Meditation Phenomenons

As a skeptic of meditation, I wanted to learn more about its healing possibilities. My friend meditates on a daily basis, and he is convinced that it helps with not only his state of mind, but also his immune system. He started meditating about five years ago, and the most sick he’s ever been was with a mild case of the common cold last winter. When I started doing research, I found that meditation can help and even diseases. In a dailybeast.com article, a man named Tibetan Lama Phakyab Rinpoche, had Potts disease and diabetes. Eventually, doctors told him that his afflictions had gotten so bad, to the point where he developed gangrene and had to get his foot amputated. But, Rinpoche did not give up so quickly. He decided to rely on meditation as a way to heal his foot. After a year, it was back to normal and he was able to walk on it again. Now, Rinpoche teaches meditation. The positive correlation between meditation and his healing foot fascinated researchers, so they decided to look deeper into meditation. They found that with lots of practice, meditation can help increase blood flow, it can boost your metabolism, and it can contribute to oxygenation. The combination of these things can fight off damaging bacteria, such as the bacteria that caused the gangrene in Rinpoche’s foot.

After doing additional research, I also found that meditation can help with cancer. Typically, cancer patients are stressed, and meditation can help them with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and depression. And, these stressed and anxious feelings certainly don’t help the patient’s recovery, or treatment for that matter. So by meditating, neuroendocrine can be altered, the immune system can be boosted, stress hormones can be reduced, and more,  according to beginnersmeditations.com.

I’m a “I need to see it to believe it” kind of girl, so this information is still hard for me to wrap my head around. Rinpoche’s story is especially mind boggling to me. No matter how much I learn about meditation, I won’t truly believe in all of its health benefits, until I tried it for myself.

phakyab-rinpoche
Picture of Rinpoche.

Sources:

http://cdt29.media.tourinsoft.com/upload/41E6DFED-C5F1-433E-A6D2-281A8C1CAD95/Phakyab-Rinpoche.png

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/25/can-meditation-cure-disease.html

http://www.beginnersmeditations.com/how-meditation-helps-cancer-patients/

 

4 thoughts on “Meditation Phenomenons

  1. Olivia Frederickson

    I agree with you when you say you need to meditate yourself to really believe its powers. Although, I also believe that such personal experiences such as meditating can be interpreted in many different ways to different people. It’s all really about personal preference with things like meditating so you might not necessarily get as good as a result as someone else. Same goes for a multitude of stress relief techniques. You really just have to find what works best for you which can take time. Also, you talk about how it can prevent you from getting sick. In this article, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-advisor/meditate-on-this-to-jumpstart-your-immune-system/article21702573/ , the author provides insight to an experiment that was conducted to show how people who meditated showed less severity to contracting a cold or flu or not contracting any virus at all. It was only about 25% of the participants who meditated, but still that is a very substantial amount. In conclusion, I would say give it a try, maybe I will too!

  2. cmt5658

    I’m like you in the sense that Rinpoche’s story does not seem very believable. While I see how medication is a relaxer and stress reliever, I do not see how it could cure diseases that no doctor every could. Personally, Im kind of a skeptic, so the whole idea of mediating seems silly to me. That being said, I have never actually seriously tried it to have the right to judge the practice. This blog (http://www.adaringadventure.com/7-reasons-to-avoid-meditation/) pretty much sums up all I feel about mediation.

  3. Hugo Almeida

    I too need to see it to believe it but that article is actually very interesting. Meditation is such a hard process for me to grasp especially for reasons like this. What exactly is meditation and does it really do anything? That’s always how I’ve approached it. Here’s an article that actually enlightened me slightly on the topic. Perhaps it can actually help you get an even better understanding for the topic.
    http://gabbybernstein.com/beginners-guide-to-meditation/

  4. Sarah Tarczewski

    This summer I also heard about the possible benefits of meditation, as my boyfriend is a Buddhist who sets time apart from his day every morning to mediate. I was curious about this, because he is a generally low stress person. I am certainly not and experience bouts of stress a least once a day. Because of this, I started mediating 5 minutes every morning and although I haven’t seen much of a change in my actual physical health, I do feel like I go about my days more peacefully. Stress seems to be easier to deal with the more regularly I meditate, which maybe in turns leads to better health!

Leave a Reply