APS Sexual Medicine

By Deborah Lambeth

For years, meditation has been touted as the “new” medication. By calming your spirit, bringing yourself into focus and into a state of quiet then all will be right with your self. But is that true? And if it were true across the board, would people who have different types of problems be inclined to seek help through meditation rather than medication? After all, a pill is a lot easier to swallow than sitting in silence for 20 minutes.

Buddhism seems to be one of the more popular proponents of meditation, which offers a more labor-intensive re-training of the mind. Some of the questions that were raised in recent research centered around a person?s ability to re-train their mind, and the ability to “self monitor” emotions and behaviors. Using a Tibetan monk as the subject, the researchers found that it is possible to use meditation to overcome certain barriers and behaviors that traditional medicine has been able to alleviate.

According to many mental health researchers, in cases of terminal or chronic illness, meditation is often used to reduce complications from stress. Physicians and the medical community in general are seeking to fund and research the area of meditation, as there are a growing number of doctors who believe that stress contributes significantly to poor physical health.

In 2004, the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine released a survey that focused on the use of complimentary and alternative medicines. According to the survey, the majority of individuals 18 years old and older used a combination of alternative medicine with conventional medicine. Deep breathing and various forms of breathing meditation was the 2nd most used form of alternative medicine therapy. Meditation that excluded the use of prayer was the 3rd most used form.

The difficulties seem to arise, though, out of knowing which modality will work best for each individual situation. It is important to seek advice from a physician before embarking upon a change in medication or using a different form of therapy. While there is still a lot of research needed in this area, the studies and statistics from what we already know are compelling enough to realize that there is a mind-body connection to improving and maintaining good health both mentally and physically.

By Anastacia Mott Austin

People of many faiths all over the world utilize beads while praying or meditating. Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims all have used beads as a form of prayer and meditation for centuries.

But the most well-known use of prayer beads is probably the Christian Catholic rosary. Catholic tradition claims that the rosary was revealed to St. Dominic during a vision in the 13th century.

The rosary is a specific number of beads strung together, often with a crucifix attached. The beads can be made of wood, berries, or metal. Most rosaries have been blessed with holy water and prayers.

Practitioners begin with making the sign of the cross while touching the crucifix, then recite a series of “Hail Mary” prayers (in groups of 10, or decades), divided by the ?Our Father” prayer, while meditating on important events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, called “the mysteries.” A typical full rosary includes five decades.

There are four types of mysteries: the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, the glorious mysteries, and the luminous mysteries. Each mystery has a particular day of the week during which one can focus on them. The joyful mysteries focus on events such as the angel of the Lord visiting Mary to tell her she would bear a son, or the birth of Jesus. The sorrowful mysteries consist of events like Jesus? pleading with God to be spared, and his death on the cross. The glorious mysteries include Jesus? resurrection and his ascension to Heaven. The luminous mysteries consist of events such as Jesus? baptism, and his converting water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

A person praying the rosary touches or holds one bead while reciting one prayer, then moves on the next bead with the next prayer, to keep track of the order without being too distracted.

Ideally, the meditations on the mysteries provide a deeply contemplative experience, and a way in which to become closer to God.

Catholic children learn the rosary prayers early on, and memorize them easily. The hope is that the repetitious nature of the “Hail Mary” prayer will occupy one?s conscious mind, allowing the spiritual soul to focus on the mystery stories and the connection to God. Some find it relaxing and reassuring when they automatically remember the words of the prayers, even years later, and can slip back into a meditative state.

The rosary can also function as a familiar touchstone when its physical presence reminds one of a safe time: childhood and home, or a neighborhood church.

People who have grown up in the Catholic Church but later felt disconnected from God say that a return to the rosary meditation can offer them the solace of a reunion of sorts with God, combined with an adult?s perception of the power of meditation to calm one?s soul, regardless of how that meditation is performed.

By Anastacia Mott Austin

For years, devotees of various forms of meditation have insisted that a regular practice can make you a better person.

It turns out they?re right, and scientists are backing them up.

A new study released by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published in the March 26th issue of The Public Library of Science One has shown that people can literally train their brains (and of course, their spirits) to be more compassionate toward others.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) imaging to examine the brains of 16 Tibetan monks who had had years of practice in compassion meditation. They matched these folks, by age, with 16 other people who had only had simple introductory instructions on compassion meditation.

During the testing, researchers and UW-M professors Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz asked both the control and experimental groups to imagine feelings of loving kindness, first toward people they knew, and then toward humanity in general, while playing audio sounds of varying human emotions.

