Your Conscious Thoughts Regulate Your Health

Your conscious thoughts regulate your health. The persistent idea of illness will make you ill. While you believe that you become ill because of viruses, infections, or accidents, then you must go to doctors who operate within that system of belief. In addition, because you believe in their cures, you will be relieved of your difficulty. Because you do not understand that your thoughts create illness you will continue to undergo it ... and new symptoms will appear ... While you are in the process of changing beliefs - when you are beginning to realize that your thoughts and beliefs cause illness - then for a while you may not know what to do.... You may realize that the doctor can at best give you temporary relief, yet you may not be completely convinced yet of your own ability to change your thoughts; or you may be so cowed by their effectiveness that you are frightened.

When traditional practitioners of the ancient eastern religion of Zen Buddhism want to achieve greater spiritual insight, they turn to a technique is called "meditation.

Today more and more doctors are prescribing meditation as a way to lower blood pressure, improve exercise performance in people with angina, and help people with asthma breathe easier, relieve insomnia, and generally relax the everyday stresses of life. Meditation is a safe and simple way to balance a person's physical, emotional, and mental states. It is simple; but can benefit everybody. When you feel joyful, your body benefits and becomes stronger.

While you believe that only doctors can cure you, you had better go to them.... While you may be cured of one difficulty, you will only replace it with another as long as your beliefs cause you to have physical problems....'The healing energy [is] always within you.

A review of scientific studies identified relaxation, concentration, an altered state of awareness, a suspension of logical thought and the maintenance of a self-observing attitude as the behavioral components of meditation; it is accompanied by a host of biochemical and physical changes in the body that alter metabolism, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and brain chemistry. Meditation has been used in clinical settings as a method of stress and pain reduction. Meditation has also been studied specifically for its effects on stress.

Studies have shown that meditation can bring about a healthy state of relaxation by causing a generalized reduction in multiple physiological and biochemical markers, such as decreased heart rate, decreased respiration rate, decreased plasma cortisol (a major stress hormone), decreased pulse rate, and increased EEG (electroencephalogram) alpha, a brain wave associated with relaxation. Research conducted by R. Keith Wallace at U.C.L.A. on Transcendental Meditation, revealed that during meditation, the body gains a state of profound rest. At the same time, the brain and mind become more alert, indicating a state of restful alertness. Studies show that after TM, reactions are faster, creativity greater, and comprehension broader.

Research has also shown that Meditation can contribute to an individual's psychological and physiological well-being. This is accomplished as Meditation brings the brainwave pattern into an alpha state, which is a level of consciousness that promotes the healing state.

Physical Benefits

• Deep rest-as measured by decreased metabolic rate, lower heart rate, and reduced work load of the heart.
• Lowered levels of cortisol and lactate-two chemicals associated with stress.
• Decreased high blood pressure.
• Low skin resistance is correlated with higher stress and anxiety levels.
• Drop in cholesterol levels. High cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease.
• Improved flow of air to the lungs resulting in easier breathing. This has been very helpful to asthma patients.

 Psychological Benefits

• Increased brain wave coherence. Harmony of brain wave activity in different parts of the brain is associated with greater creativity, improved moral reasoning, and higher IQ.
• Decreased anxiety.
• Decreased depression.
• Decreased irritability and moodiness.
• Improved learning ability and memory.
• Increased self-actualization.
• Increased feelings of vitality and rejuvenation.
• Increased happiness.
• Increased emotional stability

Meditation is a multidimensional phenomenon that may be useful in a variety of ways. First, meditation is associated with states of physiological relaxation that can be utilized to alleviate stress, anxiety, and other physical symptoms. Secondly, meditation brings about cognitive shifts that can be applied to behavioural self-observation and management, and to understanding limiting or self-destructive cognitive patterns.

Meditation may also permit deepened access to the unconscious. Meditation techniques help us to focus attention on the manner in which unconscious conflicts are being processed and recreated in the mind on a moment-to-moment basis. Thus, it offers the possibility of not just understanding such conflicts conceptually, but of actually penetrating and gradually dismantling them through meditative insight

Out of knowledge of the contents of your own conscious mind by using meditation, you can definitely start to use your mind to be more aware of stresses on your body and move toward a place of healing.