Meditation: Transcending Darkness

My husband, Bud, and I learned the TM technique in 1984.  We first heard of TM in the 60’s.  A great deal of scientific research was done on the TM technique in the 60’s and 70’s.  Frequently we would notice a news article about the remarkable scientific findings related to the practice of this technique.  We would comment to each other that the research was interesting and didn’t this TM stuff sound great.  We hoped it was helping a lot of people!  We had no interest in learning ourselves until 1984.

In the winter of 1984 a respected friend told us of his experiences with TM.  Our friend encouraged us to learn.  We listened to him, thought his comments were interesting, and promptly forgot the conversation.  Several weeks after this conversation, our friend who lived in LA at the time, called.  He said a conference on TM was going to be held at the Renaissance Center in Detroit. He urged us to attend.  Since our friend was planning to be in town attending the conference we decided to go as well. 

I think our experience of hearing about TM, not doing anything about it, hearing of TM again, and forgetting what we heard is typical. Most of us need to hear of something new a few times or even several times before we embrace it.  It is also human nature to embrace a new idea when we hear it from someone we know and admire rather than from a stranger. I think, too, that the media bombards us with information about a myriad of things we should or can do to improve our well being.  After a time we begin to discount information. 

My husband and I did attend that conference with our friend, and I remember the experience well.  I remember the room where the conference was held, and I remember specific conversations I had with people there.  I believe I remember my thoughts and feelings, experienced that long-ago evening, because I sensed we were learning about something that would dramatically alter the success of our lives.  It was an extremely important event for us. 

At the conference we were impressed by the presentation of a voluminous amount of research on the TM technique.  It seemed that there was no reason to turn our backs on the opportunity to learn.  Our only concerns regarded the time commitment of 20 minutes twice a day, but we gleaned from the speakers the information that we would not be giving up time.  We would be gaining time.  The researchers told us that the practice of the TM technique would help us to be more energetic, to think more clearly, perhaps to sleep less, and to be able to accomplish more not less.  Over the years we have learned that this is true.

Immediately after we learned TM, we realized that this technique was extraordinarily powerful.  We realized immediate effects and we clearly sensed that the benefits would be cumulative.  We realized this but neither of us thought much about it.  We simply meditated. Meditation became a regular part of our lives.  A few months after we began meditating, Bud and I noticed changes in each other.  When we commented on these changes we both realized that we did feel quite different from how we had felt in the past.

The experience of ourselves is what we know. How we feel, how we experience ourselves is our reality.  When the experience of self changes, and changes significantly and permanently, it changes by degrees.  Because we are changing from within, we do not have full realization of the change until it is so profound that it is noticeable to others.

In our book Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way Sandra and I discuss several ways that the TM technique is helps us to change. Transcendental Meditation has the following proven benefits.

1.      Dissolving Deep-Seated Stress

2.     Providing Deep Rest

3.     Alleviating Anxiety

4.     Expanding Awareness

5.     Increasing the Internal Locus of Control

6.     Enhancing Physiological Adaptability

7.     Enhancing Psychological Adaptability

8.     Purification of the Mind

9.     Integration and Personal Growth

Each of these benefits translates into a holistic change in the mind-body.  For instance, when we expand our awareness we acquire a wide-angle lens with which to view life.  Expanding awareness opens the “shutter” in the mind’s eye.  When we have a panoramic view of an event, our understanding is enhanced.  This deeper viewpoint gives us more flexibility in the face of change, allowing the stress of life’s transitions to roll off our backs more easily.  When stresses roll off of us more easily then we are not inclined to be reactive to others.  Our relationships improve and we don’t integrate stress into our physiology.  Our health also improves.  These are profound changes. 

The TM technique has been shown to increase physical, emotional, and psychological resiliency.  What can be better than increased resiliency?  To be able to roll with life’s punches and spring back to action without integrating stress into the physiology is a great gift.

I hope you are not going to be like Bud and me and have to hear about TM over and over before you decide to take the plunge.  Positive research on this technique is still being reported in scientific journals and the technique is available for all interested parties.  GoogleTM.Org to learn more and locate a teacher in your neck of the woods.

Our family is delighted to welcome a new meditator into our fold this week.  Blessings to Ivy, age 13.  She recently decided to learn TM. The TM technique will provide a natural basis for Ivy’s formation of her adult identity.  It will give her increased energy, self-confidence and a general feeling of well-being.  She’ll be able to recognize how people can be identical at their core and yet uniquely different in their personalities. This recognition will help her to have positive relationships throughout her high school experience and beyond.  We believe that practice of the TM technique will help Ivy sail through adolescence unencumbered by the stresses many teen agers experience. She’ll be able to access her internal wisdom, rid herself of stress, and reach her full potential! Bud and I are filled with joy for her!  We hope all of you decide to learn TM too!

