Dr. McDougall's Online Discussion Board

I was curious how many people here are concerned about meditation/mindfulness as a part of their health process. I think it is a net positive, but I'm not sure if it takes care of my monkey mind outside of the actual meditation session.

Comments are welcome.

Thank you.

Mark

I've been trying a bunch of different stress reduction techniques such as meditation, bio-feedback, brain wave entrainment, Benson's relaxation response, self-hypnosis, and various other techniques. They all seem to work at least in the moment and I do feel calmer afterwards. But not really sure if there's much of a physical difference between the techniques or if they simply supplement each other. At any rate, its all good in my mind

I do, every day. But maybe not in the way some people think of meditation. I try to practice mindfulness ), but it is in the form of walking, or while drawing and painting.

Sometimes, however, I'm merely mindful of the fact that I just let the monkey drive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL8xhb0PKqs

Does mindfullness it do anything for my physical health? I have no idea:).

But it does help me in intangible ways.....which I can't describe in words.

So I'll just go think about it instead...LOL.

I would love to do meditation at least 1x per day, but I never seem to make the time or effort. I love my quiet time, but even if I have headphones on and listening to music my partner wants to interrupt. I like the guided meditations best because I can really relax and follow along. Also, besides partner needing attention, my three cats want constant attention from me too. So if I am in the living room sitting in a chair meditating, you better believe I will have at least one cat wanting in my lap.

I prefer to just get more sleep. Getting enough sleep is probably more important.

colonyofcells wrote:I prefer to just get more sleep. Getting enough sleep is probably more important.

When working with the dying, I shared to someone in their deepest sleep they are the closest to God, and the response was "How do you know?" The answer was simple "How do you feel?"

Aloha, patty

Thoughts rise and fall. I find meditation helps build the skill of allowing them to rise and fall without feeding they are individual. We live in a subject object world, when feeling subjective it is important to go abstract. To do that when in crisis, gratitude of chanting Thank You, Thank You, Bless You, Bless You, works in calming the duality split mind in living life on life's terms.

Aloha, patty

katgirl55 wrote:...my three cats want constant attention from me too. So if I am in the living room sitting in a chair meditating, you better believe I will have at least one cat wanting in my lap.

Ha ha! Me too! I have done meditation as part of some yoga classes. Now, if I can't get to sleep, I find myself focusing on my breath for long, slow counts. This is a type of mediation that has helped me tremendously. It calms my mind, and eventually I get so bored I fall asleep.

I didn't vote because I've meditated on and off and I'm off currently. I hope to pick it up again. Mindfulness meditation defintitley has a lasting effect on me. I become aware sooner of rising thoughts, anxieties, fears, anger, etc and just being aware makes me more effective in not going down those previously traveled negative roads. Even though I haven't been meditating consistently for a couple of years, I still see lingering positive effects and I sometimes take a few minutes during the day to "center myself" if I feel as though my demons are overtaking me. I would imagine that anyone who has practiced for a lifetime (such as budhist monks) has changed his/her brain chemistry for the better and I believe a study showing this was conducted by neuroscientists (some university in Wisconsin, iirc?).

Synchronicity. Just posted this to my blog yesterday. Scroll down a bit to the actual post

Why Do I Keep Doing These Things?

For me, meditation has been my go-to for personal development and getting free of additive behaviors almost my entire life. Started when I was 18, freshman in college (1968), with Transcendental Meditation, and been practicing one way or another ever since. Natural Stress Relief, mentioned in the post is Transcendental Meditation exactly, just being taught by "renegade" teachers who got fed up with all the neo-Hinduism and insanely high price. Now I do Vipassana, also mentioned there. There's lots of ways to skin a cat (sorry should say to peel an apple?) but meditation is mine!

I've done quite a bit of meditation, of different sorts and kinds. Actually spent 4months studying Buddhism abroad in India during college and learned from a few different "Masters". These days, my favorite way to skin this proverbial cat is 'The Work' by Byron Katie. Not necessarily meditation per se., but her method seems to allow you to get to things that meditation might bring up in a more efficient manner; at least that's how things have gone for me anyways. Her book is my second favorite I've read, and you can also get the method for free from her website http://thework.com/en.

I think Byron Katie's The Work is absolutely brilliant! Cuts right the chase on clarity and getting us to "be real". I find myself doing a sort of informal version of it almost automatically whenever I start "stressing" or freaking out about anything.

I also don't make the time for it but would like to start easing into it. Thanks for the reminder!

Building Genuine Health: One Breath At A Time

http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Articles/E ... _Time.html

Fight-or-flight response may be calmed by yoga and pilates, say scientists
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/15/fight-or-flight-response-may-be-calmed-by-yoga-and-pilates-say-s/

Neuroscientists identify cortical links to adrenal medulla (mind-body connection)
May help explain why meditation and exercises such as yoga and Pilates can be helpful in dealing with stress
http://www.kurzweilai.net/neuroscientists-identify-cortical-links-to-adrenal-medulla-mind-body-connection

Pitt Research Provides New Insights into How the Mind Influences the Body
http://www.upmc.com/media/NewsReleases/2016/Pages/strick-stress-research.aspx

Why One Neuroscientist Started Blasting His Core
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/cortical-adrenal-orchestra/496679/

New insights into how the mind influences the body
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815185555.htm

About Peter L. Strick, PhD
http://www.braininstitute.pitt.edu/about-peter-l-strick-phd
http://www.neurobio.pitt.edu/faculty/strick.htm

Motor, cognitive, and affective areas of the cerebral cortex influence the adrenal medulla
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/08/11/1605044113.full

Another node in the network, the pregenual ACC, is a site of activation during mindful meditation (Fig. 4F), a behavioral technique for reducing anxiety.

Criteria for Inclusion of Meditation-Related Activations (Fig. 4F). Recent publications were found using the terms “meditation, stress, fMRI” in PubMed (n = 26). Coordinates were plotted in MNI space as described above. Only sites where rCBF increased during meditation versus controls were plotted (81⇓⇓–84).