compassion

Compassion meditation for healing chronic disease
It is well known that stress is related to many modern diseases. Trying to fight stress is a never ending battle that we will never conquer until we understand the pathways of the brain and the endocrine reactions that are set by our emotional responses to stress.
We can not change the external input that feed our brains but we can change the emotional response that starts a cascade of neuropeptides that lead us to chronic diseases. Repression is not the answer as changing jobs won’t work either. If it is emotions that contribute to disease and our thoughts that give form to our emotions then mind control techniques will always bring improvement.
Recent studies corroborate what Buddhists and Hindus has been saying for millennia: meditation heals. As an example an article published by the times of India on a study recently made at Emory University:
¨Individuals who engage in compassion meditation may benefit by reductions in inflammatory and behavioral responses to psychological stress.
"While much attention has been paid to meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind, improving focused attention or developing mindfulness, less is known about meditation practices designed to specifically foster compassion," says Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, who designed and taught the meditation program used in the study. Negi is senior lecturer in the Department of Religion, the co-director of Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies and president and spiritual director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc. The study focused on the effect of compassion meditation on inflammatory, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress, and evaluated the degree to which engagement in meditation practice influenced stress reactivity. "Our findings suggest that meditation practices designed to foster compassion may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and are relevant to disease," said Charles L. Raison, MD, clinical director of the Mind-Body Program, Emory University''s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of Medicine, and a lead author on the study. Sixty-one healthy college students between the ages of 17 and19 participated in the study. Half the participants were randomized to receive six weeks of compassion meditation training and half were randomized to a health discussion control group. Although secular in presentation, the compassion meditation program was based on a thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice called "lojong" in Tibetan. A variety of student participation activities were employed such as mock debates and role-playing. Both groups were required to participate in 12 hours of classes across the study period. Meditators were provided with a meditation compact disc for practice at home. Homework for the control group was a weekly self-improvement paper. After the study interventions were finished, the students participated in a laboratory stress test designed to investigate how the body’s inflammatory and neuroendocrine systems respond to psychosocial stress. No differences were seen between students randomized to compassion meditation and the control group, but within the meditation group there was a strong relationship between the time spent practicing meditation and reductions in inflammation and emotional distress in response to the stressor. Consistent with this, when the meditation group was divided into high and low practice groups, participants in the high practice group showed reductions in inflammation and distress in response to the stressor when compared to the low practice group and the control group¨.
This is just an example from many studies being done around the world. Dr. Sarno MD and writer has been working with patients suffering from pain and psychosomatic disorders for many years. He states that many illnesses are the consequence of stress episodes or psychological trauma that can be treated with his mindbody prescription. His prescription include understanding of the psychological causes and reflection (a type of meditation). His approach is and educational one.
In Daniel Goleman´s Destructive Emotions book he explains the neuroanatomy of compassion as seen on a project done at the University of Wisconsin an led by a scientist called Richard Davidson. The research done showed that as a result of meditation on compassion the Buddhist monk (who was being tested) would show an increase in electrical activity of the gamma waves which would increase as a result the production of the neurotransmitter Dopamine. This would be responsible for a mood shift towards enthusiasm, joy and alertness.
A simple way to meditate on compassion:
Step 1
Close your eyes and focus your awareness on your breathing
Step 2
Visualize a loved one who is suffering and wish him/her well
Step 3
Hold to the image of the person feeling well and happy.
Step 4
Wish happiness and wellness to all.
You can repeat a simple phrase like:
May all beings be happy, may all beings have peace.
Patricia teama lives and work in Venezuela treating physical and emotional pain with natural remedies and meditation healing. She is a missionary of the Hospitalier Order of St. John of Jerusalem and peace ambassador of the Zambuling Institute for Human Tranformation
http://embajadadepaz.blogspot.com patriciacastilloa1@gmail.com 00584148091761