Dealing with Depression & Pain

13 Mind-Body Techniques That Can Help Ease Pain and Depression

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Contributing writer for Wake Up World

Many aches and pains are rooted in brain processes that can be affected by your mental attitude and emotions. While the mechanics of these mind-body links are still being unraveled, what is known is that your brain, and consequently your thoughts and emotions, do play a role in your experience of physical pain.

For instance, meditation appears to work for pain relief because it reduces brain activity in your primary somatosensory cortex, an area that helps create the feeling of where and how intense a painful stimulus is. Laughter is also known to relieve pain because it releases endorphins that activate brain receptors that produce pain-killing and euphoria-producing effects.

This line of communication between mind and body runs both ways though, and physical pain, especially if it’s chronic, is a well-known trigger for depression. According to psychologist Rex Schmidt at the Nebraska Medical Center Pain Management:[1] “Depression and pain happen to share a part of the brain that’s involved in both conditions, which means that mind-body techniques that affect those areas can be efficacious for both.”

Meditation and laughter are just two examples of a burgeoning new field of science that looks at mind-body therapies to address depression and chronic pain. Here are 13 such strategies…

#1: Add EFT to Your Self-Help Toolkit

The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a form of psychological acupressure based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments for over 5,000 years, but without the invasiveness of needles.

Instead, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to transfer kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest while you think about your specific problem — whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, anxiety, etc. — and voice positive affirmations.

This combination of tapping the energy meridians and voicing positive affirmation works to clear the “short-circuit” — the emotional block — from your body’s bioenergy system, thus restoring your mind and body’s balance, which is essential for optimal health and the healing of physical disease.

Some people are initially wary of these principles that EFT is based on — the electromagnetic energy that flows through the body and regulates our health is only recently becoming recognized in the West. Others are initially taken aback by (and sometimes amused by) the EFT tapping and affirmation methodology.

But believe me when I say that, more than any traditional or alternative method I have used or researched, EFT has the most potential to literally work magic. Clinical trials have shown that EFT is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, the body can often rebalance itself, and accelerate healing.

In the videos below, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman shows how you can use EFT to relieve your physical pain and depression.

You can also learn more here: A Comprehensive Guide to the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

#2: Massage the Pain Away

Massage offers real health benefits, so much so that some conventional hospitals are making it a standard therapy for surgery patients and others. Along with promoting relaxation and improving your sense of well-being, getting a massage has been shown to:

  • Relieve pain (from migraines, labor, fibromyalgia and even cancer)
  • Reduce stress, anxiety and depression, and ease insomnia
  • Decrease symptoms of PMS
  • Relax and soften injured and overused muscles, reducing spasms and cramping.
  • Provide arthritis relief by increasing joint flexibility.

Massage affects your nervous system through nerve endings in your skin, stimulating the release of endorphins, which are natural “feel good” chemicals. Endorphins help induce relaxation and a sense of well-being, relieve pain and reduce levels of stress chemicals such as cortisol and noradrenaline — reversing the damaging effects of stress by slowing heart rate, respiration and metabolism and lowering raised blood pressure.

Stronger massage stimulates blood circulation to improve the supply of oxygen and nutrients to body tissues and helps the lymphatic system to flush away waste products. It eases tense and knotted muscles and stiff joints, improving mobility and flexibility. Massage is said to increase activity of the vagus nerve, one of 10 cranial nerves, that affects the secretion of food absorption hormones, heart rate and respiration. It has proven to be an effective therapy for a variety of health conditions — particularly stress-related tension, which experts believe accounts for as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of disease.

As reported by iVillage.com:[2]

“[A] new study from Thailand suggests that traditional Thai massage can decrease pain intensity, muscle tension and anxiety among people with shoulder pain. Meanwhile, research from the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami in Florida found that when adults with hand pain had four weeks of massage therapy, they reported a lot less pain, anxiety and depression.

Another study at the Touch Research Institute found that when pregnant women who were depressed received massages from their partners twice a week, they had much less leg and back pain and fewer symptoms of depression during the second half of their pregnancies.”

#3: Remain in the Now…

Practicing “mindfulness” means that you’re actively paying attention to the moment you’re in right now. Rather than letting your mind wander, when you’re mindful you’re living in the moment and letting distracting thoughts pass through your mind without getting caught up in their emotional implications. Though it sounds simple, it often takes a concerted effort to remain in a mindful state, especially if it’s new to you. But doing so can offer some very significant benefits to both your mental and physical health.

For example, mindfulness training has been found to reduce levels of stress-induced inflammation, which could benefit people suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma.

This makes sense, since chronic stress heightens the inflammatory response, and mindfulness is likely to help you relieve feelings of stress and anxiety. In one eight-week study,[3] people who received mindfulness training had smaller inflammatory responses than those who received a control intervention, which focused on healthy activities to reduce psychological stress but without particular instruction on mindfulness. Similarly, according to iVillage.com:[2]

“Mindfulness meditation — focusing on your breath and each present moment — can lessen cancer pain, low back pain and migraine headaches. Researchers at Brown University in Providence, R.I., found that when women with chronic pelvic pain participated in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program, their pain decreased and their mood improved.”

In many ways, mindfulness is similar to transcendental meditation, the idea of which is to reach a place of “restful” or “concentrated” alertness, which enables you to let negative thoughts and distractions pass by you without upsetting your calm and balance. This type of meditation is easy to try at home: simply sit quietly, perhaps with some soothing music, breathe rhythmically and focus on something such as your breathing, a flower, an image, a candle, a mantra or even just being there, fully aware, in the moment.

Researchers report that practicing mindfulness meditation for just four days affects pain responses in your brain. Brain activity decreases in areas devoted to monitoring a painful body part, and also in areas responsible for relaying sensory information.

For more information, please see: Why We Get Held Hostage by Our Emotions – and How Mindfulness Can Help

#4: Take Control with Biofeedback

In biofeedback, electrical sensors attached to your skin allow you to monitor your biological changes, such as heart rate, and this feedback can help you achieve a deeper state of relaxation. It can also teach you to control your heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tension through your mind. According to psychologist Rex Schmidt:

“Through focus and mental strategies, biofeedback induces the relaxation response and gives you a greater sense of control.”

Biofeedback is often used for stress-related conditions, such as:

  • Migraines and tension-type headaches
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Back pain
  • Depression and anxiety

#5: Free Yourself from Tension with Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is achieved by tensing and relaxing all the major muscle groups, one at a time, from head to toe. By learning to feel the difference between tension and relaxation, you can more actively disengage your body’s fight-or-flight response, which underlies most pain, depression and stress. As reported by iVillage.com:[2]

“Studies show that whether PMR is used on its own or with guided imagery, it helps ease emotional distress and pain from cancer, osteoarthritis, surgery and other conditions.”

#6: Harness Relaxation with Tai Chi

The 2,000-year-old Chinese practice of tai chi is a branch of Qigong — exercises that harness the qi (life energy). It’s been linked to numerous health benefits, including improvements in the quality of life of breast cancer patients and Parkinson’s sufferers, and has shown promise in treating sleep problems and high blood pressure.

Often described as “meditation in motion” or “moving meditation,” the activity takes your body through a specific set of graceful movements. Your body is constantly in motion and each movement flows right into the next. While practicing tai chi, your mind is meant to stay focused on your movements, relaxation and deep breathing, while distracting thoughts are ignored.

Part of the allure is that it’s so gentle, it’s an ideal form of activity for people with pain or other conditions that prevent more vigorous exercise. You can even do tai chi if you’re confined to a wheelchair. Even respected conventional health institutions such as the Mayo Clinic[4] and Harvard Medical School[5] recommend tai chi for its health benefits, especially as a stress-reduction tool. However, there are more studies available than you might think; suggesting tai chi has an impressive range of health benefits. To browse through them, please see the WorldTaiChiDay.org[6] web site. According to the study, A Randomized Trial of Tai Chi for Fibromyalgia:

“In a recent study at the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, researchers found that when people with fibromyalgia participated in 60-minute tai chi sessions twice a week for 12 weeks, they had much less physical and mental discomfort. The researchers also reviewed the medical literature on tai chi’s effect on psychological well-being and concluded that it reduces depression, anxiety and stress.”