The fMRI scans of the monks showed high activity in the insula, an area of the brain near the frontal lobe which reacts when emotions are triggered. The more intensely the participants felt the compassion meditation, the more activity was observed in the insula.

“The insula is extremely important in detecting emotions in general and specifically in mapping bodily responses to emotion,” said Davidson, “such as heart rate and blood pressure – and making that information available to other parts of the brain.”

There was far less activity detected in the insula of the brains of the untrained subjects.

High activity was also detected in the monks? temporal parietal juncture, an area in the right side of the brain that is responsible for empathetic responses to others? emotional states.

The findings that both of these emotionally responsive areas of the brain were more active in the monks during meditation was meaningful to the study?s authors.

“Both of these areas have been linked to emotion sharing and empathy,” said Davidson. “The combination of these two effects, which was much more noticeable in the expert meditators as opposed to the novices, was very powerful.”

What do they think this means for our everyday lives?

It means that we can train our minds to become more empathetic with regular compassion meditation.

The researchers believe this will be especially useful in populations of people with a history of depression, or children and adolescents who have a difficult time empathizing with the plight of others.

“We can take advantage of our brain’s plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities, says Davidson to reporters. “People are not just stuck at their respective set points.”

Granted, not everyone has the time and the focus to devote thousands of hours to daily meditation, as monks do. But the findings are still encouraging because they indicate that personality traits previously thought to be inborn can be developed.

At a fundamental level, the research is groundbreaking. If all humans have the potential to train themselves to become more compassionate, what kind of world could we envision? What kind of changes would an empathetic, compassionate race of humans create?

At the very least, from our vantage point in an uncertain present, it gives much needed hope for a better future.

By Anastacia Mott Austin

We?ve known for years that meditation can help with stress. It clears the mind and calms the body.

We?ve also known for a long time that stressful, bad habits can prompt negative gene changes which can contribute to disease and other debilitative states.

“It’s sort of like reverse thinking,” says Dr. Gerry Leisman, director of the F.R. Carrick Institute at Leeds University in England, to reporters. “If you can wreak havoc on yourself with lifestyle choices, for example, it causes expression of latent genetic manifestations in the negative, then the reverse should hold true.”

Added Dr. Leisman, “Biology is not entirely our destiny, so while there are things that give us risk factors, there’s a lot of ‘wiggle’ in this.”

Researchers have taken it a step further and have proven that a regular meditative practice can actually change genetic responses in the body. Dr. Herbert Benson, president of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, led a team of scientists in carrying out an experiment on gene response to stress, published in a recent issue of PLoS One.

Dr. Benson and his colleagues studied three different groups of subjects and their gene responses.

The team looked at 19 long-term practitioners of some type of meditation, a control group of 19 subjects who had never meditated, and 20 subjects who were given an 8-week training session of relaxation response.

The researchers found more than 2,200 different gene responses from the long-term meditators and the control group. There were also differences between the two groups in how cells responded to inflammation, programmed cell death, free radicals, cellular metabolism, and oxidative stress.

In the group that had received the 8-week relaxation training, the subjects shared 433 of the gene responses with the long-term practitioners that neither group had in common with the subjects who did not meditate.

“For hundreds of years Western medicine has looked at mind and body as totally separate entities, to the point where saying something ‘is all in your head’ implied that it was imaginary,” said Dr. Benson to reporters. “Now we’ve found how changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic genetic instructions are implemented.”

Benson and his team have been studying the mind/body connection for decades, and the most recent study is significant because it is the first one in which gene reactions were mapped in the bodies of healthy individuals, not just those already negatively affected by gene changes.

In addition, the research will help scientists study how individuals can consciously affect their own gene responses to stress conditions, possibly changing them through meditation to avoid harmful effects.

Says Dr. Benson, “Now we need to see if similar changes occur in patients who use the relaxation response to help treat stress-related disorders, and those studies are underway now.”

By Carol Johnson

Practitioners of Japa meditation claim that to achieve the most potent development of restorative or enhancing energy, a person must repeat a word or phrase at least 108 times. “By chanting?it is the sublime method for defining our Krishna consciousness,” says Srila Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. “As living spiritual souls, we are all originally Krishna conscious entities, but due to our association with matter from time immemorial, our consciousness is now polluted in the material atmosphere. In this polluted concept of life, we are all trying to exploit the sources of material nature but are actually becoming more and more entangled in our complex cities.”

