MEDITATION - THE GREATEST ENDOWMENT TO HUMANS
THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY WHICH ALTERS BIOLOGY :
The idea that your mental activity could change the function and structure of your brain is really a revolutionary one. We live in an extraordinarily different time now when with the modern technological advance coupled with the convergence of psychology, neurology and contemplative science, we now can peep into the black box of our brain and do reverse engineering noninvasively. Nobel Laureate, Dr Elizabeth Blackburn’s recent study has reinforced the new belief that our DNA is a fluid structure in our consciousness and that diseases can be caused and cured by one’s lifestyle. Also geneticists now believe that only 5% of the disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant while 95% of the gene expressions can be changed by one’s lifestyle. We are no longer living in the Newtonian universe of billiard ball mechanics, we are living in the quantum universe where intentions become molecules, thoughts produce peptides and consciousness drives mutations in clear violation of the laws of thermodynamics and in clear empirical confirmation of the existence of a nonphysical dimension to our biology.
With `mindful moments’ at many schools in the US, mindfulness rooms inside Google, Apple, IBM and many business houses, veterans and soldiers using it to alleviate PTSD, children using it to alleviate ADHD and MBSR & MBCT at University of Massachusetts Medical School - 2014 has rightly been called the `year of mindful living’ by Huffington Post. Fifteen years ago we rejected it, 10 years ago we were skeptical of it, today we accept it and tomorrow it will be in our textbooks.
Chronic Illnesses are primarily caused by psychosocial factors :
Stress is the number one epidemic of our civilization which produces the new lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, etc. Prolonged activation of HPA axis (Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal) through stress leads to raised blood glucose and lipids contributing to atherosclerosis which produces plaques in coronary arteries that leads to heart attacks. Our perception plays a key role in determining different metabolic pathways. Cholesterol metabolism tests conducted even on rabbits have revealed that the rabbits that were taken out of the cage, hugged, kissed, huddled and fed with the cholesterol rich food did not develop hardened blood arteries while the rabbits that were inside the cage where food was thrown into, developed blocked arteries. Thus the metabolic mechanism is in the atoms which are waves and not particles. As a result of all this, the medical paradigm the world over is shifting from the macroscopic physics to the microscopic physics since iatrogenic disease has now become the third most fatal disease killing millions. Iatrogenic causes are adverse drug reactions, overuse of antibiotics and nosocomial infections because all medicines are enzyme activity inhibitors and all lives are enzyme activities. It is therefore time we explore the nonpharmacological interventions which are also used as adjuncts in many medical institutions in the US to increase efficacy and reduce side-effects of drugs.
