Lotus Holistic Healing & Stress Management

"dedicated and in service to promote natural health and well-being within body, mind and spirit"

Lotus     About the Therapies     Therapist Biography     Mindfulness & Meditation     Classes & Workshops     Essential Oils     Pre/Aftercare Advice     Prices & Payment     Contact Lotus     Retail      

For information on the It's Now ~ Renfrewshire Sangha follow this link to the official website   http://itsnowrenfrewshire.wordpress.com/

 

Lynn will be doing a 10 week course in Mindfulness & Meditation at Cardonald College from January 18th 2012 http://www.cardonald.ac.uk/courses/show/677 

 

The Importance of Relaxation & Meditation
 

Do you constantly feel the strain of tension in your head, jaw, neck, shoulders or abdomen and find it hard to unwind?
Have you been advised to relax but nobody's really explained how you're supposed to do that, exactly?
Tension and stress can creep up on you unawares. As far as you know, you are just getting on with your life and dealing with stuff, and you may not even notice a fixed frown developing on your face, or a permanent tightness across your shoulders. You might perhaps notice that you are not sleeping so well, but it may not occur to you to connect this with a lack of relaxation in your life.
Many people don't realise that relaxing - taking it easy and doing nothing - is actually as essential to health as activity. Others find it hard to relax, or feel that doing nothing is a sign of moral weakness. They are always pushing themselves to be doing things and feel guilty if they are not 'busy' with something useful. They are likely to be quite shocked if a doctor diagnoses their health problems as 'stress-related'.

You see, if chronic tension builds up in your body, causing you to be constantly tightening your muscles, this drains your energy. You need energy to hold those muscles so tight. That means energy is not available for other things. In time, this can affect your posture and leads to serious fatigue. This in turn makes you prone to unpleasant states such as anxiety and irritability, and more likely to get ill.

Everybody knows you need good quality sleep in order to be healthy but you also need regular times of relaxation in your waking hours. Numerous studies have established that a twenty to thirty minute period of profound rest every day brings tremendous benefits to body and mind.

Regular deep relaxation will

  • measurably boost your immune system

  • regulate your blood pressure

  • enhance your creativity, flexibility and memory

  • increase your productivity

 

Meditation is the perfect way to relax and relieve stress, therefore promoting good physical and mental health!

 

Researchers at the Harvard Medical School have found that deep relaxation seems to switch off disease causing genes, while switching on genes that actively protect us from disorders such as high blood pressure to pain to infertility and even rheumatoid arthritis.

Researchers attribute these changes to a phenomenon they call the ‘Relaxation Effect.’ The researchers compared the genetic profile of individuals who were long-term practitioners of relaxation methods such as yoga and meditation to a control group of individuals who were not relaxation practitioners.

In the words of Dr Herbert Benson, who led the research group at the Harvard Medical School, “We found a range of disease fighting genes that were active in the relaxation practitioners but not active in the control group.” Interestingly, in as little as two months after the control group began meditating, their genetic profile changed to resemble those of the relaxation practitioners.

In a separate study conducted by Dr Dean Ornish and co-workers, men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer were asked to incorporate positive lifestyle changes as a potential treatment for their disease, as they had opted not to undergo conventional treatment. The researchers conducted two prostate biopsies on each individual, one before and one three months after incorporation of changes such as following a plant-based diet, exercise, stress management techniques such as meditation, and participating in a support group. They reported that the biopsy samples collected post-lifestyle change had a different gene expression pattern with various disease-promoting genes switched off, and various protective genes turned on.

It seemed that Drs Benson and Ornish had hit upon a treatment that came with huge benefits minus the usual side effects.

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13453&ch=biztech 

 

 What is Meditation?

 

Meditation is a term coined to encompass a variety of practices that help you focus your attention and control your thoughts. The origins of meditation can be traced to the Eastern world, where people have been practicing this art for thousands of years. Broadly, there are two types of meditation. Mindfulness meditation where the meditator focuses all attention on the flow of breath in and out of the body, and transcendental meditation which makes use of a repetitive word or sound to prevent thoughts from entering the mind, both ultimately leading to a state of relaxed alertness. Best of all, you can spend as little as 10 minutes meditating and still reap the benefits.

  Benefits

During meditation, oxygen consumption drops by 10 to 20 percent and it produces a deeper state of rest than sleep. In fact, 75 percent of insomniacs were able to sleep normally when they meditated.

 

Meditation is the only activity that reduces blood lactate, a marker of stress and anxiety.

 

Meditation decreases the stress hormone, cortisol, and increases the calming hormones melatonin and serotonin.

 

Meditators secrete more of the youth-related hormone DHEA as they age than non-meditators. Meditating 45-year-old males have an average of 23 percent more DHEA than non-meditators, and meditating females have an average of 47 percent more. Wow! DHEA is one of those supplements people describe for anti-aging benefits because it lowers stress, heightens memory, preserves sexual function, and helps control weight.

 

Meditation has a profound effect upon three key indicators of aging: (1) hearing ability, (2) it lowers blood pressure, and (3) helps close object vision.

 

Long-term meditators experience 80 percent less heart disease and 55 percent less cancer than nonmeditators. 

 

34 % of people with chronic pain significantly reduced their pain medication when they began meditating.

 

Meditation is known to produce "spontaneous remissions" in 10% of cancer cases, can help get rid of psoriasis, and is a great way to reduce blood pressure. It also is a critical component of alcoholic anonymous programs and other programs to help people beat addictions.

 

These are ALL good reasons to start meditating!

Lotus Holistic Healing is dedicated and in service to promote natural health and well-being within body, mind and spirit.