-term and moderate and heavy use of marijuana.
Jun 2nd 2008Meditation: You Say Transcendental, I Say Vedic
Meditation: You Say Transcendental, I Say Vedic
by Marisa
Most of us have heard of Transcendental Meditation. Maybe you vaguely remember some phase The Beatles went through, or have caught wind of the David Lynch Foundation's funding of TM programs in schools. Perhaps you follow Deepak Chopra, who expounds regularly on the myriad health benefits,
or have simply heard there's a meditation practice that charges $2500
to learn one word. All true. But I'd like you to hear just a little
more.
While I can't vouch for the copy-righted Transcendental Meditation (TM)
program since, well, I can't afford it, I can vouch for the technique.
It's also known as Vedic meditation, and increasingly, it's everywhere.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
mainstreamed Vedic meditation under the name Transcendental Meditation
in 1955, roughly 5,000 years after the practice's actual origin. Drawn
from the Veda, an ancient Indian body of knowledge predating Hinduism
and responsible for yoga and ayurvedic medicine, Vedic meditation was
and remains a "house-holder's" meditation. You don't need to recluse
yourself from society or forfeit the material world to practice. The
training program takes all of a handful of hours over a couple days,
after which you're on your own, sitting comfortably with your assigned
mantra, eyes closed, for 20 minutes, twice daily. Simple, right?
Portable, and easily integrated into the busy American life.
So if your curiosity is piqued but the $2,500 TM price-tag proves too large a hurdle, consider a free introductory talk with any number of independent Vedic teachers. Same practice, but on a more manageable sliding scale, and once you've completed the course, you can repeat it as often as you like with any Vedic teacher, at no additional charge. After all, a meditation designed to be accessible for the masses, should be financially accessible as well. May 21st 2008
New Dates for Exploring the Veda, Part One
EXPLORING THE VEDA
with THOM KNOLES
We are pleased to announce the commencement of a course of advanced study, Exploring the Veda,
here in Studio City. Veda, the source of yoga, ayurveda, our own
meditation and much else, is the ancient record of spiritual
experience, the study of which leads to a deep and profound
understanding of the laws of nature.
Thom Knoles is recognized
as one of the world’s foremost teachers of Vedic science, the science
of consciousness. In a six-seminar recorded course of nearly 80 hours,
students learn techniques for deepening meditation, correcting the
mistakes of the intellect and manifesting the life experiences that
reveal our true state of fulfillment.
Exploring the Veda, facilitated by Jeff Kober, is held on evenings and weekends in six 10 to 16 hour seminars. Our course will commence with Exploring the Veda, Part 1,
beginning the evening of Friday, June 13, and continuing through Sunday,
June 15, here at our home on Ethel Avenue. Healthy vegetarian meals will
be provided.
This course of study is an absolute must for anyone
interested in deepening their knowledge of the Veda and their
understanding of consciousness as it expresses itself through ourselves
and the world around us.
Thom offers a bi-annual seventh seminar in India. This in-residence course, Exploring the Veda, Part 7,
will complete the six-seminar series and provide the format for
graduation. Completion of this course is also a prerequisite to
becoming trained as an Initiator.
Prerequisite: In order to participate in Exploring the Veda you must have been instructed in Vedic Meditation.
Course Fee: $600 for each of the first six seminars.
To sign-up, or for further information, contact Adele by email or phone: 818.907.8767.
Jill Taylor's TED Talk
Link through to this video for an inspirational and informative message about the nature of the brain and the nature of life on the planet.
Jill Taylor's TED Talk
The Passing of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and His Own Comments on Body Death
Dear Initiator,
...it will be fine for the audio file to be distributed as widely as Initiators feel appropriate. It is important that Maharishi’s own teaching about body-death in enlightenment is not reduced to a mere ‘death-dependent-heaven’ concept. Maharishi taught that that concept was based in ignorance. His teaching is “Heaven on Earth”- not “die-and-go-to-heaven”.
As one can see from the comments posted on the "Maharishi Open University/Maharishi Channel" website (my copy below), the hopeful successors of Maharishi, within mere hours of His body-death, already have begun to misrepresent what Maharishi taught about body-death in enlightenment.
(From the "Maharishi Open University/Maharishi Channel" website, 5 February’08):
“Heaven is applauding and welcoming
His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
A special message
by
His Majesty Maharaja Nader Raam
Announcing the departure
Of our most eternally beloved
His Holiness
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to heaven.
The special broadcast
Including the message, Guru Puja and chanting
Will continue repeatedly until further notice.
Jai Guru Dev”
Ironically, in the recording of Maharishi’s comments that I have distributed to you today, when asked specifically about death after cosmic consciousness, His opening statement about an enlightened person is, “He doesn’t go...”
It is such an unfortunate misunderstanding of Maharishi’s teaching that H.M.Tony Nader asserts Maharishi’s “departure...to heaven...”, that H.M. has “Heaven...welcoming...” Maharishi.
Let us hope that H.M. recovers some memory of Maharishi’s teaching during his ‘special broadcast’, and that confusing ideas about “Maharishi departing to heaven” do not gain currency.
Their lack of understanding of where (and what) Maharishi actually is has thrown our colleagues into grief; I know they mean well.
That notwithstanding, we cannot take responsibility for ignorance, and I feel it incumbent on me today to remind the world of Maharishi’s own teaching about what happened to Him today. As Maharishi states in the recording, “...nothing new happens... no new merger”; no new experience. The continuity of unbounded heaven-consciousness is untouched by body death; the omnipresent consciousness cannot go anywhere- it is already everywhere. Help me spread the proper thinking.
