Eytons' Earth: Natural & Alternative Medicine

[ramnikarathi]

Transcendental Meditation or TM, was a technique of meditation devised by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1958. It is practiced for twenty minutes twice a day while sitting quietly with one’s eyes closed. It involves the repetition of a mantra and is stated to require neither contemplation nor concentration.

Transcendental Meditation became popularized internationally during the 1960s when the famous British band The Beatles became enthusiasts of the technique, eventually going to India to reside with Maharishi Mahesh Yoga for some days at his ashram in the Himalayas.

[ramnikarathi]

Before the rise of “shrinks” – psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, a person’s clergy at their local religious center used to function as their counselor or therapist when they needed a shoulder to cry on. People also turned to elders in their families or communities for advice. Well, it seems we’ve come full circle in the new millennium because therapy today is again taking on a more personal and spiritual vibration. By spiritual I don’t necessarily mean “religious”. But current therapies are now taking into account the whole person – body, mind and soul.

One form of spiritual therapy is mindfulness psychology, which is based on the Buddhist theory of “mindfulness” and the practice of “mindfulness meditation”.

[ramnikarathi]

The effects of meditation on one’s health are no longer the stuff of “new-agers” and “health nuts” but rather the facts of medical science.

Three areas in which meditation was found to improve health were depression, anxiety and stress. Neuroscientists discovered that the brain waves in the stress-prone right frontal cortex move to the more harmonious left frontal cortex during meditation. Less activity was also found in the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes fear.