#7: Breathe Easy…

Deep breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which induces the relaxation response. There are many different breathing practices that you can try, but here I’m going to share two that are both powerful and very easy to perform. The first one I learned when I attended a presentation by Dr. Andrew Weil at the 2009 Expo West in California. The key to this exercise is to remember the numbers 4, 7 and 8. It’s not important to focus on how much time you spend in each phase of the breathing activity, but rather that you get the ratio correct. Here’s how it’s done:

  1. Sit up straight
  2. Place the tip of your tongue up against the back of your front teeth. Keep it there through the entire breathing process
  3. Breathe in silently through your nose to the count of four
  4. Hold your breath to the count of seven
  5. Exhale through your mouth to the count of eight, making an audible “woosh” sound
  6. That completes one full breath. Repeat the cycle another three times, for a total of four breaths

You can do this 4-7-8 exercise as frequently as you want throughout the day, but it’s recommended you don’t do more than four full breaths during the first month or so of practice. Later, you may work your way up to eight full breath cycles at a time. The benefits of this simple practice are enormous and work as a natural tranquilizer for your nervous system.

The second is known as the Buteyko Breathing Method, which is a powerful approach for reversing health problems associated with improper breathing, the most common of which are overbreathing and mouthbreathing. When you stop mouth breathing and learn to bring your breathing volume toward normal, you have better oxygenation of your tissues and organs, including your brain.

Factors of modern life, including stress and lack of exercise, all increase your everyday breathing. Typical characteristics of overbreathing include mouth breathing, upper chest breathing, sighing, noticeable breathing during rest, and taking large breaths prior to talking.

Controlling anxiety and quelling panic attacks is one of the areas where the Buteyko Method can be quite useful. If you’re experiencing anxiety or panic attacks, or if you feel very stressed and your mind can’t stop racing, try the following breathing technique. This sequence helps retain and gently accumulate carbon dioxide, leading to calmer breathing and reduces anxiety. In other words, the urge to breathe will decline as you go into a more relaxed state:

  1. Take a small breath into your nose, followed by a small breath out
  2. Then hold your nose for five seconds in order to hold your breath, and then release your nose to resume breathing
  3. Breathe normally for 10 seconds
  4. Repeat the sequence

To learn more, see: The Buteyko Method: How This Simple Breathing Technique Can Radically Transform Health

#8: Hypnosis for Pain Management

Hypnosis, which is a trance-like state in which you experience heightened focus and concentration, can help decrease pain by altering your emotional responses to your body’s pain signals and your thoughts about the pain. Contrary to popular belief, you do not relinquish control over your behavior while under hypnosis, but it does render you more open to suggestions from the hypnotherapist. As reported by iVillage.com:

“Studies show that hypnosis can help manage the pain from childbirth and metastatic breast cancer as well as chronic low back pain. What’s more, cognitive hypnotherapy can lead to less depression, anxiety and hopelessness among depressed people than cognitive behavioral therapy does, according to research from the University of Calgary in Canada.”

#9: Soothe Your Mind and Body Through the Power of Music

If you’re a music lover, you already know that turning on the tunes can help calm your nerves, make stress disappear, pump up your energy level during a workout, bring back old memories, as well as prompt countless other emotions. When you listen to music, much more is happening in your body than simple auditory processing.

Music triggers activity in the nucleus accumbens, a part of your brain that releases the feel-good chemical dopamine and is involved in forming expectations. At the same time, the amygdala, which is involved in processing emotion, and the prefrontal cortex, which makes possible abstract decision-making, are also activated, according to recent research published in the journal Science.[7] Other research[8] revealed listening to music resulted in less anxiety and lower cortisol levels among patients about to undergo surgery than taking anti-anxiety drugs. As reported by iVillage.com:

“…[R]esearchers in Cleveland found that when [burn] patients listened to music and used visual imagery as a distraction when their wound dressings were being changed, they experienced significantly less pain, anxiety and muscle tension. In a study in Norway, depressed people who had music therapy plus psychotherapy were less depressed and anxious and more functional than those who just did regular therapy.”

Musical preference varies widely between individuals, so only you can decide what will effectively put you in a particular mood. Overall, classical music tends to be among the most calming, so may be worth a try. To incorporate music into a busy schedule, try playing CDs while driving, or put on some tunes while you’re getting ready for work in the morning. You can also take portable music with you when walking the dog, or turn on the stereo instead of watching TV in the evening.

For more information, please see: How Music Benefits The Brain

#10: Take Up Yoga

Yoga has been proven to be particularly beneficial if you suffer with back pain, but recent research also suggests it can also be of tremendous benefit for your mental health. Duke University researchers recently published a review[9] of more than 100 studies looking at the effect of yoga on mental health, and according to lead author Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center:[10]

“Most individuals already know that yoga produces some kind of a calming effect. Individually, people feel better after doing the physical exercise. Mentally, people feel calmer, sharper, maybe more content. We thought it’s time to see if we could pull all [the literature] together… to see if there’s enough evidence that the benefits individual people notice can be used to help people with mental illness.”

According to their findings, yoga appears to have a positive effect on:

  • Mild depression
  • Sleep problems
  • Schizophrenia (among patients using medication)
  • ADHD (among patients using medication)

Some of the studies suggest yoga can have a similar effect to antidepressants and psychotherapy, by influencing neurotransmitters and boosting serotonin. Yoga was also found to reduce levels of inflammation, oxidative stress, blood lipids and growth factors.

For more information, please see: Modern Science Confirms Yoga’s Many Health Benefits

#11: Visualization and Guided Imagery

According to iVillage.com, visualization techniques or guided imagery can serve as an important tool to combat both physical pain and depression by imagining being in “a better place.”

“Research shows it can help with pain from cancer, osteoarthritis and childbirth by providing distraction and promoting a state of relaxation. In addition, a study from Portugal found that when people hospitalized for depressive disorders listened to a guided imagery CD once a day for 10 days, they were less depressed, anxious and stressed over time, compared to peers who didn’t use visualization.”

Ideally, you’ll want to immerse yourself as fully as you possibly into your visualization, using all your senses: seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, and feeling. According to Dr. Schmidt:

“Using all your senses changes levels of brain chemicals such as serotonin, epinephrine and endorphins, and with regular practice you’ll gain more of a sense of control, which is often lacking when you’re in pain or depressed.”

#12: Repeat a Calming Mantra

The repeated incantation of a mantra — a soothing or uplifting word or phrase of your choice — in a rhythmic fashion can help you relax in a similar way as mindfulness training. The focused repetition, also called autogenic training, helps keep your mind from wandering and worrying, and engages your body’s relaxation response.

“A study at the University of Manchester in the U.K. found that autogenic training helped female migraine sufferers decrease the frequency and intensity of their headaches. And research from the University of Melbourne in Australia suggests that autogenic training may provide ‘helpful longer-term effects’ on symptoms of depression,” according to iVillage.com.

#13: Remove Pain and Dysfunctional Psychological Conditions with the Neurostructural Integration Technique

The Neurostructural Integration Technique (NST) is an amazing innovative technique developed in Australia. Using a series of gentle moves on specific muscles or at precise points on your body creates an energy flow and vibrations between these points. This allows your body to communicate better with itself and balance the other tissues, muscles and organs. The method of action is likely through your autonomic nervous system (ANS), allowing your body to better carry out its many functions the way it was designed to.

The main objective is to remove pain and dysfunctional physiological conditions by restoring the structural integrity of the body. In essence, NST provides the body with an opportunity to reintegrate on many levels, and thus return to and maintain normal homeostatic limits on a daily basis.

NST is done with a light touch and can be done through clothing. There are pauses between sets of moves to allow your body to assimilate the energy and vibrations. To learn more, please review the article, Gentle Hands Can Restore Your Health, by Micheal Nixon Levy who developed the technique.

Sources and References:

On Mudras & Healing

Mudras: The Healing Power In Your Hands

Mudras hold an innate healing power that supports the mind-body connection … and have been used for centuries.

A mudra, a symbolic or ritual gesture performed with the hands and fingers, is a spiritual gesture used to stimulate different parts of the body involved with breathing and to affect the flow of prana in the body.

Mudras have been in use in the East for thousands of years, particularly in Buddhism. Buddha statues often have the hands in certain hand positions. They have been used as a spiritual practice (and still are), as a way on the path to enlightenment.

