While I've written a lot about the science of how meditation can help to alleviate severity of illness, decrease symptoms such as pain and depression, and promote immune function, I haven't spent a lot of time addressing how meditation can help to impact healthcare in general.
Meditation can change the way a person experiences pain, according to a new study by UW–Madison neuroscientists. The researchers found that during a pain experiment, expert meditators felt the discomfort as intensely as novice meditators, but the experience wasn't as unpleasant for them. Images of brain regions linked to pain and anxiety may explain why. Compared to novice meditators, experts had less activity in the anxiety regions. Not only did the experts feel less anxiety immediately before pain stimulation, they also became accustomed to the pain more quickly after being exposed repeatedly to it.
Why Meditate? Science Has Proven the Benefits As a Westerner, and a skeptic, there's something about "hard science" that puts me at ease. While I am delighted with the mysteries of the universe, and truly believe that there are some things that have no "rationale" answers, like healing at a distance, I like it when science confirms my perception of the universe.
Here are a few articles on the science of meditation and how it can create long-term benefits for you to alleviate stress, provide pain relief, increase your ability to respond compassionately, and maybe even live longer. I'm just offering a "taste" of what's been published and by doing so, I hope that you'll check into the literature on meditation research, it's great!
If you want the greatest benefits from your sleep, whether eight-hours of uninterrupted sleep, or a four-hour insomniac’s sleep, you've got to meditate!
Science has continued to generate an ongoing stream of research showing empirical, scientific, measurable evidence that meditation really works!
This post is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Lee Lipsenthal, a man of great compassion and wisdom, whose service in medicine touched the hearts and minds of many people.
There has been some discussion aimed at how meditation a preventative model of medicine utilizes mind-body techniques might help to reduce healthcare costs.
For those of you who would like to jump right in to reading a book that is exemplary in terms of bringing the meditative mind into science, I would highly recommend James Austin’s Zen and the Brain.
How we experience our world, including our perceptions of the internal world, can be dramatically changed, and mediated, through meditation.