Originally published November 13 2014
Attentive mindfulness makes people 83% more likely to have good cardiovascular health, study shows
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) Attentive mindfulness approaches for better health has
popped up in various studies and medical practices, but it doesn't have
the PR machinery or big bucks to promote its values.
It
doesn't help Big Pharma make money, and it doesn't help doctors have
more clients and hospitals have more patients. It's just not a money
maker in and of itself. But it has physiological health merits in
addition to obvious emotional and psychological benefits.
Several
different studies point to how the practice of meditation helps bring
about mindfulness in our daily lives. At the University of Wisconsin, it
was discovered that those who meditated recovered from influenza more
rapidly and were able to quickly return to work.
Well, what is mindfulness?
Some
may think that it's having a vivid imagination or busy mind full of
facts ready to access with every business challenge. It's neither.
Mindfulness is a matter of full conscious awareness in the moment of
here and now without prejudice, hate, anger or critical
judgment.
It is not a matter of coloring the
present with sweetness and light, but simply calmly viewing it,
accepting it for what it is and handling whatever is present
appropriately.
It's based on the age-old
Buddhist and other Eastern traditions of carrying over levels of
tranquil or calm consciousness from the practice of meditation into
daily life instead of living by concepts, dogma or subconscious
impulses. One neither overly visits the past nor becomes anxious of the
future.
Seems like a cool way to live life.
But it takes practice to create "the ability to attend nonjudgmentally
to one's own physical and mental processes."
(Source below, study)
In
other words, one needs to practice mindfulness more and more within
day-to-day living instead of just during meditation. It is a gradually
acquired state that allows one to more and more be in charge of one's
attention and awareness.
This is what it
takes to stress less and become more aware of the wellspring of true
happiness within all of us, whatever you may call that.
So how does this relate to better heart health?
Dr.
Dean Ornish and Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn have been Western pioneers of
mindfulness for heart health, with Zinn going a couple of steps further
to relate it more to practical daily-life spirituality or living whole
and in the moment.
That doesn't mean that one
has no memory. It means that one uses memory instead of letting it use
oneself. It doesn't mean that one shouldn't plan, it means that one
should plan without attachments to success or failure. How's that for a
psychological challenge?
Oh, yes, heart
health. Dr. Ornish had great success with clinics in California that
focused on diet, yoga and meditation. His methods got heart patients out
of hospitals and off pharmaceuticals permanently as long as they
continued what they had learned during their Ornish clinical
stays.
Never mind books, lectures, seminars
and clinics that provide obvious results. Western science demands
academic studies for "evidence" and more work for academic
researchers.
So in October 2014, a study
using 382 participants from the New England Family Study, born in
Providence, RI, USA, with a mean age of 47 years, determined that
"dispositional mindfulness" influenced heart health
positively.
The researchers assessed
dispositional mindfulness using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale
(MAAS), whatever that is. Cardiovascular health was assessed based on
American Heart Association criteria.
This
study, "Positive Associations of Dispositional Mindfulness with
Cardiovascular Health: the New England Family Study," was published in
the October 2014 International Journal of Behavioral
Medicine.
You may want to read more
about how to approach dispositional or attentive mindfulness with this
article and lecture by Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn, PhD, author of
Wherever You Go, There You Are here.
Sources:
http://link.springer.com (study)
http://medicalxpress.com
http://www.healthandhealingny.org
http://www.bodhitree.com
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