Hospitals rethink spiritual spaces, create meditation rooms

Wildmind Meditation News

They have space for prayer rugs and windows facing east – but no pews or religious symbols. They are called meditation rooms, sanctuaries where families can pray for patients, and doctors can pause for spiritual refreshing.

At least three area hospitals have plans to open meditation rooms – or expand and revise what were once known as chapels – for nondenominational observance. Reasons range from the changing needs of hospital staff, with more Muslims seeking a place to follow daily rituals, to the evolving view of medicine that the body and soul can heal together.

“When people are facing the ultimate spiritual and existential crisis such as illness, they need a quiet place to go,” …

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Mindfulness meditation and health

Wildmind Meditation News
[Audio] In Western countries, mindfulness meditation was long regarded as a fringe practice. But over the last decades, scientists have studied the effects of this practice on many medical and mental health issues – and are seeing measurable positive effects. WHYY’s Behavioral Health reporter Maiken Scott spoke with psychologist Dan Gottlieb about Mindfulness Meditation – how it works, and what we’re learning about it.

Listen to the broadcast on WHYY’s website.

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Researcher finds link between meditative breathing and pain relief

Wildmind Meditation News

We’ve all been told to “just breathe.” But a few psychology researchers at ASU and the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix took that a step further in a study that took a closer look at the actual value of breathing.

The study, more specifically, looked at how meditative breathing affects the way women with fibromyalgia respond to pain in the form of heat pulses.

College Times met with Alex Zautra, the lead author of the study and a foundation professor of psychology at ASU, to talk about what this study means to the public, the idea of pain and pain treatments and the value of meditation.

College Times: From what I gather, this study was …

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Harvard doc helps judges open minds

Wildmind Meditation News

Dozens of Bay State judges followed their bliss and abandoned the bench to mellow out with a meditation guru who taught them how to boost their “concentration” in the courtroom.

The six-hour conference – scheduled for a Friday – featured noted Harvard meditation expert Dr. Daniel Brown and attracted 66 of the state’s 80 superior court judges.

It was such a hit other judges are shedding their robes for some deep reflection.

“We focused on identifying the types of stresses that are typical of being a judge,” Brown said. “We talked about ways of enhancing capacities to cope with handling the ongoing stresses of being a judge.”

Brown said it was the second such seminar …

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Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch ‘smashing’ cancer with meditation

Wildmind Meditation News

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has invited fans to join him in daily meditation sessions. In an e-mail blast sent Tuesday afternoon, Yauch said that he and a few friends were participating in the twice-daily meditations and were hoping kindred spirits might join them.

“We are picturing smashing apart all of the cancer cells in the world,” wrote Yauch, who is in recovery after being diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his parotid gland last year. The rapper, also known as MCA, is hoping friends and fans will join him at 9:30AM and 6:30PM ET, for about an hour and a half.

“We are visualizing taking the energy away from the cancer, and then …

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How to grow your brain

Wildmind Meditation News

The brains of highly successful people function differently from those of the average Joe, according to the authors of the new book, The Winner’s Brain.

Fortunately, they say, you can actually rewire your brain, even physically change it.

Assistant neuroscience professor Mark Fenske of the University of Guelph and cognitive behavioural psychologist Jeff Brown of Harvard Medical School sought input from other brain experts and a variety of individuals they deemed “winners” – from blues guitarist B.B. King to Aaron Fechter, the inventor of popular carnival game Whac-a-Mole.

They identified eight “win factors,” including self-awareness, motivation, focus, emotional balance, memory, resilience, adaptability and brain care.

Here, Dr. Fenske explains that, with practice, it’s possible …

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Does stress feed cancer?

Wildmind Meditation News

Here’s another good reason for taking up meditation — a new study shows that stress hormones make it easier for malignant tumors to grow and spread.

From Scientific American:

A little stress can do us good—it pushes us to compete and innovate. But chronic stress can increase the risk of diseases such as depression, heart disease and even cancer. Studies have shown that stress might promote cancer indirectly by weakening the immune system’s anti-tumor defense or by encouraging new tumor-feeding blood vessels to form. But a new study published April 12 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that stress hormones, such as adrenaline, can directly support tumor growth and spread.

For normal cells

…
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Stress free, medicine free

Wildmind Meditation News

WLTV: If there were a medication you could take that would reduce stress, lower your blood pressure, reduce anxiety, increase your ability to focus, prevent disease and improve your quality of life would you take it? Well, there is no such drug, but research shows that meditation can help all of those things. Doctors at Mayo Clinic have developed an iPhone application to help you fit the many benefits of meditation into your busy life.

Ann Marie Gullickson’s life is packed. She works, takes classes, keeps her family organized and somehow finds time to sew costumes for her kids’ performances. “When my mind is really busy with all the different balls I have in …

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Meditation offers benefits for patients and nurses

Wildmind Meditation News

National Nursing News: Meditation — long considered by many the province of Buddhists and New Age gurus — is gaining new respect among neurologists, psychiatrists and others who study the brain. An increasing volume of scientific study is not only showing that meditation helps reduce stress, but is offering some physiological clues about why it might be beneficial to the body and brain.

Meditation has been studied for 20 years, but in the past five to 10 years the focus of that research has gone beyond the idea that meditation makes a person feel better to scientific measurement of physiological changes, says Susan Bauer-Wu …

Read the rest of this article…

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Meditation may be the future of anti-aging (part II)

Wildmind Meditation News

Scientific experts now believe we have in-built mechanisms that can fight and reverse the aging process. Innovative research into the reversal of aging is well underway and, while scientists debate the many different theories, research has revealed that meditation dramatically affects the production of three important hormones related to stress, longevity and aging.

Cortisol, DHEA and Melatonin.

Cortisol, the ‘stress hormone’, is naturally produced by the adrenal glands. Our bodies produce cortisol (and adrenaline) when we react to stress. Long term or chronic stress however means that the body is over exposed to these hormones, and this can lead to increased anxiety, depression, an inability to cope, and ultimately, physical illness.

David Zava, Ph.D., a …

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