Love and Jai Guru Deva
Thom
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-\Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Spiritual Leader, Dies
from the New York Times:
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Spiritual Leader, Dies
By LILY KOPPEL
Published: February 6, 2008
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced transcendental meditation to the West and gained fame in the 1960s as the spiritual guru to the Beatles, died Tuesday at his home and headquarters in Vlodrop, the Netherlands. He is believed to have been in his 90s. Steven Yellin, a spokesman for the organization, confirmed the Maharishi’s death but did not give a cause.
On Jan. 11, the Maharishi announced that his public work was finished and that he would use his remaining time to complete a long-running series of published commentaries on the Veda, the oldest sacred Hindu text.
The Maharishi was both an entrepreneur and a monk, a spiritual man who sought a world stage from which to espouse the joys of inner happiness. His critics called his organization a cult business enterprise. And in the press, in the 1960s and ’70s, he was often dismissed as a hippie mystic, the “Giggling Guru,” recognizable in the familiar image of him laughing, sitting cross-legged in a lotus position on a deerskin, wearing a white silk dhoti with a garland of flowers around his neck beneath an oily, scraggly beard.
In Hindi, “maha” means great, and “rishi” means seer. “Maharishi” is a title traditionally bestowed on Brahmins. Critics of the yogi say he presented himself with the name, which he was ineligible for because he was from a lower caste.
The Maharishi originated the transcendental meditation movement in 1957 and brought it to the United States in 1959. Known as TM, a trademark, the technique consists of closing one’s eyes twice a day for 20 minutes while silently repeating a mantra to gain deep relaxation, eliminate stress, promote good health and attain clear thinking and inner fulfillment. Classes now cost $2,500 for a five-day session.
The TM movement was a founding influence on what has grown into a multibillion-dollar self-help industry, and many people practice similar forms of meditation that have no connection to the Maharishi’s movement.
Over the years since TM became popular, many scientists have found physical and mental benefits from mediation in general and transcendental meditation in particular, especially in reducing stress-related ailments.
Since the technique’s inception in 1955, the organization says, it has been used to train more than 40,000 teachers, taught more than five million people, opened thousands of teaching centers and founded hundreds of schools, colleges and universities.
In the United States, the organization values its assets at about $300 million, with its base in Fairfield, Iowa, where it operates a university, the Maharishi University of Management. In 2001, disciples of the movement incorporated their own town, Maharishi Vedic City, a few miles north of Fairfield.
Last March, a branch of the organization, Global Financial Capital of New York, moved into new headquarters it bought in Lower Manhattan.
The visibility and popularity of the organization can largely be attributed to the Beatles. In 1968, the band, with great publicity, began studying with the Maharishi at his Himalayan retreat, or ashram, in Rishikesh, in northern India. They went with their wives, the folk singer Donovan, the singer Mike Love, of the Beach Boys, the actress Mia Farrow and Ms. Farrow’s sister Prudence.
They left in the wake of rumors of sexual improprieties by the Maharishi, an avowed celibate, though no sexual-misconduct suits were filed and some of the participants later denied that anything untoward had occurred.
Nevertheless, public interest in the movement had been aroused in the West, and it continued to grow in the 1970s as the Maharishi took his movement around the world and as its techniques gained respectability in the medical world.
Later in life, the Maharishi refused to discuss the Beatles. Another one of his disciples was the Indian spiritualist Deepak Chopra, who was a friend of the former Beatle George Harrison and who promotes his own teachings based on traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine and meditation.
The Maharishi’s movement began losing followers the late 1970s, as people were put off by the organization’s promotion of a more advanced form of TM called Yogic Flying, in which practitioners try to summon a surge of energy to physically lift themselves off the ground. They have never gone beyond the initial stage of flying, described as “frog hops.”
Mahesh Prasad Varma was born near the central Indian town of Jabalpur, into a scribe caste family. Called Mahesh, he studied physics at Allahabad University and for the next 13 years became a student and secretary to a holy man, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, who the young disciple Mahesh called Guru Dev.
“Right from the beginning the whole purpose was to breathe in his breath,” the Maharishi wrote in his “Thirty Years Around the World: Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment,” published in 1986. “This was my ideal. The whole purpose was just to assume myself with Guru Dev.”
After the death of his master in 1953, Mahesh went into seclusion in the Himalayan foothills. He emerged two years later and began teaching a system of belief, which grew into the worldwide TM movement.
“It would appear that Maharishi cobbled together his teaching after his master died, when he found himself unemployed and out-of-grace with the ashram,” said Paul Mason, a critic of the Maharishi and the author of a biography, “The Maharishi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World.” “He reinvented himself and became a ‘maharishi’ and wanted to be seen as a messiah.”
Since 1990, the Maharishi had lived in Vlodrop with about 50 of his adherents, including his “minister of science and technology,” John Hagelin, a Harvard-educated physicist, who is expected to oversee the organization in the United States.
Late in life, the Maharishi tried to breathe new life into TM, establishing in 2000 his “Global Country of World Peace,” with the goals of preventing war, eradicating poverty and promoting environmental sustainability. One effort tried to reach young people across the United States with the support of celebrities like Donovan and the filmmaker David Lynch, who went on a speaking tour of colleges to promote the cause.
The Maharishi also sought to rebuild the world according to Vedic principals. He called for the demolition of all toxic buildings and unhealthy urban environments, even the demolition of historic landmarks if they were not built according to “Vedic architecture in harmony with Natural Law.” The Maharishi contended that the White House was wrongly situated. He said that a more suitable location for the capital of the United States was the small town of Smith Center, Kan.
In the last years of his life he rarely met with anyone, even his ministers, face-to-face, preferring to speak with followers almost exclusively by closed-circuit television.