After several months of remodeling, Banner Boswell Medical Center in Sun City has reopened its Meditation Chapel inside the hospital’s main entrance.

The remodeling project was done to reflect the diversity of the spiritual culture of patients, visitors and staff.
The chapel has a new water feature, an original triptych painting representing the 10 major world religions. The remodeling project also included the replacement of pews with individual chairs to create an atmosphere for individual meditation and reflection.

The chapel features a library of more than…

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40 pamphlets on various supportive topics and a special “faith box,” where handwritten requests for prayers can be placed for the chaplain. The chapel is open 24 hours a …

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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Michele Norris.

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The Rothko Chapel in Houston is more than an interfaith chapel. It’s also a center for human rights – and a one-man art museum devoted to 14 gigantic paintings by the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. The chapel opened its doors 40 years ago.

And as Pat Dowell found, it continues to make an impression on all who enter.

PAT DOWELL: Walk up to the chapel from the south and the first thing you see is a small pool with Barnett Newman’s steel sculpture, “Broken Obelisk,” apparently floating on the water. The chapel itself is …

Although Elizabethtown [Pennsylvania] College is a Brethren-affiliated college, the religious identity of students and faculty has become more diverse in recent years; the religions on campus vary from Christian faiths to Jewish to Muslim and everything in between. In light of this diversity, there have been more attempts by student organizations to reach out and invite people of various faiths through different activities.

The Labyrinth, hosted by the Chaplain’s Office, is one of these new interfaith activities. Most students are unaware of what a labyrinth is and what the experience at Etown offers them. “Labyrinths are a kind of walking meditation and they are like mazes, but there is only one path …

Books on Buddha, prayers printed in different languages, moveable chairs, kneeling stools, a glass prayer bowl, space for Muslim prayer rugs and a stained glass installation with a nature design fill the 180-square-foot room.

As intended, it’s a hodgepodge scene.

But for patients, visitors and staff of the hospital at Kaiser Roseville Medical Center, the room represents a quiet, sacred space where people of all religious backgrounds and spiritual beliefs are welcome. This meditation room also illustrates a growing recognition by health care providers throughout the United States that mind, body and spirit go hand in hand.

“Healing comes in many ways and we do a great job with the physical healing, but there’s the emotional and spiritual wounds, as well,” said Kaiser …

Yoga seems to have been “reincarnated” in America and some other parts of the world.

Various organizations are promoting “Christian Yoga”, claiming to provide a Christian approach to yoga. There are DVDs like “Christoga: Yoga Filled Body – Christ Filled Soul” (60 minutes of Yoga with bible scriptures recited by Janine. Yoga with Christ as the meditation focus!). There is a “Christian Yoga Magazine”. There are books like “Yoga for Christians: A Christ-Centered Approach to Physical and Spiritual Health through Yoga”,” Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul”, etc.

Welcoming the widespread interest in yoga, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, …

Nyoman Suryanata must have greeted at least 100 people at the National Monument complex in Jakarta last Sunday, trying to persuade passersby to sit down with him and try the controversial practice of Falun Gong.

“Please, Ma’am! Try out our meditation. It only takes a couple of minutes. Sir, have a go at meditation! Free of charge,” the 59-year-old businessman called out, offering brochures he had made himself.

Surya, as he prefers to be called, had prepared 100 brochures — at the end of the day there were none left.

From a distance, a young couple observed the practice carefully.

They were intrigued by the group’s slow-motion movements, designed to help members “cultivate” their mind and soul.

However, the couple …

The patterns of sacred colors pressed in glass on the doors of St. Alexius’ Meditation Room are rounded, reminiscent of Chippewa art and decoration, as well as geometric motifs, like the Lakotas’.

The colors and patterns also are appropriate for a room used by Muslim medical staff for prayer, since there is no depiction of the human form, which is forbidden in Islam.

The colored doors and side windows designed by artist Butch Thunderhawk allow light into the simply-furnished room. Rows of chairs line soft sand-colored walls. Natural materials complete the space – a wood plank ceiling and slate floor. The back of the room curves into a gentle bow to suggest the circular themes in Native American spiritual practices and the …

Students at Waukee South Middle School are learning the sources of stress.

They’re also learning how to break it.

Students in sixth through eighth grade in the school’s health class are working on a stress unit.

During class, students in Traci Havlik’s health class work on ways to identify stress and address it.

“They have a lot on their plates,” Havlik said.

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Prison inmates can find hope and healing through meditation and yoga, students at a local high school found out this week, in a presentation on the work of Sister Elaine MacInnes and her charity, Freeing the Human Spirit.

“Every day, 36,000 Canadians wake up in prison cells,” Cheryl Vanderburg, Freeing the Human Spirit’s program co-ordinator, told her teenage audience at Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School, Wednesday morning, Nov. 10.

“More than half the people in prison are victims of child abuse. The majority have unstable job history. Every day, I go into prisons and I see kids like yourselves. They’ve done something stupid and gotten caught.”

Vanderburg was a …

Virginia resident Kia Scherr walked quietly through the jasmine-scented halls of Mumbai’s Oberoi Trident high-rise hotel as Indian staff members gently smiled.

On Nov. 26, 2008, her husband, Alan Scherr, 58, and their 13-year-old daughter Naomi were killed when gunmen opened fire in the hotel’s oceanfront restaurant. The Scherrs were among six Americans killed in the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead and more than 230 wounded.

Now Kia Scherr has come to India to meet President Obama during his three-day visit to Mumbai and New Delhi. She said she wants to thank him in person for the condolence letter he wrote her after the attacks, which were carried out by 10 gunmen from Pakistan.

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