Benefits of Meditation:

Are you continually stressed, overwhelmed by life’s pressures? Are you feeling so stressed that you’re disconnected from your loved ones and your environment? Isolated? Experiencing events without feelings? Experiencing automatism (not noticing what you do)? Never feeling like you have had enough rest? Are you just trying to cope? Or simply looking to become all that you can be? Then join us for some rest, some peace and quiet and immediate empowerment.

The effects and health benefits of meditation are both immediate and cumulative. Can you imagine how creative and how much fun your family, friends and co-workers would become if you practised together? Get together and spur each other on! We encourage it!

Benefits of Meditation:

Meditation activates the Parasympathetic Nervous System. The sympathetic and parasympathetic work in OPPOSITION, when one is turned on, the other is turned off.

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): “Stress” – key neurotransmitters are epinephrine and norepinephrine and the hormones are cortisol, insulin and grehlin; increasing alertness, fight-flight-freeze-feint response, mobilised energy, increased heart rate, elevation in muscle tone (to get away), diminished blood flow to organs that aren’t vital eg brain, gut, liver…

Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS): “Relaxation” – key neurotransmitter is acetylcholine and the hormones are oxytocin, growth hormone and testosterone; rest and digest (digestion and peristalsis optimised), optimal organ function (including the ALL important LIVER), tend and befriend, creating energy reserves, calmness, reduced heart rate, decreased alertness…

Meditators secrete more of the hormone of health & youth, DHEA as they age than non-meditators. Meditating forty-five-year-old males have an average of 23 percent more DHEA than non-meditators, and meditating females have an average of 47 percent more. This helps decrease stress, heighten memory, preserve sexual function, and control weight.

Benefits of Meditation (short list)

The effects of more DHEA (Dehydroepiandrosterone) include:

*Anti-aging, longevity

*Enhanced mood, energy and memory

*Improved immune system

*Boosted sex drive

*Reduced osteoporosis

*Improved fat loss

*More muscle mass

*Reduced autoimmune disorders

*Less heart disease

• The calming hormones melatonin (which research suggests, boosts the immune system and has anti-cancer effects; it also happens to help with anti-aging) and serotonin (the hormone which makes you happy), are increased by meditation, and the stress hormone cortisol is decreased.
• Meditation creates a unique hypometabolic state, in which the metabolism is in an even deeper state of rest than during sleep. During sleep, oxygen consumption drops by 8 percent, but during meditation, it drops by 10 to 20 percent.
• Meditation is the only activity that reduces blood lactate, a marker of stress and anxiety.
• Meditation has a profound effect upon three key indicators of aging: hearing ability, blood pressure, and vision of close objects.
• Long-term meditators experience 80 percent less heart disease and 50 percent less cancer than non-meditators.
• 75 percent of insomniacs were able to sleep normally when they meditated.
• 34 percent of people with chronic pain significantly reduced medication when they began meditating.
• Results show that: 24 cities in which 1% of the population had been instructed in meditation by 1972 displayed decreased crime rates during the next year and decreased crime trends during the subsequent five years (1972-1977) in comparison to the previous five years (1967-1972), in contrast to control cities matched for geographic region, population, college population, and crime rate. Journal of Crime and Justice, www.honeytraveler.com/buy-symbicort/ 4:25-45, 1981. Except for the last item these statistics are found in Meditation as Medicine by Dharma Singh Khalsa, 2001.

Increased intuition and psychic abilities – remote viewing and remote influencing. For more information click here.

 

The  definitive (long) list of the benefits of meditation is here.

 

A Harvard University study published in 2008 found the first compelling evidence that the Relaxation Response (RR) – the physiological response to meditation, yoga, tai chi, Qi Gong or repetitive prayer – positively affects DNA.

Nineteen adults were long-term daily practitioners of various RR techniques, 20 were trained in RR eliciting techniques (breathing, mantra and mindfulness meditation) for 8 weeks, and 19 served as controls.

By analysis of blood samples, the study found that 2209 genes were differently expressed (switched on or off) between the long-term meditators and control group. Specifically, 1275 were up-regulated (their activity was increased) and 934 were down-regulated (their activity was reduced). It also found that 1561 genes were expressed differently between the group who did the 8 weeks meditation training and the control group. Specifically, 874 were up-regulated and 687 were down-regulated.

In other words, meditation – short or long term – causes hundreds of genes to turn on or off.

Many of the genes were involved in cellular metabolism and in the body’s response to ‘oxidative stress’. Oxidative stress is one of the biological products of mental and emotional stress. It produces free radicals and is known to be involved in a host of disease processes, including atherosclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. It also accelerates aging at the cellular level. Ideally, we want a good response to oxidative stress so that we can prevent the negative effects.

In the study, blood analysis found significant changes in cellular metabolism and response to oxidative stress in the two meditation groups relative to the control group.

The scientists proposed that the Relaxation Response – whether it is induced through meditation, yoga or prayer – may counteract cellular damage due to chronic psychological stress.

People have meditated for years and enjoyed better health (and a slower aging process) but many others have been sceptical as to its benefits. Now, we have solid scientific proof of the positive genetic effects of meditation in that it affects genes that positively influence cell metabolism and the response to oxidative stress.

Here’s the link to the article. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002576 You can download the PDF free: This article is Copyright © 2008 by David R. Hamilton Ph.D.

Next: Regular Meditation. The Importance of Continuing Meditaiton