However they’re also used for physical ailments. – source

The Healing Power In Your Hands

Mudras are a powerful addition to any meditation.  In a recent article posted by Forever Conscious, shows us some of the most common mudras and how to use them to boost our mind and body connection.

by Tanaaz, Forever Conscious

Mudras are positions of the hands that are said to influence the energy of your physical, emotional and spiritual body.

Mudras have been used in the East for thousands of years and were practiced by many spiritual leaders including Buddha. Today, Mudras are still used in Yoga and meditation.

Sometimes we may subconsciously place our hands into Mudra positions without even knowing it and other times we can use them to help channel and stimulate healing.

There are hundreds of Mudras but here are some of the most common:

1.) Gyan Mudra (Mudra of Knowledge):mudra of knowledge

The tip of the index finger touches the tip of the thumb while the other fingers remain straight.

Benefits: Enhances knowledge, stimulates the pituitary and endocrine glands, increases memory, helps meditation, prevents insomnia, can boost mood and bring clarity.

Practice: Any time while sitting, standing or lying in bed.

2.) Prithvi Mudra (Mudra of Earth): mudra of earth

The tip of the ring finger touches the thumb while the other fingers remain straight out.

Benefits: reduces physical and spiritual weaknesses, can increase the life force, can help clear skin, promotes body functionality.

Practice: Any time.

3.) Varuna Mudra (Mudra of Water): mudra of water

The tip of the pinky finger touches the thumb while the other fingers remain straight up.

Benefits: helps to balance emotions and helps to retain water. Helps to relieve constipation and cramps. Can also help regulate menstrual cycles and hormonal conditions.

Practice: 15 minutes three times a day.

4.) Vayu Mudra (Mudra of Air): mudra of air

The thumb wraps over the index finger while the rest of the fingers remain straight.

Benefits: helps to calm an anxious mind, soothe a strained voice and can help decrease stress. Can also help reduce impatience and indecisiveness.

Practice: 10 to 15 minutes, 3 times per day.

5.) Shunya Mudra (Mudra of Emptiness): mudra of emptiness

The tip of the thumb presses the middle finger down while the rest of the fingers stand straight up.

Benefits: reduces dullness in the body and can also be highly effective for ear aches. Can help restore confidence and boost mental cognition.

Practice: 40-60 minutes daily or for an earache- 4 to 5 minutes.

6.) Surya Mudra (Mudra of the Sun): mudra of the sun

Bend the ring finger under the thumb while the rest of the fingers remain straight.

Benefits: helps stimulate the thyroid gland, helps to alleviate weight gain and reduces appetite, stimulates digestion, helps relieve anxiety and stress. Helps to guide you to your purpose.

Practice: 5 to 15 minutes, twice daily.

7.) Prana Mudra (Mudra of Life): mudra of life

The ring and pinky finger both bend to meet the thumb while the index and middle finger remain pointed straight up.

Benefits: improves the life force, helps to strengthen the mind, body and spirit, helps promote taking action, improves immunity and motivation. Helps enhance vision and reduces fatigue.

Practice: Any time.

8.) Apana Mudra (Mudra of Digestion): mudra of digestion

The middle and ring finger are bent under the thumb while the pinky and index finger stand straight up.

Benefits: helps to regulate the excretory system, helps detoxify and stimulates bowel movements. Helpful at relieving constipation and piles.

Practice: 45 minutes daily

9.) Apana Vayu Mudra (Mudra of the Heart): mudra of the heart

The index finger bends to touch the base of the thumb while the middle and ring finger bend to touch the tip of the thumb. The pinky finger remains stretched out.

Benefits: stimulates healing of the heart and helps physically protect the heart. Can also help reduce gas and heart burn.

Practice: 15 minutes, twice daily

10.) Linga Mudra (Mudra of Heat): mudra of heat

Interlock the fingers of both hands but keep the thumb of the left hand pointing up. Take the right thumb and wrap it around the thumb so it touches the index finger of the right hand.

Benefits: helps to stimulate heat in the body, helps reduce phlegm and congestion, good for strengthening the lungs, helps to invigorate and balance the body.

Practice: Any time but do not over practice.

12 Healing Mudras,  Volume 1

The first 12 healing Mudras of vol 1 are: Guru mudra, Trajitam mudra, Jii mudra, Amrita mudra, Aghnya mudra, Raahu mudra, Danta mudra, Panjabhutani mudra, Tri stambha mudra, Naga mudra, Bhumi mudra and Svargatim mudra. These mudras can support your health..

from:    http://www.ewao.com/a/mudras-the-healing-power-of-your-hands/

Benefits of Yoga & Meditation

How Yoga changes your Brain

By Sat Bir Singh Khalsa on Wednesday June 15th, 2016

YogaBrainMeditation

Can Regular Yoga and Meditation Improve Your Brain Function?

There is increasing evidence that yoga and meditation can improve our memory and attention, both help us to function at a higher level at work, home or in school. Furthermore, these benefits occur whether you’re new to yoga and meditation or a long-time practitioner, and studies show it might even help starve off age-related neural decline. The reason, neuroscientists have discovered, is that certain areas of our brain undergo positive structural changes when we meditate. Because the brain exhibits plasticity, which means it has the ability to change, whatever you experience will be reflected in – and have impact on – your brain structure.

Several groundbreaking studies have shown how meditation, especially when practiced over the long-term, can produce significant changes in the structure and mass within certain brain regions. For example, a continued meditation practice can produce a thickening of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in memory, attention, awareness, thought and language. Like a body builder who pumps iron, the bigger his biceps get, the heavier weights he can lift. Likewise, when we meditate, we exercise the parts of the brain that involve the regulation of emotion and mind-body awareness that lead to changes in brain activity and structure, which in turn improve our memory and attention.

Studies have shown how meditation can produce significant changes in the structure and mass within certain brain regions.Studies show how meditation can produce significant changes in the structure and mass within certain brain regions.

One of my fellow researchers, Dr Sara Lazar of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, found these brain changes to be especially apparent in long-time meditators. In her 2005 study, for example, MRI brain scans were used to assess cortical thickness in participants with extensive meditation experience (averaging about 9 years of experience and 6 hours per week of meditation practice), and a control group that did not practice yoga or meditation. Dr Lazar found the brain regions associated with attention, sensory, cognitive and emotional processing were thicker in meditation participants than those in the control group who did not engage in yoga or meditation.

This was the first significant study (of now more similar studies) to provide evidence for a link between long-term meditation practice and structural brain changes. Equally exciting is that the greater prefrontal cortical thickness found in the meditation group was most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that extensive meditation might also offset age-related cortical thinning. It appears that the brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing, which frequently diminishes over the years, can remain more youthful in those people who continue to practice meditation.

Alt text hereThe brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing can remain more youthful.

In another interesting study conducted at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA, differences in the brain’s anatomy and structure called gyrification (or cortical folding) were also discovered in people who meditated. Although the implications of this research remain to be fully established, the findings from this study support the possbility that meditation can lead to changes in regulation of activities including daydreaming, mind-wandering, and projections into the past or future, and a possible integration of autonomic, emotional, and cognitive processes.

And while research reveals long-term meditation can produce structural changes in specific areas of the brain that enhance our ability to learn, one does not have to practice for thousands of hours to reap the positive brain benefits. Dr Lazar also found that these increases in grey matter in some regions of the brain occurred after just 8-weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Education (MBSR), a formal program involving meditation and some yoga practice. These results suggest that even short-term participation in meditation-related practices can lead to changes in grey matter concentration in brain regions that are involved in learning and memory processes, as well as in emotion regulation.

Yoga-Brain Fact: If you practice yoga and meditation techniques on a regular basis, your brain will be better able to cope with stress and emotion. This brain enhancement will help you to maintain higher levels of learning and memory.

Long-term meditation can enhance our ability to learn.Long-term meditation can enhance our ability to learn.

Yoga makes us Smarter

Think about how we feel when we’re stressed. We might eat more, lose our appetite, sweat profusely, or simply want to bury our troubles in mindless television or computer games. What happens to our brains when we are under stress is that our bodies increase the secretion of cortisol, a well-known stress hormone. When faced with sustained, high levels of chronic stress, the associated high levels of cortisol can actually be toxic and even fatal to our brain cells. Because our hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning, is particularly vulnerable to high sustained cortisol levels, we may ultimately compromise our learning and memory capacities when faced with uncontrolled chronic stress. By managing stress through yoga and meditation, you can actually improve your memory, concentration, and your ability to learn.