As always, Sandra and I send our best wishes for health and happiness,

Nancy

Do Antidepressants Work?

The answer is no, the antidepressants do not work. This information has now because of a “60 Minutes” broadcast (February 20, 2012) reached the mainstream.

As we’ve said before, antidepressants do not work any better than placebos in almost all cases of depression.Only 13 percent of people suffering from depression have severe symptoms and it is only in those cases that researchers can detect a statistically significant effect from antidepressants.

The jury is in and the verdict is that most people with depression are going to do as well with a sugar pill as they will on medication.  The good news is that sugar pills don’t have any side effects!

The bad news is that millions of people now feel terrified because since learning that antidepressants don’t work, they don’t know what to do to solve the problem of how they feel.  I have a simple suggestion for these millions of folks: Step out (or stay in and use Amazon) and buy a copy of Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way.

In our book, published in 2009, Sandra and I discuss life style changes that are helpful for treating and preventing depression.

How did it happen that the public was so taken in by the pharmaceutical industry for such a very long time?  After all, antidepressants have been on the market for about 60 years and it is only fairly recently that we have learned they do not work.

According to Andrew Weil, M.D., the reason we believed that drugs would help with depression is that we have been living under a “Biology Tells it all” belief system for quite awhile.  The credo of this biomedical model has been “There is no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.”

The development of antidepressant drugs fit the model.  If a person was depressed there was a biological reason and correction lay in a medication.  Isn’t it always this way?  Our solutions lay in how we see our problems.

Fortunately mind-sets are changing and knowledge of Ayurveda and integrative medicine is coming to the foreground and we are realizing that depression results from a nexus of risk factors; not from brain chemistry alone (or at all).

Depression is endemic in all industrialized countries in the world and this is because of life style.  We must realize that the mind and body are not separate entities.  The mind, body and spirit is one seamless energetic system which is continually interacting with the environment.  Each action creates a reaction and if life style is not healthy a problem will show up physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually or in every area of life experience.

People are eating more processed food, sleeping less (especially teen agers), not exercising or exercising too much, and perhaps most significant of all—-millions are moving far away from their spiritual center.  Spirituality is an appreciation for the abstract qualities of life and this is easily lost in the chaos of today’s hectic world.

Sandra and I hope that more stories like the one last night on “60 Minutes” program will be presented and will help to move our society away from a “biology tells it all” attitude toward a “lifestyle tells it all” mind-set.

Things can and do change very quickly.  Not even a decade ago, physicians treated heart disease by focusing on the organ of the heart, rather than focusing on the whole person experiencing the disease.  Nowadays, no cardiologist would think to give a pill for heart disease without simultaneously discussing the impact of lifestyle on heart health.  Perhaps sooner than the blink of an eye (or so we hope), the psychiatric and psychological communities will shift their current paradigm and begin to think of depression in a holistic manner.

We are hopeful that this switch will happen quickly because we know we’re living in a time of great and rapid change.  Previous mind-sets are melting away and new ideas taking hold.  These are exciting times in which to be alive.  All fields including medicine are changing rapidly.   The positive aspects of western medicine—and there are many—will be kept and will expand.  The negative aspects based on a division of mind and body will be swept away.  I envision millions of little antidepressant pills bobbing up and down as they float downstream and out into the airless sea where all bad ideas eventually sink to their demise.  The replacement for these millions of pills will be an awareness of lifestyle habits that empower our populace and promote health and happiness.  This is all to the good!

 

Here is a short video that was shown before the segment but gives good insight into what they talked about: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7399119n

 

As always Sandra and I wish you perfect health and its by-product, happiness!

Meditation: Transcending Darkness

                         My husband, Bud, and I learned the TM technique in 1984.  We first heard of TM in the 60’s.  A great deal of scientific research was done on the TM technique in the 60’s and 70’s.  Frequently we would notice a news article about the remarkable scientific findings related to the practice of this technique.  We would comment to each other that the research was interesting and didn’t this TM stuff sound great.  We hoped it was helping a lot of people!  We had no interest in learning ourselves until 1984.

In the winter of 1984 a respected friend told us of his experiences with TM.  Our friend encouraged us to learn.  We listened to him, thought his comments were interesting, and promptly forgot the conversation.  Several weeks after this conversation, our friend who lived in LA at the time, called.  He said a conference on TM was going to be held at the Renaissance Center in Detroit. He urged us to attend.  Since our friend was planning to be in town attending the conference we decided to go as well.

I think our experience of hearing about TM, not doing anything about it, hearing of TM again, and forgetting what we heard is typical. Most of us need to hear of something new a few times or even several times before we embrace it.  It is also human nature to embrace a new idea when we hear it from someone we know and admire rather than from a stranger. I think, too, that the media bombards us with information about a myriad of things we should or can do to improve our well being.  After a time we begin to discount information.

