The Power Of Meditation

Most people who meditate will rave about the benefits. People who don’t will dismiss it as hippy rubbish.

Underestimating the technique may mean they’re missing out on a range of benefits to health, mood and attention span, according to research.

One study has found that people who meditate have a better immune response to the flu vaccine than people who don’t. Another looked at 90 cancer patients who did meditation for seven weeks and it was found that those who meditated had 31 per cent lower stress symptoms and 67 per cent less mood disturbance than the ones who did not meditate.

Studies this year suggest that meditation is powerful enough to even “re-circuit” the brain.  Just as we do aerobics to improve muscle shape, meditation tones the grey matter.

Brain scans conducted by researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reveal that those experienced at meditating boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.

The finding agrees with other studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex.

It is also claimed that meditation is helpful for improving asthma and increasing fertility through to reducing the effects of ageing.

So how does it work?

To understand the impact of meditation, experts say we need to understand what meditation actually is. A broad description is that it’s a mental practice in which a person focuses their attention on a particular subject or object, maybe a candle flame, a mantra, breathing patterns, or simply an awareness of being alive.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Dr Richard Davidson carried out studies on Buddhist monks. In one study, he also observed the brains of a group of office workers before and after they did a course of meditation. At the end of the course the workers’ brains seemed to have altered in the way they functioned, they showed greater activity in the left-hand side – a characteristic linked to happiness and enthusiasm.

Dr Davidson told the BBC: “By meditating, you can become happier, you can concentrate more effectively and you can change your brain in ways that support that.” Meditation is said to improve the well-being of everyone, as well as those suffering from depression and mental illness.  Researchers are very excited by this.

One of those researchers is Kathy Sykes, professor of sciences and society at Bristol University in the UK, who visited Kathmandu for instruction with Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who has been meditating for more than 30 years. She wanted to learn more about meditation and says it helped her cope with the death of her father and she now uses it all the time. It helps her to cope in many situations.

Her father died from cancer about two months before she went to Kathmandu and she had not been able to grieve. Matthieu suggested she focus on unconditional love, and when she thought about that, she thought about her father. She wept and was finally able to let go.

“Meditating and mindfulness now help me get in touch with what really matters, and stop me from worrying,” she says. “It helped me profoundly in handling all my grief around dad’s illness and death. It helps me with almost everything.”

After her visit to Kathmandu, she went to Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, where Dr Herbert Benson, a Harvard Medical School professor, put her through a series of tests.  Doctors measured her resting pulse, muscle tension, respiration and sweat. They then subjected her to some mental arithmetic, her stress levels and all her readings soared.  However, after a short period of meditation, her pulse and breathing dropped below the resting rate. He said that to the extent that any disorder was caused or made worse by stress, achieving a “relaxation response” like this, would counteract that condition.

Sykes said she was recently on a crowded train travelling from London where there was “standing-room only”.

“I’d had a frenzied day, having to think and concentrate hard, speak and plan all day. The train was a nightmare. Packed, noisy, no seats left and truly horrid. I just found a place to sit in the floor, closed my eyes, and allowed all the mad busyness of my brain that day to stop, concentrated on my breathing and found it was a massive relief and escape.”

Meditation and mindfulness have now been approved by the UK clinical watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, for use with people in the UK who have experienced three or more periods of depression and it is offered by hospitals in cases of chronic or terminal illness to reduce complications ­associated with increased stress, including a depressed immune system.

So, what are you waiting for?  Find yourself a local meditation class, practice using the videos on the website and see just what benefits meditation and mindfulness can offer you.

New Findings Identified on Mind-Body Connection

Researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA)  have provided the results of a new study revealing fresh insights into the mind-body connection, by finding how chronic emotional stress ages the immune system.

Researchers have found that the stress hormone cortisol suppresses immune cells’ ability to activate enzymes that keep the cells young by preserving their ability to continue dividing. Every cell apparently contains a tiny clock called a telomere, which shortens each time the cell divides and according to the researchers, short telomeres are linked to a range of human diseases, including HIV, osteoporosis, heart disease and aging.


Many studies have already shown that the enzyme telomerase keeps immune cells young by preserving their telomere length and researchers insist that their latest study may help understand why the cells of persons under chronic stress have shorter telomeres. 

The findings show how stress makes people more susceptible to illness.

”When the body is under stress, it boosts production of cortisol to support a “fight or flight” response,” says Rita Effros, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the Jonsson Cancer Center, Molecular Biology Institute and UCLA AIDS Institute.

”If the hormone remains elevated in the bloodstream for long periods of time, though, it wears down the immune system. We are testing therapeutic ways of enhancing telomerase levels to help the immune system ward off cortisol”s effect. If we”re successful, one day a pill may exist to strengthen the immune system’s ability to weather chronic emotional stress,” the researcher adds.



We think a daily meditation practice is that magic pill and it’s free.