Science is Finally Catching On to the Health Benefits of Meditation
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time now you know that I am a firm believer in the power of meditation. I’m not a believer because meditation is really “in” right now, I believe in meditation because it helped me beat cancer nearly 25 years ago. Recently, there’s been more studies looking into the benefits of Meditation, and new articles are pointing toward observable proof!
Often when I’ve told my story – that I was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer and given 3 months to live and I chose alternative treatments, meditation being one, to treat and beat my cancer – I have gotten eye rolls from people that immediately let me know they think alternative medicine is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo woo-woo nonsense. They completely block out the fact that I was supposed to die 25 years ago, but I didn’t, I am standing in front of them speaking and telling them how I beat cancer when, according to medical “experts” I shouldn’t have. This is why I get so excited when I hear about a new study that supports something I did to treat myself and make myself well all those years ago. Because the more science backs up my story, the more people will listen to it, and the more people I can help turn their health and life around.
Researchers in Canada have uncovered evidence that meditation has the ability to alter the cellular activity in cancer patients. There really are some observable health benefits to meditation!
Published in the journal Cancer, their study is one of the very first (and hopefully not the last!) to suggest that the mind-body connection really does exits. If you are a skeptic and an eye roller, please read that line again: science is now saying there is, in fact, a mind-body connection.
“We already know that psychosocial interventions like mindfulness meditation will help you feel better mentally, but now for the first time we have evidence that they can also influence key aspects of your biology,” said Linda E. Carlson, the lead investigator at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre.
The Canadian study focused on telomeres, which are the little protein caps at the end of all of our chromosomes that determine how fast our cells age. Researchers found that the telomeres in cancer patients who meditated over a certain period of time stayed the same length while those in patients who didn’t meditate shortened.
Although scientists are still determining the exact role telomeres play in regulating disease, longer telomeres are generally thought to help protect us from disease. And, while many in the scientific community say that further research must be done to understand what’s causing this biological effect, the fact remains that this study is a huge first step in linking our minds and bodies and proving that our thoughts can and do cause changes in our physical world.
A 2 minute meditation to calm your day:
Sit quietly and focus in on this beautiful scene. Look deeper into the image and start to notice the depth of color and contrast. See yourself right here…feel yourself here…smell the oxygen in the air…now start to breathe in 1,2,3,4,5 hold 1,2,3,4,5 breathe out 1,2,3,4,5, repeat. Feel the calm.
Have a great day my wonderful friends.
With love & gratitude,
My new & revised YouTube channel has free meditations to get you started. Please click “subscribe” so you can get the latest and greatest videos. This will also help me gain more subscribers! Every click helps! Thank you! YouTube