Primarily rooted in the Hare Krishna movement, chanting is becoming more and more popular among many who practice meditation. According to Prabhupada, the way humans can rejoin their earlier essence and harmony with all living entities is through the repetitive chanting of specific mantras.

Prabhupada himself employs a traditional maha chant, “Hare Krisha, Hare Krishna/Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare/Hare Rama, Hare Rama/Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare.” Although many people associate this particular chant with John Lennon?s song “My Sweet Lord,” the chant itself is not intended to be associated with a religious meaning, but rather with a personal, emotional striving.

“This illusory sudden and instant material nature can at once be stopped by revival of our Krishna consciousness,” Prabhupada explains. “Krishna consciousness is not an artificial imposition on the mind. This consciousness is the original energy of living entities. When we hear the transcendental vibration, this consciousness is revived.”

The theory behind Hari Krishna meditation is that sound has a great power locked within it to reach the levels of consciousness such as those former LSD drug advocate Timothy Leary sought to attain. Japa meditation makes use of the mantra?a Sanskrit term referring to a specific chant?to distract the mind from its daily mundane thought processes and move it to another plane of consciousness. Although Leary and his followers probably believed they were on that plane, practitioners of Japa meditation truly believe they are able to reach that higher level of consciousness without having to be in a state of chemically-enhanced euphoria.

A meditational mantra can be anything the chanter chooses, as long as it?s positive. Negative mantras hold the same power, but with a different purpose; they seek to invoke discord within one?s personal sphere. Prabhupada suggests choosing an appropriate mantra from the traditional Sanskrit mantras, but he acknowledges the efficacy of positive personal affirmations. Hari Krishna mantras allow practitioners to return to a deeper consciousness and a life that is in touch with a transcendental plane.

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Researchers from Emory University?s School of Medicine have published a study in this month?s Public Library of Science One (PLOS One), , in which they argue that zen meditation may sharpen the brain?s focus.

Guiseppe Pagnoni, Ph. D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and his colleagues studied 12 long-time zen meditation practitioners (over three years of regular meditation practice) and compared their brains to non-practitioners.

The team, whose study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine blood flow in the regions of the brain associated with focus and calm in all of the study?s participants.

The subjects were told to focus on their breathing, and then given an assignment in which two words flashed on a screen, a real word and a nonsense word, and they had to distinguish between the two at random intervals. They were then told to return to their focus on their breathing in between these flashes. The random flashes were designed to mimic regular thought interruptions that occur daily.

The scans showed that the experienced meditation group members were able to return to a calm, alert state much more quickly than the inexperienced group in between flashes.

The differences between the two groups were noted in areas of the brain identified as “the default mode network,” which is connected to spontaneous thoughts which arise randomly. This is just the type of distraction that practitioners of zen meditation are trained to focus away from.

“This suggests that the regular practice of meditation may enhance the capacity to limit the influence of distracting thoughts,” said Pagnoni to reporters. “This skill could be important in conditions such as attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, and major depression, characterized by excessive rumination or an abnormal production of task-unrelated thoughts.”

Zen meditation is a conscious focusing, often on one?s breathing, and it is this focused attention that aids the mind in letting go of other random thoughts and “noise” that try to enter in. Ideally, the mediator is able to completely lose him- or herself in the focused breathing and allow everything else to fall away.

Pagnoni himself admitted to flaws in the study. For example, he pointed out that the experienced mediators may always have had brains that were able to reach that calmed, alert state, and were perhaps drawn to meditation because it suited qualities they already possessed. There was no way to test whether the meditation practice itself was responsible for developing that ability.

In addition, the small subject pool ? 12 people in each group ? is an unusually small number of subjects for an experiment to produce scientifically legitimate results (though the small subject pool was not mentioned by Pagnoni).

But Pagnoni says that questioning is a normal part of the scientific analysis of experiments, and told reporters he felt confident that the study?s results would hold up.

“It is important that this type of research be conducted with high scientific standards because it carries a long-standing stigma, perhaps well-deserved, of being ?wishy-washy,?” said Pagnoni to reporters. “Constructive skepticism should always be welcomed as a great sparring partner.”

Meditation is the process by which one?s mind is taken towards a deeper state of relaxation. The process involves the focusing of one?s mental attention towards a single point to fight the thoughts that cause the mind to drift away. The different types of meditations consist of different psychological processes intended to help one achieve a higher state of consciousness. Mediation is practiced with an aim of achieving self-awareness and peace of mind. Let us try to understand what Holosync meditation means.

