Yo WestWind and Papajeff,

Great stuff and thanks for sharing.

Here's a list of 101 Benefits of Meditation

(from http://www.ineedmotivation.com/blog/2008/05/100-benefits-of-meditation/ )



Physiological benefits:

1- It lowers oxygen consumption.

2- It decreases respiratory rate.

3- It increases blood flow and slows the heart rate.

4- Increases exercise tolerance.

5- Leads to a deeper level of physical relaxation.

6- Good for people with high blood pressure.

7- Reduces anxiety attacks by lowering the levels of blood lactate.

8- Decreases muscle tension

9- Helps in chronic diseases like allergies, arthritis etc.

10- Reduces Pre-menstrual Syndrome symptoms.

11- Helps in post-operative healing.

12- Enhances the immune system.

13- Reduces activity of viruses and emotional distress

14- Enhances energy, strength and vigour.

15- Helps with weight loss

16- Reduction of free radicals, less tissue damage

17- Higher skin resistance

18- Drop in cholesterol levels, lowers risk of cardiovascular disease.

19- Improved flow of air to the lungs resulting in easier breathing.

20- Decreases the aging process.

21- Higher levels of DHEAS (Dehydroepiandrosterone)

22- prevented, slowed or controlled pain of chronic diseases

23- Makes you sweat less

24- Cure headaches & migraines

25- Greater Orderliness of Brain Functioning

26- Reduced Need for Medical Care

27- Less energy wasted

28- More inclined to sports, activities

29- Significant relief from asthma

30- improved performance in athletic events

31- Normalizes to your ideal weight

32- harmonizes our endocrine system

33- relaxes our nervous system

34- produce lasting beneficial changes in brain electrical activity

35- Cure infertility (the stresses of infertility can interfere with the release

of hormones that regulate ovulation).



Psychological benefits:

36- Builds self-confidence.

37- Increases serotonin level, influences mood and behaviour.

38- Resolve phobias & fears

39- Helps control own thoughts

40- Helps with focus & concentration

41- Increase creativity

42- Increased brain wave coherence.

43- Improved learning ability and memory.

44- Increased feelings of vitality and rejuvenation.

45- Increased emotional stability.

46- improved relationships

47- Mind ages at slower rate

48- Easier to remove bad habits

49- Develops intuition

50- Increased Productivity

51- Improved relations at home & at work

52- Able to see the larger picture in a given situation

53- Helps ignore petty issues

54- Increased ability to solve complex problems

55- Purifies your character

56- Develop will power

57- greater communication between the two brain hemispheres

58- react more quickly and more effectively to a stressful event.

59- increases one's perceptual ability and motor performance

60- higher intelligence growth rate

61- Increased job satisfaction

62- increase in the capacity for intimate contact with loved ones

63- decrease in potential mental illness

64- Better, more sociable behaviour

65- Less aggressiveness

66- Helps in quitting smoking, alcohol addiction

67- Reduces need and dependency on drugs, pills & pharmaceuticals

68- Need less sleep to recover from sleep deprivation

69- Require less time to fall asleep, helps cure insomnia

70- Increases sense of responsibility

71- Reduces road rage

72- Decrease in restless thinking

73- Decreased tendency to worry

74- Increases listening skills and empathy

75- Helps make more accurate judgements

76- Greater tolerance

77- Gives composure to act in considered & constructive ways

78- Grows a stable, more balanced personality

79- Develops emotional maturity



Spiritual benefits:

80- Helps keep things in perspective

81- Provides peace of mind, happiness

82- Helps you discover your purpose

83- Increased self-actualization.

84- Increased compassion

85- Growing wisdom

86- Deeper understanding of yourself and others

87- Brings body, mind, spirit in harmony

88- Deeper Level of spiritual relaxation

89- Increased acceptance of oneself

90- helps learn forgiveness

91- Changes attitude toward life

92- Creates a deeper relationship with your God

93- Attain enlightenment

94- greater inner-directedness

95- Helps living in the present moment

96- Creates a widening, deepening capacity for love

97- Discovery of the power and consciousness beyond the ego

98- Experience an inner sense of "Assurance or Knowingness"

99- Experience a sense of "Oneness"

100- Increases the synchronicity in your life



and the 101st is that Meditation is free!



