By now, most of us have the sense that meditation is a great tool for stress management, heart health, healing, boosting creativity, and more.But meditation is also a great way to improve your sleep and enhance your dreams.Did you know that anxiety, depression and pain stick with you while you sleep? You bet - they can be visible in the patterns of brainwaves, eye movements and muscle tone recorded in laboratories and sleep clinics. Their presence dulls the natural cycles, or architecture of our sleep.Not surprisingly, when we carry extra stress, when we’re down in the dumps, or when we have aches and pains our sleep is far from optimal. Our REM (dream) density and deep sleep is lessened when we are anxious, sad or sedentary. We end up feeling unrested, and not quite right. We feed a negative cycle.So how do we break it? How do we turn it around and feel truly rejuvenated physically, mentally and spiritually? Well, of course, one great way is through meditation!During meditation you clear your mind. Essentially, you focus on “nothingness” and you simply “be”. This is easier said than done at first, but […]
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We’ve written before about the benefits of Tai Chi for your brain fitness and your immune system. Now a new study shows some striking effects of a year-long Tai Chi program at dramatically reducing cardiovascular disease risk factors.The new paper published by Chin Lang et al. in the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine details the evaluation of 53 patients with clinically problematic high cholesterol or triglycerides. About half of the patients in this study participated in a 12-month Tai Chi program while the other half continued their typical sedentary lifestyle. Since all of the patients were classified as high risk for cardiovascular illness, they remained on cholesterol reducing medication in both groups.The group that received Tai Chi saw a significant improvement on many fronts. Their blood pressure dropped, their total cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL) went down, their insulin levels decreased and markers of excess inflammation fell as well. The sedentary control group saw a slight reduction in blood pressure but their cholesterol and triglyceride levels actually got worse - even though they remained on cholesterol reducing medication (chalk up another point for exercise).Beyond these blood markers, the Tai Chi group also experienced improvements on measure of physical fitness. […]
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With today’s lifestyle and economy, we all would benefit by learning ways to manage stress. Many of us are aware that we need to control stress - and for good reason. Stress is linked to depression and many other life threatening diseases including heart disease, lung disease and cancer.Harmful internal toxins are created during times of high stress. When overly excited, angry or afraid, your body releases chemicals throughout. Ever felt butterflies in your stomach every time you think of a certain person or circumstance? This is the release of harmful internal toxins.As these extreme emotions happen to many of us on a daily basis, these chemicals are released daily as well. They will build up over time. Now you have the daily emotional issues and the built up internal toxins that add to and hold in fear and stress.Added to these toxins are the chemicals in processed and junk foods. Eating the wrong foods will create a harmful cycle of creating toxins, adding more through your food, which makes you feel worse, so you stress and create more toxins, and so on. Our health and wellbeing is in jeopardy and managing stress becomes even more important than […]
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