While researching the effects of long-term yoga and meditation, I found an intriguing study that reported improvements in attention, mood and stress over a very short time period. When a group of 40 undergraduate students were given 5 days of 20-minute meditation training, this group showed significantly better attentional abilities and control of stress than a similar control group of 40 students given only relaxation training, including greater improvement in attention, lower anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue and an elevated mood.

There was also a significant decrease in stress-related cortisol.

These studies, which are just a few of those being conducted today, clearly show a strong relationship between our ability to maintain attention and our responsiveness to stress and emotional reactivity. In other words, the more one practices the contemplative skill of controlling attention through meditation and yoga, the more one has a manageable stress response and improved emotional reactivity. Ultimately, our cognitive performance is most efficient and at its optimal level when we are more in control of our stress and emotions.

Our cognitive performance is most efficient and at its optimal level when we are more in control of our stress and emotions.Our cognitive performance is most efficient and at its optimal level when we are more in control of our stress and emotions.

The Effects of Yoga on Memory and Decision Making

Yoga and meditation not only make our brain more efficient, they also improve brain activity related to decision-making and cognitive performance. In a research study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana, scientists compared the effects of a yoga exercise session to aerobic exercise, the results showed that the memory retention and cognitive performance after yoga was significantly superior (ie. shorter reaction times, increased accuracy) to aerobic exercise. The reason yoga can be better for the brain than aerobics (although both are good), is that it allows us to cope with stress and emotions more effectively.

Long-term yoga improves concentration, processing and motor speed

Research clearly indicates that yoga and meditation, especially a long-term practice, improves the way our brain functions, including our ability to concentrate and perform well on certain tests. In one study comparing 15 yoga practitioners with a control group of non-practitioners and involving a series of tests for attention, the yoga group performed significantly better. Long-term practitioners of yoga and meditation showed greater attention span, processing speed, attention alternation ability,and performance in interference tests.

Another recent study also showed improvement in cognitive functioning and dexterity among 57 research volunteers who were given tasks requiring attention, visual scanning and motor speed. Each participant was assessed before and after three types of sessions: yoga meditation, supine rest, and control (no intervention). The results showed that the yoga condition was associated with the greatest improvements in psychomotor functioning with no improvement in test skills for those who did not practice yoga and meditation.

Yoga was associated with the greatest improvements in psychomotor functioning.Yoga was associated with the greatest improvements in psychomotor functioning.

Yoga Improves Computation Skills

Many people believe that equation solving and memorisation are the most effective ways to improve one’s mathematical aptitude—all of which can be extremely time-consuming and, to the math phobic, feel like an ordeal. The fact is that sessions of yoga and tai chi can also sharpen your mathematical ability. These were the findings of a Bolo University of Miami School of Medicine study in which 38 adults participated in a session that included two minutes of tai chi movement and two minutes of sitting, standing, and lying down yoga poses. The researchers measured self-reported math computation skills of each participant before and after the session. The findings showed that the tai chi/yoga participants performed better on basic math after the workout. Why? The increased relaxation may have contributed to the increased speed and accuracy noted on math computations following the tai chi/yoga class.

Yoga as a learning tool for students around the world.

Another study providing preliminary evidence that yoga may improve academic performance of children in schools was done on 8OO teenagers in India. The students in this study who were engaged in a yoga program performed better academically than those who did not do yoga. Researchers selected 159 high-stress students and 142 low-stress students. Both groups were given tests in mathematics, science, and social studies. Those who participated in a 7-week yoga program of (poses), pranayama (breathing exercises), and meditation performed better in academics than those who did not do yoga. The study also concluded that low-stress students performed better than high-stream students, showing, once again, that indelible connection between stress and academic performance.

from:    http://upliftconnect.com/how-yoga-changes-your-brain/

Magic, Physics, & The Sacred


‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ —Arthur C. Clarke

‘What the universe becomes depends on you’ —Henryk Skolimowski

 Magic may not be what we think it is. In fact, it may be very much more. It may in fact be everything, and everything that is not magic simply is not. In other words, life itself is magic. Not only the miraculous nature of life itself (which is what it is when we come to think about it), but also the very process/act of life creation is itself a form of magic. We live in a world of magic today; without magic there would be nothing. So let’s be clear, I’m not talking about white doves flying out of long sleeves, rabbits jumping out of top hats, or sleight of hand card tricks. This is conjuring (or ‘party tricks’) and is as far away from genuine magic as a tasty meal is from the written menu. Rather, true magic is about the animation and power of the human soul. The ancient Egyptians knew this well.

For the ancient Egyptians magic was not so much seen as a series of human practices or rituals but rather as the essential energy that pervades the cosmos. It was an underlying pervasive energy that humans could access, activate, and potentially direct. The Egyptians understood this magic to be in the form of a god, named Heka, which represented the primal cosmic energy that permeated all levels of existence. It was an energy that animated the bodies of gods and humans, as well as the plants and the stones. Everything was thus instilled with this ‘magic,’ which was a spiritual energizing power. It was through Heka that things of the material plane could participate upon the spiritual. The spiritualizing force was also the conscious, animating energy. Heka – magic – also referred to the activation of a person’s soul. The Egyptians believed that one of the functions of magic was to activate the soul within the human body. As Jeremy Naydler notes,

The ancient Egyptians understood that to become enlightened one must become aware of that which is cosmic in one’s own nature. One must realize that there is something deep within human nature that is essentially not of this earth, but is a cosmic principle.1

This cosmic principle in one’s own nature was magic, or the underlying animating energy of the cosmos. In those times there was not the vocabulary that is extant today for observing and describing the cosmos. In the ancient past, which had a participatory understanding of the communion between humanity and the cosmos, language was couched in different terms. The Egyptians, for example, expressed themselves through the visual language of hieroglyphics. In this language the world of the human was inextricably bound with the world of the gods, and the otherworld. The deep animating force of the human soul came from a communion with the spiritualizing force of the cosmos. From their language, translated into our own, we know this as magic. Yet to them it was a different form of magic, and totally unlike that which we understand today. And yet if we look at the quirky weirdness of the quantum world, with its uncertainty principle and quantum entanglement, we are seeing the same form of magic that inspired the Egyptians. As the eminent science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke noted, any form of advanced technology is, to the observer, indistinguishable from magic. Magic is the mysterious glue that entangles, connects, communes, and also animates us from nothing to everything. Sacred creation and the creative sacred is the mirroring of the magical quantum collapse into being.

The knowledge of sacred magic, of the cosmic mysteries, was sought after by all of our known and most highly regarded historical philosophers. From Plato, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Plotinus, and so on, such seekers of wisdom travelled widely and extensively in their time for the gaining and understanding of such knowledge. Upon their return, they then publicly preached and taught it. There was that which was allowed to be divulged in public, for the consumption of the masses, and then there were the Mystery Schools for those initiates deemed worthy of the deeper knowledge of the cosmos. Magic and natural philosophy were seen as aspects of the same stream of knowledge. It was about the science of material and non-material things; knowledge of the pure forms and secondary forms.

The great religious institutions also openly wrote accounts of the use of sacred magic. The biblical King Solomon was declared as proficient in the magical arts, and it is said that God bestowed upon him the knowledge of the ‘true science of things.’ In the Quran there are also numerous references to the existence of djinns and their magical, and often disruptive, influence. Magic is also connected to the cosmos and creation in many cultures, and in indigenous and so-called primitive tribes the world over. Some form of shamanic contact with the spirit world seems to be nearly universal in the early development of human communities. For millennia it has been known that ritual acts, language, and intention (mental focus) form a bridge of magical influence over forces within the universe. Magic is the art of participation, and the participatory art of communion with the forces around and within us. The celebrated anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski argues that every person, no matter how primitive, uses both magic and science.2 Magical practices and religious observances are so similar in their approach in that they both employ the manipulation of symbols, words, or images, to achieve changes in consciousness. Similarly, both magic and religion often serve the same function in a society. The difference is that magic is more about the personal connection with non-material forces, and the power of individual gnosis. In contrast, religion serves to connect both the individual and the community to a prescribed godhead through faith.

