HEALTHY MIND, HEALTHY BODY

HEALTHY MIND, HEALTHY BODY

The causal relationship between germs and illness has been known for many years. If you expose yourself to a particular germ you are likely to succumb to it, if you don’t take adequate precautions such as washing your hands.
However, modern research has now shown that just because you are EXPOSED to or even CARRYING a germ, you may not actually develop the disease if your immune system is STRONG.

Many factors weaken the body’s ability to fight infection.

It is estimated that an average person thinks about 12,000 thoughts per day, while a deep thinker can think up to 50,000 thoughts.

Deepak Chopra states that while 95% of what we think ARE the same thoughts as we had yesterday, 75% of the average person’s thoughts are negative.

That’s between 9,000 and almost 38,000 negative thoughts every single day.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE
A positive attitude and environment goes a long way in keeping you healthy.
Who or What limits you?
What supplies you with your best flow of positive energy?

AFFIRMATION

Bring awareness to the breath and the link between the mind and body.
Slow the breath down until it becomes slow, steady, and even.
This may take a few breaths or a few minutes.
Take as long as you need.

With each exhalation I breath out all that is stressful.
With each inhalation I breathe in peace.

I am strong and resilient.
I am whole and healthy.
I am ready to receive.

Peaceful Meditation

Meditation promotes peace in mind, body, and actions

Mind-Body Connection
The connection between the mind and the body has been a subject of study for many decades. One hundred years ago, it was noted that when animals became distressed, they did not eat. Research then gravitated towards humans, noting the causal relationship between events that affect the psyche and consequently impact the health of the body and mind.

The connection between the mind and the body is not new knowledge though. We can go back thousands of years and see how ancient cultures treated the mind and body as one, and not as separate entities. Chinese medicine is well-known for its belief that certain organs and centers of the body represent mental or emotional conditions. This form of medicine, and practices such as acupuncture, yoga and similar Eastern techniques also believe that the body contains meridians or nadis that carry energy effortlessly through the body when there are no physical or psychological obstacles.

Stress is known to be a major factor in creating chronic health conditions. It creeps into a person’s life and festers, creating serious problems that impact the heart and blood-pressure, and also produces anxiety, fear, intolerance, anger, and other physiological changes that create a recipe for unhappiness and illness.
While short periods of stress can help an individual to accomplish a task, it is the long-term, insidious form of stress that takes hold and upsets the overall health and well-being of a person.

Happiness Factor
Researchers are now finding clinical evidence for techniques such as meditation and rhythmic breathing to alleviate the chronic symptoms of long-term stress. Meditation boosts the immune system, establishing not only a calm and peaceful mind and body, but manifests actual changes within the brain and neurological systems of the body.

When you are happy, corresponding signals travel to your brain, which in turn boosts your immune system. Your feelings impact you on a deep level whether you are aware of this or not.
Thinking unhealthy, sad, hopeless thoughts really does affect the cells of the body detrimentally; while thoughts filled with hope, kindness, and love promote health and well-being.

It actually takes less energy to be positive than it does to think and act in a negative manner.

What Meditation Will Achieve
Through self-direction, you decide whether to see the positive rather than the negative in any situation. This awareness enables you to choose to create your best life. Smiles are contagious! And so, by default, are scowls, frowns, and a cantankerous attitude.

Speak to yourself in positive language and you will increase your emotional and physical health.
Meditation affects your perception, your awareness of time, and by promoting a positive mental state enables you to be free from the negativity that creates disorder and ill-health.
It helps to forge new pathways in the brain thereby enabling you to develop new habits.

Affirmations
You can self-generate power by using positive thoughts and vibrations.
Speak a word such as “Love,” or a phrase such as “I am Healed,” or the universal sound of AUM pronounced OM.
I am responsible for my life and have the power I need to have joy.
The happier I am with people around me, the happier I am as a person.
I see my life anew.

After Your Meditation Practice

• At home, practice smiling and capture the relaxed and carefree emotions that you generate.
• Keep a comfortable internal expression to maintain a positive mood and your feelings will show externally on your face and body language.
• Become active rather than reactive to situations, e.g. thinking before you speak or act
• Carry the feeling of peace and contentment with you wherever you go and watch the responses you receive from people around you.
• Give full attention to what you are experiencing physically, and what you are feeling, thinking and doing.

