Mindful Spiritual Healing

Today’s employees and managers are deluged with an unprecedented amount of information and distraction. Research shows that constant information overload sends the brain into the fight-or-flight stress response. The prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive functions such as decision making, problem solving, and planning) cannot execute properly when it is in stress mode. Scientific studies that have proven the value of meditation in changing the brain point to meditation’s practical application in the workplace. Meditation is now gaining acceptance and being used in established American companies such as General Mills, Google, and Prentice Hall.

Quieting the self-obsessing chatter in our heads may be what happiness is all about. For millennia before we turned to government-approved drugs, humans devised clever ways of coping: Taking a walk, eating psychedelic mushrooms, breathing deeply, snorting things, praying, running, smoking, and meditating are just some of the inventive ways humans have found to deal with the unhappy rovings of their minds. But which methods actually work?

The emerging field of positive psychology is bursting with new findings that suggest your actions can have a significant effect on your happiness and satisfaction with life. Here are 10 scientifically proven strategies for getting happy.

Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital find that participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress.

There's a "second brain" in your stomach, and it influences mood, what you eat, all kinds of disease, and decision-making. And you thought it was all in your head.

The reality is that nothing of value in life, including life change, is easy or fast. In attempting to change, you are swimming against the tide of many years of these four obstacles: baggage, habits, emotions and environment. But if you can dismantle those obstacles (no small task, admittedly) and commit yourself to a new direction in your life, amazing things can happen and positive change can actually occur.

Our minds are designed to try to understand things that happen to us. When a traumatic event occurs or we undergo a major life transition, our minds have to work overtime to try to process the experience. When we translate an experience into language we essentially make the experience graspable. Individuals may see improvements in what is called “working memory,” essentially our ability to think about more than one thing at a time. They may also find they’re better able to sleep. Their social connections may improve, partly because they have a greater ability to focus on someone besides themselves.

Popped ribs, brain injuries, blinding pain. Are the healing rewards worth the risks?

Among devotees, from gurus to acolytes forever carrying their rolled-up mats, yoga is described as a nearly miraculous agent of renewal and healing. They celebrate its abilities to calm, cure, energize and strengthen. And much of this appears to be true: yoga can lower your blood pressure, make chemicals that act as antidepressants, even improve your sex life. But the yoga community long remained silent about its potential to inflict blinding pain.

Note from Pamir: This is a cautionary tale. It doesn't negate yoga's many benefits, and relates only to yoga asanas (poses), which is only one, single branch of yoga.

The positive effects of mindfulness meditation on pain and working memory may result from an improved ability to regulate a crucial brain wave called the alpha rhythm.

The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not.

Lovingkindness, fortunately, is becoming better known, and researchers are now studying the effects of practicing that form of meditation, showing that they positively affect health and well-being. In some of these studies, the benefits were revealed after only twelve hours of meditation.