Magic in its original form is a practical extension of natural philosophy. Through observation and experimentation it sought to study, and then engage with, the hidden forces of Nature. It also sought for an understanding of the relations – the correspondences – between the macrocosm and the microcosm; that is, the ‘As Above, So Below’ communion as expressed through the Hermetic Arts. In this sense, magic can also be viewed as an amalgamation of science and religion (from Latin religare – to bind). That is, science seeks to understand whilst the religious impulse seeks to bind the human to the greater cosmic forces. Magic was a merging of the natural world with the human spirit. The investigation of Nature’s secrets, of the cosmic mysteries, was a spiritual quest long before it became seen as a scientific endeavour. As Giambattista della Porta, the 16th century Italian philosopher wrote, magic is ‘nothing else but the survey of the whole course of Nature.’3

The Renaissance zeitgeist, and especially its magical adherents and practitioners, experienced the world, the universe, in which they lived as a thriving intelligence, and not just as an intellectual idea. For them, art itself was a form and expression of magic; a means of channelling the secret patterns and energies of the cosmos into the world of matter. The famous German occultist and theologian Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486 – 1535) referred to magic as ‘the most perfect and chief Science, that sacred and sublimer kind of Phylosophy [philosophy]’4 The early Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino wrote that ‘The whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.’5 For Ficino, natural magic reflected a desire to animate human life with the living spirit of the cosmos. Magic then was a means for humanity to align itself with the living intelligence of the cosmos and to be able to receive its enhancing energies. In other words, it was a kind of cosmic connection and download. And when Arabic numerals (representing the Hindu-Arabic numeral system) – now our modern numbers – entered Europe from mainly Arabic thinkers, writers, and speakers they were adopted quickly by western occultists. In time these ‘uncanny squiggles’ came to replace the orderly roman numerals so beloved by government bureaucracy. The vital and dynamic era of renaissance magic was necessary in laying the foundations for the new Scientific Revolution of the 17th century.

In the 20th century the concept of magic was given bad press by its association with black magic, and the public rise of the ‘black magicians’ (or those of the Left-Hand Path). The most infamous of these was the Englishman Aleister Crowley, who preferred the spelling of magick. Yet despite his much-beloved public displays of anti-social eccentricity and taboo-breaking lewdness, he was a man of deep insight into magical operations. When communicating on a more profound level he would declare the true definition of magic as being ‘the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will.’ That is, Crowley used a form of mental and mystical/ spiritual discipline in order to train the mind to achieve greater focus to commune and participate with the non-material forces of the cosmos.

Even today various forms of magical practices have become merged with accepted psychological principles and are utilized to promote techniques for personal development. For example, the visualization techniques once widely used in magical operations are nowadays often put to use in such diverse areas as clinical psychology and sports training. Many forms of modern recreational health practices, such as yoga, tai chi, yiquan, and qigong, are based on a series of body posture, breathing, and meditation techniques that connect with the underlying energetic force/energy prevalent in the cosmic matrix that surrounds us and in which we are embedded. After all, magic is little more than the application of one’s own soul-self, our integral unity, with the cosmos. In other times this would be seen as mystical, magical, and mysterious. And now it is part of the world we are living in as the sacred revival rears its head from the non-visible to the visible plane once again.

Magic too can be viewed as being indistinguishable from our art, whether we are talking of painting, writing, music, sculpture, or any other form. Also, the word ‘technology’, which comes from the Greek word tekhne, means art or the ‘science of craft’ but not directly the application of science. Yet whether we are talking about magic, technology, art, or science, in the end it is all about the same thing – the exploratory path to knowledge and understanding. And this quest for understanding includes, and often merges, all such forms and pathways. We can say it all constitutes parts of the same body, just dressed up in different rags according to context, time and culture.

Magic as Science and Technology

It is my view that science and magic are manifestations of the same phenomena. There is more than one path – one ‘science’ – in persuading the cosmos to open up and reveal its secrets. Science did not overthrow magic, it emerged from it. The beginnings of empiricism were rooted in the magical tradition. It is now well understood that modern chemistry materialized from practical alchemy (al-kimiya). Many practising alchemists – from Paracelsus to Isaac Newton – were employing empirical methods with natural magic. The shift in applications went hand in hand with a changing worldview. Applied science was yet another avenue to gain access to and command the secret forces of the cosmos. What we consider as barbaric and primitive from the past will similarly stigmatize the current methods of our day from a future perspective. We cannot, it seems, escape the trap of being victims of our time.

The underlying basis of science derives from the convictions of the earliest natural (magic) philosophers such as Plato and Pythagoras. Namely, that our apparent changeable world adheres to certain laws that can be applied to external formulae. Is searching for the Higgs boson – as the quantum excitation of the Higgs field – any different from magical correspondences with non-visible fields of force? Perhaps applied science then is our modern name for the magical pursuit of eternal truths?

The flame of magical enquiry was also dampened by the rise of religious fervour and cries of heresy. Occult philosophy increasingly found itself confronted by allegations and rumours of demonic flirtation amid the rise of witch trials and mass suspicion (or hysteria). As C.S. Lewis pointed out, the great renaissance magic was discredited less by science than from a general ‘darkening of the human imagination.’6 Perhaps there is no greater symbolic end to the magical enterprise than the public burning of Giordano Bruno in Rome in 1600. After the demise of renaissance magic the human imagination did not rise to such heights again until the Romantics, or the depths of the human psyche so probed until depth psychology. The new struggle of the human mind was now with the rise of scientific thinking.

Heliocentricity, the understanding that the planets revolve around the sun, came to symbolize the great scientific revolution and the step from the medieval mind into early modernity. Our scientists now scorn and smirk at the religious thinking that once placed the earth at the centre of the ‘divine’ universe – and yet today, centuries on, we know little else. Our neighbouring planets are gas giants or oddly pock-marked balls of rock that remain as enigmas. Sun-flares and coronial mass ejections disrupt our communications and continue to intrigue and baffle us. Dark matter is a mystery that is estimated to constitute 84.5% of the total matter in the universe. Dark matter plus dark energy together constitute 95.1% of the total mass–energy content of the universe, and we don’t know what it is. The universe is singular, then it’s multiple, or parallel; it’s held together by strings, or it’s connected multi-dimensionally, or is a holographic projection from a quantum matrix beyond space-time, etc, etc. We may indeed be in a stage of modernity, or rather just a later period of medieval-ness. Or maybe, like our philosophical Greek and Arab predecessors, we merely like the fun of being able to ‘entertain contradictory world-views simultaneously.’7 As Patrick Harpur astutely observes,

…whatever we suppress gathers in the unconscious and throws a ‘shadow’ over the world. Dark matter is precisely the shadow of the imaginative fullness we have denied to our cosmos. The daimons we cannot bring ourselves to admit return as dark ‘virtual particles’. Like the psychological shadow, dark matter’s massive invisible presence exerts an unconscious influence on the conscious universe.8

Renaissance thought and the medieval mind accepted the existence of the world soul – the anima mundi – where all things were connected by an underlying soul/force. Modern science banished the soul from roaming the world, and replaced it by the tick-tock of mechanistic laws. The technical inventions of renaissance science – its clocks, telescopes, and compasses – no doubt assisted to dissolve belief in the world soul and its system of correspondences. New correlations, connections, and correspondences were derived by technical means, by materialized devices. And yet our high technologies of today are turning this situation around by de-materializing themselves and merging into our environment and our bodies. Perhaps the coming era of high technology re-constitutes a new chimera of the world soul. I will return to this question later in the book.

Broadly speaking, technology can be defined as those means and devices, both material and immaterial, which allow a greater degree of manipulation over one’s environment. Their use also achieves a degree of value for the user. It has often been said that the human species’ use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistoric discovery of how to control fire is frequently cited as one of the first widespread uses of a technology. Whatever definition we choose to use the essential feature is that technologies materialize magic – they make the once-magic happen. They bring the sights of the seer into the human eye (telescope), transport telepathic communication (phone), create occult harm at a distance (weapons), delve into the mystic heart of the body (microscope), and project our imaginations and otherworlds into image (television/video). Technologies are an extension of magic by other means.

In this day and age we are moving further into the world of image. We have always been fed images of the world that are not. We live in a world of representations; we dance with the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. We exist in a world that, as Plato would say, is construed from representations of Eternal Forms. And then we take a further step back as we live in cultures that use symbols and images to relate the represented world to us. We are thus even further away from the Real. There is little wonder then that our souls often feel under-nourished. In response they long for, and seek out, the sacred, the eternal, and the bridge to the real: the phenomenal is the bridge to the real (Sufi saying).