My husband and I did attend that conference with our friend, and I remember the experience well.  I remember the room where the conference was held, and I remember specific conversations I had with people there.  I believe I remember my thoughts and feelings, experienced that long-ago evening, because I sensed we were learning about something that would dramatically alter the success of our lives.  It was an extremely important event for us.

At the conference we were impressed by the presentation of a voluminous amount of research on the TM technique.  It seemed that there was no reason to turn our backs on the opportunity to learn.  Our only concerns regarded the time commitment of 20 minutes twice a day, but we gleaned from the speakers the information that we would not be giving up time.  We would be gaining time.  The researchers told us that the practice of the TM technique would help us to be more energetic, to think more clearly, perhaps to sleep less, and to be able to accomplish more not less.  Over the years we have learned that this is true.

Immediately after we learned TM, we realized that this technique was extraordinarily powerful.  We realized immediate effects and we clearly sensed that the benefits would be cumulative.  We realized this but neither of us thought much about it.  We simply meditated.  Meditation became a regular part of our lives.  A few months after we began meditating, Bud and I noticed changes in each other.  When we commented on these changes we both realized that we did feel quite different from how we had felt in the past.

The experience of ourselves is what we know. How we feel, how we experience ourselves is our reality.  When the experience of self changes, and changes significantly and permanently, it changes by degrees.  Because we are changing from within, we do not have full realization of the change until it is so profound that it is noticeable to others.

In our book Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way Sandra and I discuss several ways that the TM technique is helps us to change.  Transcendental Meditation has the following proven benefits.

1.  Dissolving Deep-Seated Stress
2. Providing Deep Rest
3. Alleviating Anxiety
4. Expanding Awareness
5. Increasing the Internal Locus of Control
6. Enhancing Physiological Adaptability
7. Enhancing Psychological Adaptability
8. Purification of the Mind
9. Integration and Personal Growth

Each of these benefits translates into a holistic change in the mind-body.  For instance, when we expand our awareness we acquire a wide-angle lens with which to view life.  Expanding awareness opens the “shutter” in the mind’s eye.  When we have a panoramic view of an event, our understanding is enhanced.  This deeper viewpoint gives us more flexibility in the face of change, allowing the stress of life’s transitions to roll off our backs more easily.  When stresses roll off of us more easily then we are not inclined to be reactive to others.  Our relationships improve and we don’t integrate stress into our physiology.  Our health also improves.  These are profound changes.

The TM technique has been shown to increase physical, emotional, and psychological resiliency.  What can be better than increased resiliency?  To be able to roll with life’s punches and spring back to action without integrating stress into the physiology is a great gift.

I hope you are not going to be like Bud and me and have to hear about TM over and over before you decide to take the plunge.  Positive research on this technique is still being reported in scientific journals and the technique is available for all interested parties.  Google TM.Org to learn more and locate a teacher in your neck of the woods.

Our family is delighted to welcome a new meditator into our fold this week.  Blessings to Ivy, age 13.  She recently decided to learn TM.  The TM technique will provide a natural basis for Ivy’s formation of her adult identity.  It will give her increased energy, self-confidence and a general feeling of well-being.  She’ll be able to recognize how people can be identical at their core and yet uniquely different in their personalities. This recognition will help her to have positive relationships throughout her high school experience and beyond.  We believe that practice of the TM technique will help Ivy sail through adolescence unencumbered by the stresses many teen agers experience.  She’ll be able to access her internal wisdom, rid herself of stress, and reach her full potential! Bud and I are filled with joy for her!  We hope all of you decide to learn TM too!

As always, Sandra and I send our best wishes for health and happiness,

Nancy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image courtesy of http://meditationatlanta.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-is-transcendental-meditation.html

The Culprit is Stress

The Culprit is Stress

Hans Selye, the physician who first coined the term “stress,” defined stress as “essentially the rate of wear and tear in the body.”  In recent years scientists have learned that stress underlies most, if not all, physical, mental and emotional disorders.   If we look below the surface when investigating a disorder we will usually see stress as the culprit.  Accumulated stress is a permanent burden that the system carries.  But where does this wear and tear on the body come from?  

Stress has many origins.  One of these is our hidden assumptions.  We build internal knots of stress because our hidden assumptions keep us busy attempting to get external input to decide whether we are on the right track or not.  Instead of relying on ourselves for affirmation we look to others.  In this way we create a mental framework which causes us stress and physiological imbalances.  

