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Meditating isn't easy. Instead of sitting on the floor cross-legged for half an hour, you probably want to be tweaking your
fantasy football team, working through your Netflix cue, crossing things off the to-do list. Yet, new studies show that meditating could be just as good for you as those obviously relaxing and productive activities, plus offer surprising, cool mind, body, and health benefits. Take a few minutes a day to focus on one thing - a mantra, a word, or
your own breath; basically, anything but that to-do list - and you'll benefit in these ways.
Feel Less PainResearchers put healthy participants in an MRI to see how their brains light up when they experience pain, and how meditation could change their evaluation of that pain. After only four days, meditation during pain was found to reduce the participants' rating of unpleasantness by 57 percent, and also decreased the intensity by 40 percent. How? Meditation-induced reductions in pain were associated with increased activity in the areas involved with cognitive processing and reframing the contextual evaluation of sensory events - meaning the pain you feel can be reframed in your brain as less terrible, and more tolerable.
Control AnxietyMeditate, and you'll stress less in the moment, and you may be able to also stop yourself from worrying about the future, according to
recent research. Nearly a hundred patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (a disorder characterized by chronic worry and physiological hyperarousal symptoms), were trained in a type of meditation called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. After eight weeks, without adding any traditional cognitive therapy, their anxiety and distress levels went down. The study's takeaway: If you can learn from mediation that thoughts are just thoughts, and physical sensations are just physical sensations, you can more easily shut down the anxiety-causing negative self-talk about those feelings.
Furthermore, participants in the study who had to do public speaking (perhaps the world's greatest anxiety-inducer) even showed more confidence, saying things more often like "I can handle everything" rather than the self-sabatoging, "I'll probably bomb anyway."
Be HappierThis year, a Johns Hopkins professor did
an analysis of 47 of the best existing mediation studies on more than 3,500 participants. He found that meditation provided as much relief from depression symptoms as antidepressants. And unlike drugs, which can come with a host of unpleasant side effects - drowsiness, reduced sex drive - meditation has never been shown to have any risk or negative side effects. Well, other than a little flack from your friends.
Comment: There is one proven technique that can assist you with managing pain, reducing stress, calming and focusing your mind, creating better links between body and mind and thus improving quality of life, increasing sense of connection with others in your community. It will help you to have improved overall health, a stronger immune system, better impulse control, reduced inflammation, etc. It will also help you to heal emotional wounds; anything that may hinder or prevent you from leading a healthy and fulfilling life.
There is a myriad of relaxation techniques out there, but not many of them can attest to having not only immediate effects, but also having a highly practical application. With Éiriú Eolas, there is no need to sit in special postures, or be present in a carefully prepared relaxing atmosphere. The strength of the program comes from its high adaptability to stressful conditions of the modern world. Anyone can do it, be it a student, sitting outside of a lecture hall before the exam, a mechanic needing a break from tackling problems all day, a businessman just before signing an important deal, a mother having to raise three children and worrying if she will have enough money to pay the mortgage, etc.
Visit the Éiriú Eolas
site or read and participate on the
forum to learn more about the scientific background of this program and then try it out for yourselves, free of charge.
The kingdom of heaven truly does exist within, and the only access is stillness. Rest assured The Thugs in Charge are aware of this, and they are hell bent in creating anything but.