Because the Scientific Revolution put the emphasis upon the quantifying eye, the visual aspect became a validating tool of empirical reality. What we could witness became a legitimate part of our truths – ‘seeing is believing’ as they say. What was seen at the end of the telescope or microscope became a new fact to add to the expanding artefacts of facts we kept accumulating. We began to trust too much in what the human eye, and its technological appendices, could see. The eye became a dominant lens for seeking truth within the new paradigm of modern science. This was not the case with our ancestors, who relied much more on a close range of senses, especially touch and smell, as well as a heightened sense of instinct. Because they formed more of a participatory bond with the world around them they did not distance themselves like we do today by viewing the world in terms of object and subject. That is why in modern terminology we refer to the observer effect whereby the act of observation can influence, or make a change, upon the phenomenon being observed.

Quantum physics tells us that through measurement, or rather observation, quantum energy ‘collapses’ into a particle or wave function. And yet this terminology is misleading as it uses the older vocabulary which stipulated the human eye as a validating tool of empirical reality. It is a fallacy of how we understand sight and observation. We don’t observe particles or phenomena at a distance – we are already participating in their existence. The observer effect should really be changed to saying the participatory effect. Consciousness is a participatory phenomenon. In our known reality, we participate in a conscious universe where, according to the Hermetic saying, the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. There is no better place for the Hermetic arts and the quantum realm to meet than in the magic of alchemy. This archaic science is the crossroads where science, magic, and the spirit meet. On the material level it is seen as a long series of precise and laborious scientific experimentation in order to transmute base metals (such as lead) into gold. It is a play with chemical composition and atomic arrangements; a form of molecular management and interference. However, upon the spiritual plane it is a major magical and mystical arcane participation with non-visible forces that bind the material world beyond our known sciences. Perhaps the most well-known, and revealing, brief encounter and explanation of this process occurred in the 20th century. According to the now infamous meeting with the mysterious alchemist Fulcanelli in June 1937, in a laboratory of the Gas Board in Paris, the chemical engineer Jacques Bergier was warned about efforts to create the atomic bomb. Jacques Bergier was given a message by Fulcanelli to pass on to the noted French atomic physicist André Helbronner. Allegedly Bergier was told that:

The secret of alchemy is this: there is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call ‘a field of force.’ The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the Universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work.9

The Great Work, it would seem, involves the participatory mind of human consciousness interacting with a specific field of force that produces a view/perception of the universe. This appears to be a form of the quantum observer/participatory effect yet on an intentioned and conscious level – a form of consciously arranged quantumly entangled perception? This view correlates somewhat with the words of famed theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler:

The universe does not exist ‘out there’ independent of us. We are inescapably bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a participatory universe.10

Our cosmos is set up for cognitive participation, which is why we should realize that whenever we attempt to observe or describe reality, what we are actually doing is participating and thus influencing, or interfering, with it. Our own conscious thoughts are more powerful and non-visible tools than we realize. In this regard, the ‘principle of cognitive participation is replacing the principle of objectivity.’11

Moreover, another way of re-phrasing the deceptive ‘wave collapse’ is to refer to it as coming into being. What is taking place is a quantum act of creation. The underlying quantum energy landscape of our cosmos is an energetic playing field of participatory creation. It is the ancient Egyptian divine archetype Heka, the spiritualizing force that is the conscious, animating energy of the cosmos. The quantum realm is the magical realm, where through participation the enquiring human mind proposes new hypotheses that then gets projected into the underlying energy matrix which has the potential to conjure them into reality. We could call this the Higgs Boson Effect, whereby we actually form a participatory relation to the physical manifestations of our own projections. The Higgs Boson – also somewhat ironically referred to as the ‘God Particle’ – was first proposed by a team of physicists in 1964 (and not just one guy called Higgs!). Several other physicists from the 1960s onwards also speculated and hypothesized on the Higgs Field effect. This enquiry led to a forty year search within the international physics community and eventually culminated in the construction of the world’s most expensive experimental test facility and the largest single machine in the world – the CERN Large Hadron Collider.12 After many experiments and independently verified research CERN announced on 14th March 2013 that there were strong indications that the Higgs boson had been found. It was what they had been looking for all along. And finally, after much mental focusing and scientific ritual, with instruments and precise application, a phenomenon materialized into reality. Maybe this is a good time to recap Aleister Crowley’s definition of magic – the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will. Was not then the discovery of the Higgs Boson an act of magic, after all? Perhaps it will go down in history as one of the most complex, community-led, conjuring tricks in the annals of science. Or maybe it will just be seen as yet another proof that the scientific method works. This would show, yet again, that the universe exists upon a set of static fundamental laws that are just in need of discovery.

It would be heresy to speculate that our quantum-matrix reality actually responds to sentient thought and creates – forms into being – material representations of willed projections. If this were the case, then it would be a big secret indeed. So big, in fact, that it would need to be kept hidden from untrained minds who, ignorantly, could set into motion a wave of material phenomenon of destructive and chaotic consequences. Such potential power, if it existed, would likely need to be placed in quarantine until such a time whereby it could be used for the greater good. Luckily for us though it is only speculation.

Similar speculations have occurred elsewhere too, such as in our popular culture. One example is the science-fiction story by Stanislaw Lem called ‘Solaris,’ which was later visualized hypnotically in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film version.13 In Lem’s story, the protagonists of a research space station are investigating an alien intelligence that is the oceanic sentient planet of Solaris. However, the sentient planet is in turn probing into the minds of the human researchers and investigating them. In this process the planet is able to respond by materializing thoughts, memories, and desires that are deep within the human mind. In this way each scientist is forced to confront those aspects that they have mentally hidden away. By encountering an unknown and alien energetic entity, mental processes are able to be projected into a material reality. The sentient ocean of Solaris could be taken as a metaphor for the quantum ocean/field that is increasingly recognized today as a consciousness field.14

Whilst this may seem like magic to us, for the ancestral pre-modern mind the real magic was the spiritualizing force that animates the entire cosmos. Animation – the bringing to life – is a spiritualizing sacred force, and it is magic. And that is why the sacred revival is all about magic: the magic of how we create into being our soul-life and project it into the world in which we participate. Genuine magic is the science and art of the participatory mind to commune with the cosmos and manifest our deepest will into materiality. Magic is the spiritualizing force that animates the human soul, and which communes with the soul of the world, the anima mundi. We have also hidden this magic within our sciences, our technologies, and within our human memories and emotions; and yet it is the pervasive force which entangles us all together and from which the immaterial becomes material.

We are finally regaining the understanding through the new sciences that our knowledge is not discovered or given to us but are part of the reality that is being continually created by us. Our penetration into the participatory cosmos is part of a grander unfolding where everything is evolving; and so too are our perceptions of the sacred source evolving as well. The sacred revival is about re-animating our relationship to this profound, spiritual truth.

from:    http://realitysandwich.com/319503/magic-the-higgs-boson/

The Psoas Muscle, Stress, & Yoga

The ‘Muscle of the Soul’ may be Triggering Your Fear and Anxiety

Psoas MusclesBrett Wilbanks, Staff Writer
Waking Times

The psoas major muscle (pronounced “so-as”) is often referred to as the deepest core, or as yoga therapist and film-maker Danielle Olson states, the “muscle of the soul.” This core-stabilizing muscle located near the hip bone affects mobility, structural balance, joint function, flexibility, and much more. In addition to its function to help keep the body upright and moving, the psoas is believed to allow you to connect with the present moment especially when it is stretched out and tension is released from the body.

Research indicates that the psoas is vital to our psychological wellbeing in addition to structural health. Liz Koch, author of The Psoas Book, states that our psoas “literally embodies our deepest urge for survival, and more profoundly, our elemental desire to flourish.” This means that there is a lot more to the psoas than one might initially think. It is entirely possible to harness healing pranic energy and improve mental health by keeping the psoas healthy.

Where is the Psoas?

The psoas is the principal muscle associated with physical stability. It stretches from the legs to the spine and is the only muscle connecting the legs to the spinal column. The muscle flares out from the T12 vertebrae, follows down the five lumbar vertebrae, before attaching to the top of the thigh bone.

