Silva Method and the Ultimate Mind

This is yet another study showing that meditation, whether TM, the Silva Method or any meditation technique helps reduce blood pressure and stress. It still is of utmost importance that we take at least 30 minutes for ourselves to relax our mind and tune in to our body.

Here’s the article from Medical News Today:

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The first randomised controlled trial to demonstrate that a mental technique can reduce blood pressure in at-risk university students - through improving psychological health - was published on Wednesday in the American Journal of Hypertension (A Randomized Controlled Trial on Effects of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Blood Pressure, Psychological Distress, and Coping in Young Adults. Am J Hypertens 2009 Dec.) See . See also summary below.

Earlier this week, another paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association revealed that Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi helped heart disease patients lower risks of heart attack, stroke, and death by nearly 50 percent: ; and it was announced that the US National Institutes of Health are awarding another US$1m for research on Transcendental Meditation and cardiovascular disease.

These three recent press releases follow strong endorsements by John Hopkins University of the benefit of this mental technique for cardiovascular health .

Read more here

Is it true that when we drive, walk or reach for something our brain performs calculations? Is this ability learned or innate?
—Helena Larks, San Francisco

Computational neuroscientist Terry Sejnowski of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego, answers:

Our brain is wired to perform calculations that let us judge how far away an object is when we walk or jump around or reach for a container of milk. Although this task may seem easy, it turns out that calculating depth is surprisingly complex.

When we look at an object, our eyes project the three-dimensional structure onto a two-dimensional retina. To see the three dimensions, our brain must reconstruct the three-dimensional world from our two-dimensional retinal images. We have learned to judge depth using a variety of visual cues, some involving just one eye (monocular vision) and others involving both eyes (binocular vision).

Read more here about subconscious calculations.

(Via Scientific American.)

You may hurt the ones you love but ‘forgive and forget’ is much more likely apply in intimate relationships than it is to your friends, according to research results from The Australian National University, being released as part of National Psychology Week.

The study by Clinical Psychology PhD Candidate Jodie Burchell, suggests that although the people that are closest to you have the greatest capacity to hurt your feelings, over time people feel less hurt from events occurring in an intimate relationship than they do from those involving close friends.

Read more here

(Via Medical News Today.)

Living with pain is stressful, but a surprisingly short investment of time in mental training can help you cope.

A new study examining the perception of pain and the effects of various mental training techniques has found that relatively short and simple mindfulness meditation training can have a significant positive effect on pain management.

Though pain research during the past decade has shown that extensive meditation training can have a positive effect in reducing a person’s awareness and sensitivity to pain, the effort, time commitment, and financial obligations required has made the treatment not practical for many patients. Now, a new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte shows that a single hour of training spread out over a three day period can produce the same kind of analgesic effect.

The research appears in an article … Continue here for the rest of this article

(Via The Medical News)