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--- In meditationsocietyofamerica@yahoogroups.com, WestWindWood

<westwindwood2003@...> wrote:

>

> I would like to comment a little more.  My previous message is the way I

actively

> approach an illness.  I would also say

> that just meditating without a medical issue does calm a person and relieve

the

> chaos in the mind that occurs from normal living.  I am sure that relieving

that stress would make for a healthier

> person.  Try meditating and you will

> observe that after about twenty minutes, all those feelings that are banging

> around will settle down and you will be aware of your central dominant

> feeling.  Meditate another twenty

> minutes and that will settle also.  The problem is that the dominant feeling

will occur in the next session, so you have to actively work on you issues

between sessions by actively trying to change behavior.  For instance, if you

find yourself trying to be dominant with another for no evident benefit, let

then have their way if no harm is likely to come from doing so.  You might feel

like you are giving up a part of yourself in doing so, but do it to become a

better person.  It

> takes three or four sessions for the chaos to settle enough for the

> twenty-minute intervals to become evident. 

> After all you have a lifetime of feelings accumulated.  After meditating for

a few weeks, you are

> likely to have your friends comment that you are calmer and easier to be

> with.  So for a healthy and fruitful

> life, as I once saw on a bumper stickers in Berkeley, CA, “Don’t hesitate

to

> meditate” rather than “My karma ran over your dogma”.

>

>

>

> --- On Thu, 7/30/09, WestWindWood <westwindwood2003@...> wrote:

>

> From: WestWindWood <westwindwood2003@...>

> Subject: Re: [Meditation Society of America] Harvard Medical catching up with

yogis

> To: meditationsocietyofamerica@yahoogroups.com

> Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 1:07 AM

>

>

>

>

>

>

>  

>

>

>

>

>

>                   Sometimes stress can cause serious

> illness. 

> --

>

>

>

> http://www.independ ent.co.uk/ life-style/ health-and- families/ features/

relax-your- way-to-perfect- health-1763109. html

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This from another group:





http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/relax-your-\

way-to-perfect-health-1763109.html



It's a piece of advice that yogis have given for thousands of years: take a deep

breath and relax. Watch the tension melt from your muscles and all your niggling

worries vanish. Somehow we all know that relaxation is good for us. Now the hard

science has caught up � for a comprehensive scientific study showing that deep

relaxation changes our bodies on a genetic level has just been published.



What researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered is that, in long-term

practitioners of relaxation methods such as yoga and meditation, far more

"disease-fighting genes" were active, compared to those who practised no form of

relaxation.



In particular, they found genes that protect from disorders such as pain,

infertility, high blood pressure and even rheumatoid arthritis were switched on.

The changes, say the researchers, were induced by what they call "the relaxation

effect", a phenomenon that could be just as powerful as any medical drug but

without the side-effects.



"We found that a range of disease-fighting genes were active in the relaxation

practitioners that were not active in the control group," explains Dr Herbert

Benson, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who led the

research.



The good news for the control group with the less-healthy genes is that the

research didn't stop there. The experiment, which showed just how responsive

genes are to behaviour, mood and environment, revealed that genes can switch on,

just as easily as they switch off.



"Harvard researchers asked the control group to start practising relaxation

methods every day," explains Jake Toby, hypnotherapist at London's BodyMind

Medicine Centre, who teaches clients how to induce the relaxation effect. "After

two months, their bodies began to change � the genes that help fight

inflammation, kill diseased cells and protect the body from cancer, all began to

switch on."



More encouraging still, the benefits of the relaxation effect were found to

increase with regular practice � the more people practised relaxation methods

such as meditation or deep breathing, the greater their chances of remaining

free of arthritis and joint pain with stronger immunity, healthier hormone

levels and lower blood pressure.



Benson believes the research is pivotal because it shows how a person's state of

mind affects the body on a physical and genetic level. It might also explain why

relaxation induced by meditation or repetitive mantras is considered to be a

powerful remedy in traditions such as Ayurveda in India or Tibetan medicine.



But just how can relaxation have such wide-ranging and powerful effects?

Research around the world has described the negative effects of stress on the

body. Linked to the release of the stress-hormones adrenalin and cortisol,

stress raises the heart rate and blood pressure, weakens immunity and lowers

fertility.



By contrast, the state of relaxation is linked to higher levels of feel-good

chemicals such as serotonin and to the growth hormone which repairs cells and

tissue. Indeed, studies show that relaxation has virtually the opposite effect,

lowering heart rate, boosting immunity and enabling the body to thrive.



"On a biological level, stress is linked to fight-flight and danger," explains

Dr Jane Flemming, a London-based GP. "In survival mode, heart rate rises and

blood pressure shoots up. Meanwhile muscles, preparing for danger, contract and

tighten. And non-essential functions such as immunity and digestion go by the

wayside."