The Reptilian Connection

In addition to connecting the legs and spine, the psoas is connected to the diaphragm. Breathing is modulated at the diaphragm, and it is also the location where many physical symptoms associated with fear and anxiety manifest. Koch believes that this is due to the direct link between the psoas and the most ancient part of our brain stem and spinal cord, called the reptilian brain.

According to Koch, “Long before the spoken word or the organizing capacity of the cortex developed, the reptilian brain, known for its survival instincts, maintained our essential core functioning.” The way we live today, constantly rushing, competing and achieving, has the psoas in a constant “fight or flight” state.

psoas

Issues Associated with Chronic Psoas Stress

Trapped in a constant “flight or fight” state, psoas muscles are stressed and constricted, almost from the time of birth. As Koch notes, “this situation is exacerbated by many things in our modern lifestyle, from car seats to constrictive clothing, from chairs to shoes that distort our posture, curtail our natural movements and further constrict our psoas.” This lifelong chronic stress put on the psoas can lead to many problems like back, hip, or knee pain, and even digestive issues and dysfunctional breathing. It could also be a major cause why people suffer from chronic physical pain.

The physical body is not the only part of you that suffers from a chronically-stressed psoas. The psoas is much more than a muscle used for structural stability. It influences every element of life, from how you feel, to how you look at the world, and even how you treat others. A variety of problems have been associated with a chronically-stressed psoas muscle: it can negatively affect your emotional state; it can impact your interpersonal relationships; and it can influence your general contentment with life. Awareness that a healthy psoas is important to emotional wellness, as well as physical health, is the first step towards ensuring that we give this muscle the attention it deserves.

Koch states, “Whether you suffer from sore back or anxiety, from knee strain or exhaustion, there’s a good chance that a constricted psoas might be contributing to your woes.”

Fear and the Psoas

Since the psoas is closely linked to our “fight or flight” mechanism, fear can be over-represented in those with a constricted psoas.

It is an emotion that manifests itself in the most unusual ways and can “lock” itself into the body resulting in both physical and emotional tension. By restoring balance to your psoas muscles, you are likely to release this pent up tension, which can have a profound effect on releasing unfounded fearfulness about life, and thus improve both your physical and mental wellbeing. You will feel a greater sense of inner peace, along with fewer muscle aches and strains.

The Connection to the Energetic Body

Lengthening and releasing your psoas grounds you to the Earth, which is filled with healing and revitalizing energy, thus allowing you to balance your pranic energy and enabling you to feel more present in the moment. Proper structural stability attributed to a healthy psoas allows prana to flow, unimpeded, throughout the body, allowing for proper distribution of vital energy. In the physical sense, when the body can properly support itself, movement is less-restricted and requires less effort, thus leaving you more energetic.

Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times

Our understanding of the psoas is by no means new knowledge. In fact, it is more akin to ancient wisdom that was either lost or discarded over time. Yoga shows us explicitly that ancient gurus understood the importance of releasing contracted psoas muscles. Ancient yoga asanas, or postures, that are now practiced all around the world, focus on lengthening and releasing psoas muscles and restoring comfort and balance to the entire body. With consistent practice, you can learn how to isolate this muscle, which can be immensely useful and healing in the long run.

Yoga is also a great way to measure the current health of the psoas. There are many postures, such as tree (Vrksasana), which cannot be properly achieved if the psoas is contracted. If you are practicing a sitting or standing yoga pose and feel strain in either your knees or lower back (or both), then there’s a good chance that your psoas is constricted and needs more of your attention.

The psoas is an important, yet often unknown, muscle that plays a vital role in physical health and mental wellbeing. The cumulative effect of neglecting this muscle is physical and mental stress and tension, which manifests itself in our society as anxiety, depression, chronic back pain, knee pain, digestive distress, respiratory problems, etc.

Source:
https://bodydivineyoga.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/the-psoas-muscle-of-the-soul/

http://www.yogajournal.com/article/practice-section/the-psoas-is/

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/06/02/the-muscle-of-the-soul-may-be-triggering-your-fear-and-anxiety/

Jonathan Goldman on Healing Sounds

 

Yoga & Health

9 Health Benefits of Yoga

yoga man

We’ve all heard at one time or another about how yoga is great for our holistic well-being and some of us have a daily yoga practice we do with that in mind. What you may not know is that the list of life enriching benefits of yoga just keeps on growing and here we look at several new discoveries about the wonderful benefits of yoga that have emerged in recent years. If you don’t incorporate some form of yoga into your daily life you may reconsider after reading this and become a yogi or yogini yourself!

Yoga gives an immune boost to breast cancer survivors

In breast cancer survivors, the Iyengar method of yoga not only promotes psychological well-being, but seems to offer immune system benefits as well, according to new research. The Iyengar method, created by B. K. S. Iyengar, “is considered to be one of the more active forms of yoga,” says lead researcher and presenter Pamela E. Schultz
“It still has the meditative component, but it’s been shown to have a physical output equivalent to a moderate-intensity exercise.” –Source

Yoga reverses the risk of heart disease

Ycan reverse the clinical and biochemical changes associated with metabolic syndrome, according to results of studies from Sweden and India. Waist circumference, blood pressure, blood sugar, and triglycerides were significantly lower, and “good” HDL cholesterol levels were higher in the yoga group as compared to controls, Agrawal’s team reports in the journal Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice. –Source

Yoga proven to help back pain

Research shows that regular yoga sessions may be an effective way to combat back pain. In one study, those who practised weekly 75-minute yoga classes made greater progress than those who took part in strengthening and stretching classes. The researchers found that at the end of 12 weeks patients in the yoga group were better able to do daily activities involving the back. After another 14 weeks they also reported less pain, and used less pain relieving drugs. –Source

Yoga enhances sexual performance

A study published in the December 2008 edition of The Journal of Sexual Medicine showed women who were not satisfied with their sex life experienced heightened arousal and better orgasms when they practiced yoga. Another study published in the same journal in 2007 showed yoga was the most effective solution for men dealing with premature ejaculation in comparison to Prozac and non-prescription drugs. –Source

Yoga can help heal in PTSD recovery

Recently Yoga has begun to be used as a treatment to aid in healing those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In a recent study, a group of female patients suffering from PTSD were taught Hatha Yoga in eight sessions while another group of female patients underwent eight sessions of group therapy. Those who finished the Yoga training showed a substantial improvement in symptoms such as “the frequency of intrusive thoughts and the severity of jangled nerves” in comparison to those who underwent group therapy. –Source

Yoga helps in weight control through mindfulness

According to a new study headed by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, people who practice yoga regularly are less likely to be obese. The reason isn’t necessarily the exercise part of yoga but the mindfulness part that promotes a slim body. It was found that middle-age people who practice yoga gained less weight over a ten year period than those who did not. This was independent of physical activity and dietary patterns. –Source

Yoga helps in stopping binge eating

According to research conducted at the University of The Rockies, binge eaters were encouraged to take part in a 10-week yoga therapy program. These participants saw a dramatic drop in their binge-eating episodes towards the end of the program. Every week, the program included an hour of yoga and group discussion afterwards that lasted half an hour. –Source

Yoga improves mood and reduces anxiety

Yet another study has confirmed that yoga can assist in the treatment of a wide range of psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, and cardiac disease. Chris Streeter, MD, and his colleagues from Boston University School of Medicine discovered that it may be because of yoga’s ability to increase levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an endogenous antidepressant neurotransmitter present in the brain. –Source

It’s well known yoga reduces stress; now we know why

Research has suggested for some time that psychosocial interventions like meditation reduce the adverse effects of caregiver stress on physical and mental health. However, the pathways by which such psychosocial interventions impact biological processes are poorly understood. –Source

Source: “9 Life Enriching Benefits of Yoga”, from shift.is, by Paul Lenda

from:   http://theunboundedspirit.com/9-health-benefits-of-yoga/

Where Traditional and Alternative Medicine Agree

Traditional Doctors, Alternative Treatments: An Intersection?

Complementary Treatments

 

Sometimes it can seem as though complementary/alternative treatments and traditional medicine live in two silos — never the twain shall meet, as the saying goes. We go to the doctor when we’re sick or for regular wellness checks. And we go to the yoga studio or a meditation class. Yet we don’t talk to our doctors about how one can support the other.