Holosync Meditation

The characteristic feature of Holosync meditation is that the process of this type of meditation requires a person to listen to an audiotape. The music consists of binaural beats, which possess the capacity to change a person?s state of consciousness. During Holosync meditation, a person is exposed to beats of two different tones at the same time. The person?s mind processes the difference in the tomes as a lower frequency binaural tone. These audio signals cause the mind to resonate and bring about a change in the brain wave pattern. It is the tonal frequencies of these sounds that affect the conscious state of a person?s mind.

Holosync meditation differs from traditional meditation in many respects. Firstly, holosync meditation does not require absolute silence. Minor distractions cannot break the meditative state. Secondly, with Holosync meditation one requires minutes to acquire the meditative state, as opposed to hours required in traditional meditation. The plasticity of the brain waves is said to increase through the practice of Holosync meditation. It is comparatively easier to practice, yet as rewarding as any other form of meditation. So, let?s go about it. Read about the different types of meditation and learn how to meditate.

Whenever you go to a doctor and you get a prescription for a medication, you may not be aware of it but your body begins healing before the medicine is even in your system. This is due to a process known as “the placebo effect”?an extraordinary healing ability of the body. For most people, just going to see a doctor and getting a diagnosis or a professional opinion gives them confidence, and tells their body to begin healing itself. Their mind believes what the doctor says about the medicine helping them, and their body begins making it happen.

There are stories in the news regularly about the fantastic things the human body is capable of despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. We?ve heard stories of skinny little people being able to lift cars to free trapped loved ones in peril of drowning, thanks to a tremendous adrenaline rush. The same principle applies to healing?the body is capable of performing more than miraculous one-time feats; it is capable of healing itself.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the noted physician and humanitarian, explains it this way: “The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us (medical doctors) succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside himself. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.”

There are several documented methods for helping people to heal meditatively at the cellular level. If you are already experienced with meditation techniques, you should use whatever position, relaxation technique, and breathing pattern you are accustomed to using to prepare for meditating. If you are not in the practice of meditating regularly you should spend some time reading about the different ways to approach meditation, and try different methods to see what works best for you. There are numerous online resources for learning about different types of meditation techniques.

Using meditation to enact healing on a cellular level may take mere seconds or decades to accomplish, depending on the type of illness or condition you are suffering from, the type of meditation technique you use, and how successful you are in freeing your mind to encourage your body to heal itself. Before you begin, it is helpful to use an anatomy book to study the body structure you want healing to take place in. Memorize how that part appears when it is in a state of perfection, without disease or illness. During your healing visualization meditation you will need to be able to envision your body in a state of perfection, so you need to study what that will look like in order to visualize it for yourself.

1. Relax. To begin, settle yourself into your chosen physical position and empty your mind of any mental or emotional reactivity that might interfere with the object of your meditation. In your mind?s eye, begin to see the inflamed cells in your body changing into healthy cells. If there is a damaged or corrupted area within the cells, visualize them changing and becoming perfect again. Visualize yourself as being perfectly healthy.

2. See warrior cells attacking. Medical researchers have proven that there are cells within your body that actually attack and kill damaging cells that invade healthy tissue. So in your mind?s eye, watch as these warrior cells destroy the cells that are causing you pain or illness. Watch as they devour the harmful structures. See your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as being perfectly healthy.

3. See healthy cells gathering. Visualize groups of healthy cells joining forces to replace any damaged areas of your body. For example, if you have suffered a serious wound, envision the cells coming together, bonding together to reform the complete structure of bone, muscle, skin, and tissues, to form a complete structure. Visualize yourself as being perfectly healthy.

4. Open your mind and body to healing energy. Concentrate on filling your mind with healing energy from a higher power that has given you the gift of healing. See this healing energy changing your cellular structure to a perfect condition. Watch, in your mind?s eye, as the healing energy causes the specific organ, body system, or damaged body part to heal itself. Visualize yourself as being perfectly healthy.

5. See nerve endings relaxing. If you are in pain, focus on seeing, in your mind?s eye, the nerve endings that are in the specific area of your discomfort, or all of the nerve endings in your entire body. As you breath inward, feel and visualize healing air flowing from a higher power and entering you to fill your lungs. See the air being absorbed by your lungs and filtering into your red blood cells, and see them carrying the healing air through your arteries and spreading healing oxygen to every cell in your body. Watch as the inflamed and painful nerve endings are soothed and relaxed with the healing oxygen. Watch as your body begins to glow with well-being and healthiness. Visualize yourself as being perfectly healthy.

