Health – Page 14 – Mindfulbalance

Giving life’s events some space and time

April 23, 2011April 23, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

More lessons from these three days. There are different ways of saying that at times we need to be patient, to sit in silence and wait for the real meaning of what is happening to become clear. It is put beautifully in this quote: we need to give difficult periods the space their “gentle origins” demand. We do not need to “add on” stories, which only ultimately make things more difficult.

If you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge – from which new sorrows will be born for others – then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply. And if you have given sorrow the space its gentle origins demand, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich.

Etty Hillesum

The key to getting balance in our lives

April 18, 2011April 18, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Our task is to find a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extra activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity

Sogyal Rimpoche, Glimpse after Glimpse

Meditation better than morphine for relief of pain

April 8, 2011April 8, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

A new study conducted by Dr. Fadel Zeidan at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and published on Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, has found that meditation is very effective for pain relief even in people who have just learned how to practice it, better than some of the most powerful drugs.

The study used 15 volunteers who had never meditated before. They attended four, 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention. In these training sessions the participants were taught simply to concentrate on their breathing and to let go of distracting thoughts and emotions. Then a heated probe was pressed against their leg, steadily raising the skin temperature to a painful 32C, while scans measured activity in the brain. It was found that the perception of pain and its unpleasantness was greatly reduced.

According to lead author Dr Zeidan, the effect was a 40% diminution in intensity of pain and 57% reduction in pain unpleasantness. This compares with the effects of powerful drugs such as morphine, as Dr Zeiden went on to say: Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 per cent. One of the reasons that meditation may have been so effective in blocking pain was that it did not work at just one place in the brain but instead reduced pain at multiple levels of processing.

Teens Day 9: Negative, judgmental thoughts

April 2, 2011April 3, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The habit of judging our experience locks us into mechanical reactions that we are not even aware of and that often have no objective basis at all.These judgments tend to dominate our minds making it difficult to find any peace within ourselves.

It is as if the mind were a yo-yo going up and down on the string of our own judging thoughts all day long

Jon Kabat Zinn

Teens Day 7 : Health is related to paying attention

March 31, 2011March 29, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The dynamic balance we call heath

involves both body and mind

and can be enhanced by specific qualities of attention

Jon Kabat Zinn

About this Blog

Mindfulbalance supports the slow, patient practice of mindfulness meditation, as a way to find balance and meaning in life, reduce stress and develop health and wellbeing. It contains reflections to encourage the practice of meditation as well as occasional posts from psychology, spirituality and the wisdom traditions. The daily posts are prompted by Rilke's advice: "Write about what your everyday life offers you, your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind, and your belief in some kind of beauty". Written in County Laois, Ireland