But the tide may be turning — a recent study in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine has found that three percent of people seeking out mind/body treatments, such as yoga, meditation, tai chi, deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation, are doing so based on a referral from a medical provider.

And while that number may not seem to be particularly high, consider a yoga or meditation class, of say, 30 people — on average, one of them is there because their provider told them to be, explains lead author and HuffPost blogger Aditi Nerurkar, M.D., M.P.H, a physician and integrative medicine fellow at Harvard Medical school and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “We weren’t expecting it to be that high,” she says. “Forty-one million Americans are using mind-body therapies. Of those, 6.4 million are using mind-body therapies because they were recommended to by their provider.”

Looking at a nationally representative sample size of 23,000 survey participants, the researchers found that the most commonly prescribed treatments were deep breathing exercises (84 percent of the respondents), meditation (49 percent), yoga (23 percent), progressive muscle relaxation (20 percent) and guided imagery (14 percent). These numbers were similar to those who sought out the treatments on their own.

“For years and years this has been a patient-driven phenomenon,” Nerurkar says. As people discover what works best for themselves and loved ones, yoga studios, for instance, have popped up to fill a need that patients haven’t always discussed with their doctors.

So why are some physicians ready to hand out an Rx for a little “Om” time?

One reason may be the relatively recent body of research on how various mind-body treatments can be helpful, healthy additions to traditional treatment programs for certain conditions, including anxiety and depression, headaches, chronic pain, cardiac disease, insomnia and treatment-related symptoms of cancer, Nerurkar says.

The researchers also found that the patients who were seeking out mind-body treatments at the recommendation of a medical provider were those who typically had more diagnosed conditions and used the health-care system more often. Nerurkar says one reason that may be is that providers are referring their more complex patients once other treatments have failed — and this concept may lead to future research studies about what would happen if these complementary programs were offered earlier on in the treatment process.

Of course, not all complementary and alternative treatments have evidence behind them, Nerurkar points out. But when the research that is out there is coupled with patients’ success stories, some providers are opening up to the possibilities. “Ultimately you just want your patients to feel better,” she says. “At the end of the day, if my patients are using these therapies and they’re feeling good, I encourage them to do it.”

Here are some starting points for each of the mind-body treatments most commonly suggested by the medical community:

Deep breathing: Regular deep breathing — taking slow breaths in and out — has been linked to regulation of the cardiovascular and nervous systems and easing symptoms of anxiety, among other benefits. To start out a deep breathing exercise, focus on your breath coming in and out as it would normally and then begin deeper breaths, spending longer on inhalations and exhalations, according to the University of Rochester:

Breathe deeply and slowly, focusing all of your attention on each breath. Don’t rush it or breathe quickly. As you exhale naturally, allow any tension to leave you with the breath. Imagine the tension draining from your body and mind as you exhale. Notice the feeling of calm and relaxation that comes with exhalation.

Meditation: Studies have linked regular meditation to, among many other benefits, a decrease in fatigue and depression in multiple sclerosis patients, boosts in cellular health and a reduction in the severity of various mental and physical side effects from certain types of cancer treatment. Check out this primer for do-it-yourself meditation from the Mayo Clinic, or find a class near you.

Yoga: Of the many potential benefits of yoga, certain forms have been associated with improving recovery from breast cancer, lessening anxiety and counteracting fibromyalgia. Yoga has many different forms — you can practice poses alone, attend a local class or even do a yoga video at home.

Progressive muscle relaxation: This technique has been found to benefit people with Alzheimer’s disease, patients in the midst of cancer treatment, older people suffering from chronic pain and insomnia sufferers. The basic theory is to focus on groups of muscles in the body, often tensing them up, as you breathe in and then slowly relaxing them as you breathe out.

Guided imagery: Guided imagery has been associated with increased immunity and reduced feelings of depression. This process helps you to relax by taking you through a series of visualizations and direct suggestions, according to the Academy For Guided Imagery. You can find a certified instructor through the academy, practice guided imagery with a therapist or buy a tape to try the technique at home.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/complementary-treatments_n_866555.html?utm_hp_ref=meditation

Jean Houston on Spiritual Awakening

The Spiritual Quest – from Jean Houston (Admin)

December 9th, 2011

If I am to know God directly, I must become completely God, and God I, so that this God and this I become one I.
–Meister Eckhart

Wandering the Earth as I do, I eventually run into everybody. And almost everybody I meet seems to be on a spiritual quest, or if not, they have a growing hunger for it. The hound of heaven woofs at their heels urging them to wake up to their spiritual possibilities.
The thing about everybody is that they try everything. For sheer creativity and inventiveness, nothing beats spiritual adventuring.
People meditate or fast or pray in search of Divine connection. They make outlandish promises–giving up sex, calories, comfort. They go mad or go manic, become zealots, hush their minds into quiescence and empty themselves of thought hoping to tempt God to fill the void.
They walk on burning coals, sit in the snow, count their breaths, twirl into ecstasy, make pilgrimages to places where God or His/Her local incarnations are reputed to have placed their feet. They try out religions as different as possible from the ones in which they were raised, go on spiritual shopping sprees, twist their bodies into uncomfortable positions, change their names.
Mostly, they shout at God, begging the Great One to finally show up in their lives.
I’m not criticizing these practices; I’ve tried them all. And don’t laugh–so have you, in other ways, perhaps.
There are many signs that point to your being on a spiritual quest, even if you have not named it as such:
Do you wonder every time you pass a book counter if truth is to be found on its shelves today?
How many books have you bought this year that have “soul” in the title?
Are you always heading off to a seminar or a church retreat?
Is your house filled with angel images–cards, statues, books, candles?
Do you have an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, a medicine cabinet full of supplements?
When you get the flu, do you take vitamins and echinecea instead of standard brand antibiotics?
Do you frequent health food stores?
Have you thought about trying to be a vegetarian?
Have you quit the softball league and signed up for a class in yoga or Tai Chi?
Are you surfing the Internet?
Do you find yourself hiding what you’re reading when your relatives enter the room, even though it’s not the least bit sexy?
Have you divorced a spouse because he or she just wasn’t on the same wave length?
Do your kids think you are weird?
Do your CD’s thrum with chants and drums and Celtic harps?
Are you a fan of TV shows about mythic heroes, outer space, immortals, parapsychology?
Are you sometimes unaccountably surprised by joy?
Are you reading this book?
If you have answered “yes” to any of the above, chances are you’re hooked! As well you might be, for the complexity of the present time seems to demand a deepening of our nature if we are going to survive. Deepening requires exploration. And for all its byways, exploration leads ultimately to the spiritual source of our existence.
Not since the days of Plato and Buddha and Confucius, some 2500 years ago, has their been such an uprising of spiritual yearning. But instead of being a Mediterranean and Asian phenomenon, as it was then, the explosion of spirituality is now happening worldwide.

from:   http://www.jeanhouston.com/blog/

Science & Spirituality

My Take: Science and spirituality should be friends

Editor’s Note: Deepak Chopra is founder of the Chopra Foundation and a senior scientist at the Gallup Organization. He has authored over 60 books, including The Soul of Leadership, which The Wall Street Journal called one of five best business books about careers.

By Deepak Chopra, Special to CNN

For most people, science deserves its reputation for being opposed to religion.

I’m not thinking of the rather noisy campaign by a handful of die-hard atheists to demote and ridicule faith.

I’m thinking instead of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution has proved victorious over the Book of Genesis and its story of God creating the universe in seven days. Since then, God has been found wanting when measured against facts and data. With no data to support the existence of God, there is also no reason for religion and science to close the gap between them.

Yet the gap has indeed been closing.

Religion and spirituality didn’t go away just because organized religion has been losing its hold, as suggested by showing decades of  declining church attendance in the U.S. and Western Europe.

Despite the noisy atheists, two trends in spirituality and science have started to converge. One is the trend to seek God outside the church. This has given rise to a kind of spirituality based on personal experience, with an openness to accept Eastern traditions like meditation and yoga as legitimate ways to expand one’s consciousness.

If God is to be found anywhere, it is inside the consciousness of each person. Even in the Christian West we have the assurance of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven is within, while the Old Testament declares, “Be still and know that I am God.”

The other trend is a growing interest by scientists in questions about consciousness

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/my-take-science-and-spirituality-should-be-friends/