6. See God heal you. Visualize yourself in front of your own personal deity. See the deity heal you by touch, and by sending divine energy flowing through your body. See your deity end your suffering, and see your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as being perfectly healthy.

The most important part of this healing meditation is to sincerely want the healing to take place, and to honestly believe that it will occur. Although you don?t have to believe in God for the benefits of meditation to help you, there are Bible passages that are useful in pointing out the power of concentrated belief. One example is Mark 11:24: “What things you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them.”

For a more contemporary take on the power of belief, you need only hear from noted researcher Dr. Herbert Benson, of the Harvard Medical School. “We know that belief can lead to healing or at least improvement in 50 percent to 90 percent of diseases, including asthma, angina pectoris, and skin rashes, many forms of pain, rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure,” says Dr. Benson. “They’re all influenced by belief. We in medicine have made fun of belief by calling it the ?placebo effect,? or insisting that ?It’s all in your head.? Yet, belief is one of the most powerful healing tools we have in our therapeutic arsenal.”

In ancient literature and historical guidelines written by masters of meditation, beginning students of meditation are instructed, “assume a comfortable position and then empty your mind of all thought.” The purpose behind this admonition is supposedly to clear your mind of any thoughts that might prove to be a distraction that will interrupt your meditative state.

Problem is, when most people start meditating they are concentrating so furiously on emptying their mind that it becomes impossible. If you?re constantly thinking, “I need to empty my mind,” then how empty can it be? Just as soon as you imagine yourself sitting beneath a palm tree on the pristine deserted shore of a tranquil bay with the sound of gently lapping water, you?re sure to have a tiny thought enter your mind about how long you should focus on nothing before beginning your meditation?or you?ll change your mind and decide to imagine yourself on a hillside instead?or wait a minute, maybe swinging in a hammock in a long leaf pine forest would be better?oh, that reminds me, I need to buy mulch for the front yard…and before you know it, your mind is anything but empty.

Instead of consciously focusing on trying to empty your mind, a better approach might be to purposely fill it up – pack it full of interrelated thoughts that will lead to a clearer focus. For example, focus on a single object, such as a balloon. You then think of everything you can imagine that is related to a balloon. Balloons are round; they come in all sorts of colors and sizes; they start out small and grow larger as they are inflated; they are fragile and can be easily popped; they can be made of rubber, plastic, mylar, or soap bubbles; they are used to celebrate special days, etc. Then you can extrapolate how all of those characteristics might relate to you.

People?s faces are often round; they come in different colors and sizes; they begin small and grow larger; they can be fragile emotionally or physically; etc. As you consider all of these things, keep referring back to the balloon. When focus on how the balloon relates to everything else in the universe. Einstein said that everything in the universe relates to everything else in the universe. So how does your balloon – and yourself – relate to the universe? Before you know it, you will begin to find that you can relate everything else to a balloon if you focus on doing so. And as your mind slowly fills with thoughts of the ways the universe is related to your balloon, your mind will eventually surrender out of fatigue.

Now that your mind is truly empty, you can fill it back up with the essence of the balloon, which is the essence of everything else in the universe, including you. You do not need to try hard to realize that essence, if you ponder the idea that a balloon is made up of atomic particles and subatomic substances that are no different than the subatomic substances that make up the entire universe, including you. Your mind and your body have literally the same energy and essence as the stars, and all of the atomic particles in the universe. Atoms are compelled to merge into molecules, and then those molecules develop into compositions that are increasingly complex. The most complex of all, of course, is the human being, because we alone have the ability to contemplate this miraculous process of evolution and growth, and unite ourselves with the wisdom or consciousness that creates and maintains this essence.

There are a number of other ways you can empty your mind by filling it. Zen koans (unanswerable questions) have been used for hundreds of years. Examples of these imponderables are questions such as, “Before you were born, what was your face?” and “What is the sound made by one hand clapping?” Another method is to visualize yourself in a conceptual way. For instance, imagine yourself as being the type of person you?ve always wanted to be, with perfect health, wisdom, peace, self-control, and complete mastery of your body and mind.

Try several different ways to fill your mind in order to empty it, and see which one feels right to you. You may find more than one that works well, and you can alternate as you choose. Keep filling your mind to empty it, and eventually your mind will become a useful tool for meditation, just like your computer or your car or anything else you rely on to get you through the struggles and stress of daily life. Spend a few minutes each day filling your mind with the essence that is you, and you will live happily ever after.