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Peace of Mind Heals

The long-known belief that peace of mind heals is now proven by scientific evidence. Relaxation and mediation boost immunity and relieve insomnia and high blood pressure. Here is how to put these proven techniques to work for you.

Relaxation and meditation can have a very powerful effect on the body. They can help you cope with all kinds of stress-related problems, including migraines, peptic ulcers and anxiety. People who develop and retain peace of mind do experience mental and physical healing.

Researchers have found that relaxation and meditation techniques can boost immunity, short-circuit anger, curb smoking, and relieve insomnia, back pain, high blood pressure, motion sickness, impotence, premenstrual syndrome, menopause and irritable bowel syndrome. With professional care, these techniques can also help control diabetes, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, panic attacks, phobias and depression.

Everyone can benefit from learning to relax. "Learning to neutralize the effects of stress is one of the most important aspects of preventive medicine," says Andrew Weil M.D., teacher of alternative medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson. Dr Weil is also the founding director of the University's Center for Integrative Medicine and a physician emphasizing natural and preventive medicine.

Relaxing or meditating probably isn't the first thing that pops into your mind when you're stuck in traffic, scrambling to meet a deadline or confronted by an angry spouse. In those situations, your muscles tense, your breathing becomes shallow, your heart races, your blood vessels constrict, your blood pressure rises, you start to sweat and your digestive tract cramps up. Unlike our primitive ancestors, we may not be able to "fight or flight" -- the two most natural responses to stress --when we're in a modern, stressful situation, such as a traffic jam. So we remain chronically tense.

But calming yourself down is what you should do. If you can't "fight or flight," then you need to learn how to "flow." Excessive amounts of stress can adversely affect almost every part of your body. Chronic stress, for example, can elevate blood pressure, total blood cholesterol and blood platelet counts, all of which can lead to hardening of the arteries and heart attack. Stress has been linked to many other ailments ranging from the common cold to colon cancer. Eight of ten people seen by primary care physicians have some stress-related symptoms. Overall, stress-related ailments cost American business and industry more than $100 billion annually in lost productivity and absenteeism.

For many of us, dousing the fires sparked by stress means pushing hard on a long run, sinking a 25-foot putt or climbing a mountain. But while those activities can relieve stress, they can also generate competition and frustration, which can make it harder to relax.

Sports and recreational activities give some people a legitimate outlet for the stress they can't relieve on the job or at home. But for other people, these pursuits raise their blood pressure and perpetuate the view that their lives are ongoing battles in a hostile, competitive world.

To help you really calm yourself, experts recommend that you let your mind slip into idle several times a day, so that for at least a few minutes you're not regretting yesterday or dreading tomorrow. Instead, you're focused on the present moment without feeling compelled to make judgments about your life.

More importantly, these mental rest stops can evoke the relaxation response, a physiological state that has been shown to lessen feelings of stress and anxiety. The relaxation response reduces muscle tension, lowers heart rate, blood pressure, metabolism and breathing, and sparks tranquil feelings. Although the relaxation response is often associated with a simple form of meditation, it may be easily conjured by other relaxation and meditation techniques.

The relaxation response blunts the release of adrenaline and other stress hormones that trigger the fight-or-flight response. That's important because an overdose of stress hormones can suppress the immune system and elevate blood cholesterol levels.

The relaxation response also performs another vital task. This type of deep relaxation is associated with healing in many different ways. When you get very deeply relaxed, for example, the body releases growth hormones that help repair and restore damaged tissue.

Experts say there are literally dozens of ways to produce the relaxation response. Some, such as meditation, are centuries old. Others, such as progressive relaxation and biofeedback, have been developed within the past 70 years. It's just a matter of discovering which ones you are most comfortable with.

In fact, the more techniques you know, the better off you may be. Using a combination of techniques, such as deep breathing followed by progressive relaxation, can increase the power of the relaxation effect. Each technique takes you down a notch and puts you into a deeper, longer-lasting state of relaxation.

Before you begin, however, it is important to remember that these techniques won't prevent stress from occasionally disrupting your life. There is no proven way to completely eliminate stress. The challenge is to find ways to handle it better, so it doesn't damage your body.

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