MEDITATION AND HEALING

Meditation and Healing
Meditation has proven health benefits in both healthy individuals and people who have been diagnosed with a specific illness. The benefits are not subjective, i.e. “I feel good” but using blood tests and brain scanning imagery researchers are able to provide data on the clinical improvements.

In a Swedish study, published in December 2007, researchers studied 55 healthy adults and the effect of a breathing technique that involved cycles of slow, normal, and rapid breathing exercises.
At the end of the study, feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression were significantly decreased and optimism was significantly increased in the breathing study group.
There was also a reduction in the sympathetic nervous system activity and a feeling of well-being with an increase in antioxidants and lower levels of cortisol.

Other studies have looked at the influence of thoughts upon the cells of the body and how mood affects your health one way or another. During a health crisis, remaining positive helps with a positive outcome as well as having supportive colleagues. It does not mean doing away with modern therapies, but is seen as a means of supporting the treatment.

Tapping into the light within you during meditation has benefits
to your overall health and well-being.

Researchers at the University of Miami found that controlled breathing, guided imagery, and meditation promote not only a positive mental attitude in women being treated for stage I or II breast cancer, but provide significant health benefits in supporting the immune system and the overall health of the body, including reduced serum cortisol levels in only 10 weeks.

Affirmations
Prior to your meditation session, fill your mind with the words, images, and energy of your affirmations.
Thoughts have their own unique energy. Use the power of your words to create only that which is positive for you. Here is one example but please choose the words that are appropriate for your own needs.

“I am filling each cell with light and creating a new body.”

See yourself feeling strengthened and invigorated as you awaken in the morning. Smile and embrace the start of this new day. Hear yourself welcoming the potential that this glorious day will bring. See yourself succeeding in whatever tasks you need to fulfill.

Enter into meditation.
Spend fifteen minutes allowing your body to enter into a peaceful and tranquil state using any of the methods outlines in previous postings on this site. (See Guided Meditations)

After Your Meditation
See yourself as strong and healthy. See healing energy passing into you and surrounding you. See yourself doing all the things that you are now able to do.

Move lightly, filled with vitality and the knowledge that all is well.

Use your affirmation during the day whenever you feel troubled.

Tap into the peace of your meditation to stay relaxed and permit the healing energy to flow within you.

Meditation for Immunity

see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil,

When you think of the reasons for having a regular meditation practice, images of calmness, inner peace, and an unruffled attitude come to mind. These relaxed states will also lower the blood pressure, steady the heart rate, and slow the aging process of the brain.

However there is a third powerful reason to meditate.

Psychoneuroimmunology is the study of the interaction between the mind of an individual and the world and how their behavior affects the immune system resulting in either health or illness.

In the seventies, a Harvard study discovered a special group of receptors on the immune cells distributed throughout the body. This was a major breakthrough and shone new light upon what we know about the immune system. The research demonstrated that the immune system is not an independent self-directed system; rather it has an actual connection with the conscious mind and the effect of thoughts upon the body.

This means that the mind and the body interact with one another in previously unthought-of ways.

Meditation helps this process by directing your thoughts to those that are positive.

No longer do scientists regard cells as operating independently of one another. The energy behind a single thought can alter a cell with either a positive or negative result. When you are exposed to a specific event, it is how your mind reacts that determines the response, rather than the actual event itself.

For example, when you are in a negative state of mind, your body shows a marked decrease in cells responsible for protection against infection and disease.
A positive state of mind has the reverse effect, promoting a healthy immune system, increasing lymphocyte and T-cell activity, and decreasing stress hormones.

This helps you to stay healthy and fight infection by boosting the immune system.



THE DAILY EDGE
Helping You Expand Your Possibilities
TODAY'S EDGE: Mind/Body Mantra

See yourself in a tranquil location surrounded by people and animals that bring you joy. Delight in the warm loving embrace of their presence. You are free of disease and sadness in this environment. Peace and bliss envelop you.

I am divinely guided in all I do.
I expect life to give me what is best for me.
I am safe and always feel protected.


Carry these images and affirmations within you and use them whenever you need to return to a happy state.

Meditation keeps you healthy and happy.