Transcending ‘chatter’

What’s this? An article in the Canberra City News, Lifestyle – Body section on May 7, 2008

A NEW study released in the “American Journal of Hypertension” has found that regular meditation can significantly reduce blood pressure.
Dr James Anderson, the study’s lead author, said the study showed that all it takes is 20 minutes a day of meditation to reduce blood pressure and boost heart health.
Dr Anderson said the preferred practice was transcendental meditation, which involves sitting comfortably and attempting to quiet the mind by focusing on a mantra.
“It’s fairly simple, but you need training to get into it,” Dr Anderson said. “It allows you to get below the kind of ‘cocktail chatter’ that’s always going on in your brain.”
The study said that mantra-based meditation has a unique ability to bring the practitioner into a quiet zone that acts as a kind of sanctuary for a person, refreshing them and reducing stress.
In welcoming the report, Seikan Cech, from The Gawler Foundation (founded by well-known Australian cancer survivor Dr Ian Gawler) said: “These findings provide further confirmation of our long-term observations and experience that regular meditation practice will routinely create a whole range of positive health effects for the body and mind.”
Seikan, who is a therapist at The Gawler Foundation, is a Zen monk with extensive meditation experience.
“Maintaining excellent health is actually what our bodies are designed to do naturally,” he said.
“To allow this to happen effectively, it’s useful for our minds to become settled and not get in the way. This is what meditation will facilitate.

“And by restoring the balance between the body and the mind, our health and healing will be its natural ‘side-effects’ – ones that nobody will ever have to complain about,” Seikan said.
For more information, visit http://www.gawler.org.

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