Decreases Need To Sleep: A study conducted by the University of Kentucky showed that meditation provides at the minimum a short-term cognitive improvement even in beginner meditators. In long term practitioners, who spend significant time in meditation there is a link with the need to sleep significantly less when compared with people of the same demographic who do not meditate.
Improves Your Immune System: Stress, lack of sleep and bad emotional regulation all affect your body on not only a psychological level, but also on a physical level. A study from Harvard Medical School showed that practitioners of yoga and meditation had improved mitochondrial energy production, consumption and resiliency which improve your immune system and resilience to stress.
Improved Sense Of Touch: Researchers at the Ruhr-University Bochum and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University München performed studies on experienced Zen Monks that showed an improved sense of touch. In order to assess the sense of touch quantitatively, researchers measured the so-called "two-point discrimination threshold". This marker indicates how far apart two stimuli need to be, in order to be discriminated as two separate sensations. After a finger meditation, the performance improved on average by 17 percent.
Improved Breathing: In most types of meditation you are very consciously focused on your breathing, filling your lungs up with air. The more you practice this the more it becomes a part of your unconscious, which leads to better, deeper breathing patterns.
Higher Pain Threshold And Resilience To Illness: When you have strong meditation skills, you are able to shift your conscious focus towards other things when experiencing pain. A study from the University of Montreal exposed 13 experienced meditators and 13 non-meditators to equal degrees of pain using heat while measuring their brain waves. The experienced meditators reported less pain than was shown on their scans, so even though their brains had been receiving the same level of pain, in their minds they felt it less.
Helps You To Avoid Overwhelm: Research from the University of Washington and University of Arizona explored whether training in meditation or relaxation can improve office workers' ability to multitask on a computer more effectively and/or with less stress. Human resource (HR) personnel were given 8 weeks of training in either mindfulness meditation or body relaxation techniques, and were given a stressful multitasking test both before and after training. Opposed to the control group, the meditation group reported lower levels of stress and showed better memory for the tasks they had performed; they also switched tasks less often and remained focused on tasks longer.
QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: For an active meditation practice we recommend our Meditation Elixirs. In particular the Zen formula and Success & Achievement formula specifically enhance focus and attention span.
Longevity through Forgiveness
In another study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, scientists compared participants who did not forgive a prior perceived wrong with those who did. The participants were then asked to walk to the foot of a hill. The forgivers perceived the hill to be considerably less steep than those who held a grudge, suggesting that forgiving can lead to optimism.
Robert Enright, professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a leader in forgiveness research, and a founding member of the International Forgiveness Institute. In one of his books on the subject, Forgiveness is a Choice, Enright breaks forgiveness into five steps:
- Admit you’ve been treated unfairly.
- Express your anger.
- Recognize the wrongdoer is a person who is more than the offense at hand.
- Accept that your pain may never go away completely.
- Find meaning in the experience and grow from it.
When forgiving seems too generous but you recognize you must move on, psychologist Janis Abrahms Spring, author of How Can I Forgive You?, suggests taking these steps:
- Let go of your preoccupation with the slight. Move on.
- If you find yourself ruminating over the painful event, pause and say aloud: "Stop!" Redirect your thoughts to something pleasurable.
- Don't make it all about you. "When someone feels wronged, they often feel shame and shattered," Spring says. But sometimes insensitive behavior stems from the other person's own hurt, life challenges or a misunderstanding.
- Protect yourself from further hurt. "Decide what level of relationship makes sense with this other person so you are no longer in harm's way," Spring says. Cutting yourself off entirely is rarely the healthiest option. Instead, establish boundaries that will protect you from repeat offenses.
Self-Healing Is More Common Than you Think
Our mental state has particularly dramatic effects when it comes to the symptoms we experience: things like pain, nausea, fatigue and depression. Playing a virtual-reality game eases pain in burn patients by as much as 50 percent (PDF) more than drugs alone, while research on placebos (fake treatment) tells us that psychological factors such as expectation and social interaction ease symptoms via biological changes very similar to those caused by drugs. Placebo painkillers trigger the release of natural pain-relieving chemicals called endorphins. Parkinson's patients respond to placebos with a flood of needed dopamine. Breathing fake oxygen can reduce the levels of neurotransmitters called prostaglandins, which cause many of the symptoms of altitude sickness.
Trials show that during invasive medical procedures such as breast biopsies or destruction of tumors, people who feel negative or anxious beforehand suffer more complications (things like prolonged lack of oxygen, low or high blood pressure, post-operative bleeding or an abnormally slow heart rate). Relaxation techniques such as visualizing a safe place vastly reduce pain and anxiety during these procedures—as well as the rate of adverse events. In one study, terminal cancer patients offered early palliative care chose to receive less aggressive treatment. They were less depressed, had a better quality of life—and they lived longer.
QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: In quantum medicine, everything is energy. This includes the entire biofield within and around a person--all the magnetic fields, electrical potentials and currents--all of which are affected by the mind, through our decisions, preferences, intentions and perceptions. Stress (mental, physical, emotional and spiritual) is the greatest threat to well-being and health. Use our E-1 Stress Relief Formula to balance and harmonize the entire body biofield.
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As An Infinite Being, You Chose What?
One of the most basic realities about being a spiritual being is that we are infinite. We have all the power, all the awareness, all the knowledge we need to create anything we desire. In fact--a hard fact--is that we have created, in great detail, everything we are experiencing in our lives.
"When I argue with my wife, I'm always wrong." -- And an infinite being would create that for what reason?
By using Bashar's three sentences, we can unravel how it is we ended up here, and it allows us (or forces us) to ask the right question. "How or why is this serving me, and why the hell do I think it's a good thing?"
A recently published study (meta analysis) in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience titled "Predicting the unpredictable: critical analysis and practical implications of predictive anticipatory activity", examined a number of experiments regarding this phenomenon that were conducted by several different laboratories.
Sensitivity to nature's healing energy can help you in your quest to achieve well-being. Research shows that time in nature lowers boosts immunity, decreases blood pressure and calms activity in areas the brain associated with stress. Our bodies and spirits seem to thrive on time near bodies of water, under vast skies, and near trees, grass, and brush. Nature is, after all, our home. Nature can bring us back into our bodies and reconnect us with ourselves. We evolved to be outdoors, sharing the planet with plants, insects, and other creatures, with our feet on the earth and our eyes scanning the distance as well as seeing what is right in front of us.
I love those moments when "out of the blue" you get an insight on how you've been living your life--and they seem to come when I'm doing something mundane, like walking the dog, driving the car, or grocery shopping (must be some neurological circumstance of some sort)... Anyway, today a big existential question came crashing in: "Do I really know what's going to happen, or am I choosing it?"
Perhaps a more "quantum" way to live would be to--instead of predicting what's going to happen--we just float in the question: "What amazing things await me at any moment?"
Abraham Hicks has a famous saying: "Hold a thought for just 17 seconds, and the Law of Attraction kicks in. Hold a thought for 68 seconds and things move; manifestation has begun."