Many years ago I saw a sad young woman in therapy.  She was sad because her boyfriend and she had recently spilt up.  For a long time I listened to her sob and tell me about her anguish over losing the love of her life.  I felt confused because within her story there were contradictions.  It seemed to me that she had unwittingly pushed the young man away.  I told her that I wondered if she could “get him back” since she seemed to miss him so much.  She thought about this idea for awhile but confessed that although she was very sad that he was gone, she also felt relieved.  

She believed she had to “be” a certain way when he was around.  Her hidden assumptions were the cause of such internal pressure that eventually she had unknowingly pushed the young man away.  Her grief was palatable.  Yet the pressure caused by her hidden assumptions was worse.  In addition to her hidden assumptions she continually looked for signs from him that she was doing OK.  She had created an impossible situation for herself.

To one degree or another we all possess hidden assumptions.  How does this problem begin?

Children are natural born philosophers.  They are continually seeking instruction on how to be in the world.  If they receive support, love and nurturing guidance, they will do fine.  If they live with unpredictability or receive constant corrections, their self-confidence will flounder and they will operate from a bank of hidden assumptions.  After all, we all have to figure out how to handle the external world.  It is quite easy for a child to become vigilant, always on the lookout to discern the expectations of others.  This pattern flows into adulthood and disrupts happiness and causes exhaustion.  Undoubtedly, a great deal of what causes the mental framework leading to depression and other physiological imbalances is a tendency to second guess yourself.  

Along these lines, depression can be thought of as a symptom of one-sided awareness.  It frequently occurs when the mind becomes exhausted because it is in a state of extreme external awareness.  The extent of focus on the external determines the degree of depression.  The advice to “get in touch with yourself” is not just a silly saying; it is good solid counsel.  Sandra and I recommend reading Chapter 9 in Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way and learning how meditation can help change your internal world and increase your ability to rely on yourself for affirmation instead of relying on externals.  

The Transcendental Meditation technique has been shown in replicated studies to relieve stress from the physiology and to help the individual view life with more depth and breath.  The TM technique is an agent of vitality that anchors us to a deeper sense of self.  In a subtle but profound way, we experience a more panoramic view of our life and past and present problems take on a different proportion.  Our mind is able to grasp more layers of reality and thus to perceive life with more depth.  The deep rest given by this type of meditation dissolves accumulated stresses and hidden assumptions.  We become connected back to the self and begin to look inward instead of outward for affirmation.  This is a very healthy thing.

Nancy and Sandra

 

Ice Isn’t Nice

Ayurveda considers optimal digestive processes to be of the utmost importance for our health.  If we don’t digest our food properly we are not completely nourished.  Without proper nourishment our organs, tissues—-the very cells in our mind-body will not have top-notch functioning.

Faulty digestion, overtime, leads to big problems.  It leads to feelings of fatigue and lethargy and to chronic illnesses.  Currently it is estimated that approximately 40 % of American adults suffer from some form of chronic illness.  It seems that as a society we need to focus improving our digestion.

The Vedic sages gave us several instructions for how to optimize our digestion.  Today let’s “talk” about one of these.  It is suggested by the sages that we avoid iced drinks and carbonated beverages with meals.  Yikes!  Avoid iced drinks and carbonated beverages–this almost seems un-American.

However, let us think about how our physiology works when it digests food.  It seems that our digestive enzymes and other vital factors were intended to operate at body temperature.  Iced drinks hamper the digestive process.  (Ice water is neither nice nor wise.)  Enzymes also function best within a narrow pH range.  Carbonated beverages are, in general, highly acidic.  By altering the ph of the physiology, they impair the breakdown of food.

Perhaps you are wondering just what pH ranges and iced drinks have to do with depression.  Can a carbonated drink slurped down with a meal cause depression?  Can depression be cured by drinking non-iced water with food?

Depression is created and its roots are often physical.  Of course situations and genetics play a role in the creation of depression.  But, no matter the situation we are encountering or our genetic make-up we can avoid depression from gaining a foothold in our physiology through our daily choices.  Life style is everything.

We make many decisions every day.  We decide what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, when to go to sleep, how to respond to other people and whether or not to exercise.  Daily life is a flurry of decision making.  Decisions which support the physiology will help us to avoid depression or to recover from the blues quicker after a situation has tossed us upside down.  Drinking iced drinks and carbonated drinks is just one of those decisions.

The sages recommend that we follow their instruction manual for the creation of health at least 50% of the time.  The body is resilient and it is never a good idea to put pressure on ourselves to follow a lot of rules.  Daily decision making should be easy–never a strain.

We suggest that you think about iced drinks and carbonated beverages with food.  If it makes sense to you that optimal digestion is pivotal for proper health and that iced drinks and carbonated drinks interfere with digestive processes then begin to drink room temp water with your meals.  Pay attention and notice if you begin to feel a bit better after eating.  Notice if your digestion begins to run more smoothly!

As always, we wish you perfect health and its companion–happiness