Relaxation, on the other hand, is a state of rest, enjoyment and physical

renewal. Free of danger, muscles can relax and food can be digested. The heart

can slow and blood circulation flows freely to the body's tissues, feeding it

with nutrients and oxygen. This restful state is good for fertility, as the body

is able to conserve the resources it needs to generate new life.



While relaxation techniques can be very different, their biological effects are

essentially similar. "When you relax, the parasympathetic nervous system

switches on and that is linked to better digestion, memory and immunity, among

other things," explains Jake Toby. "So as long as you relax deeply, you'll reap

a variety of rewards."



But, he warns, deep relaxation isn't the sort of switching off you do relaxing

with a cup of tea or lounging on the sofa. "What you're looking for is a state

of deep relaxation where tension is released from the body on a physical level

and your mind completely switches off," he says. "The effect won't be achieved

by lounging round in an everyday way, nor can you force yourself to relax. You

can only really achieve it by learning a specific technique such as

self-hypnosis, guided imagery or meditation."



The relaxation effect, however, may not be as pronounced on everyone. "Some

people are more susceptible to relaxation methods than others," cautions Joan

Borysenko, director of a relaxation programme for outpatients at Beth Israel

Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, US. "Through relaxation, we find that some

people experience a little improvement, others a lot. And there are a few whose

lives turn around totally."



The health benefits of deep relaxation



The next time you tune out, switch off and let yourself melt, remind yourself of

all the good work the relaxation effect is doing on your body. These are just

some of the scientifically proven benefits...



Immunity



Relaxation appears to boost immunity in recovering cancer patients. One study at

Ohio State University, in the US, found that progressive muscular relaxation,

when practised daily, reduced the risk of breast cancer recurrence. In another

study at Ohio State, a month of relaxation exercises boosted natural killer

cells in elderly people, giving them more resistance to tumours and viruses.



Fertility



A study at the University of Western Australia found that women are more likely

to conceive at periods when they're relaxed rather than stressed. Another study

at Trakya University, Turkey, found that stress reduces sperm count and

motility, a finding that implies that relaxation may boost fertility in men,

too.



Irritable bowel syndrome



When patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome practised a relaxation

meditation twice daily, symptoms such as bloating, belching, diarrhoea and

constipation improved significantly. The method was so effective that the

researchers at the State University of New York at Albany, recommended it as an

effective IBS treatment.



Blood pressure



A study at Harvard Medical School found meditation lowered blood pressure by

making the body less responsive to stress hormones, in a similar way to blood

pressure-lowering medication. Meanwhile, a report in the British Medical Journal

found that patients trained to relax had significantly lower blood pressure.



Inflammation



Stress leads to inflammation, a state linked to heart disease, arthritis, asthma

as well as skin conditions such as psoriasis, say researchers at Emory

University in the US. Relaxation can play a role in preventing and treating such

symptoms by switching off the stress response. In this way, one study at McGill

University in Canada found meditation clinically improved symptoms of psoriasis.



The BodyMind Medicine Centre, W1, teaches deep relaxation techniques that enable

people to access the relaxation effect at home. For information go to

relaxationeffect.com



Take a deep breath... How to relax deeply



So how can you access relaxation's healing powers? Harvard researchers found

that yoga, meditation and even repetitive prayer and mantras all induced the

relaxation effect. "The more regularly these techniques are practised, the more

deeply-rooted the benefits will be," says Jake Toby. Have a go at one or more of

the following for 15 minutes once or twice a day.



Body scan



Starting with your head and working down to your arms and feet, notice how you

feel in your body. Taking in your head and neck, simply notice if you feel

tense, relaxed, calm or anxious. See how much you can spread any sensations of

softness and relaxation to areas of your body that feel tense. Once your reach

your feet, work back up your body.



Breath focus



Sitting comfortably, become aware of your breath, following the sensation of

inhaling from your nose down to your abdomen and out again. As you follow your

breath, notice your whole body and let tension go with each exhalation. Whenever

you notice your mind wandering, come back to your breath.



Mantra repetition



The relaxation response can be evoked by sitting quietly with eyes closed for 15

minutes twice a day, and mentally repeating a simple word or sound such as 'Om'.



Guided imagery



Imagine the most wonderfully relaxing light, or a soothing waterfall washing

away any tension or worries from your body and mind. Make your image as vivid as

possible, imagining the texture, colour and any fragrance as the image washes

over or through you.