Meditation, yoga might affect your genes
Researchers have discovered how meditation and yoga improve health, reports The Washington Post. "It's not all in your head," said Dr. Herbert Benson, president emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "What we have found is that when you evoke the relaxation response, the very genes that are turned on or off by stress are turned the other way. The mind can actively turn on and turn off genes. The mind is not separated from the body."
"We all are under stress and have many manifestations of that stress," Benson added. "To adequately protect ourselves against stress, we should use an approach and a technique that we believe evokes the relaxation response 20 minutes, once a day."
I'm sure many yogis out there are not surprised by this news, but did you ever think yoga might actually be affecting your genes?
yogajournal.com
vegetariantimes.com
backpacker.com
optimumwellness.com
wholefoodsmarket.com
betternutrition.com
Comments
Many thanks for this post. Daily yogic (deep) relaxation is essential for stress release and healing.
Posted by: Sejel Khajuria | July 14, 2008 03:55 PM
thanks for this post. it is very interesting. i hope such information will help the skeptics. i teach Yoga Nidra, which is a deep relaxation technique using breath awareness and creative visaulizations. it has tremendous potential to transform the way we respond to stress-producing stimuli. it can be integrated into one's daily yoga practice. it involves body awareness, yogic breathing and creative visualisation.
Posted by: Nanditha Ram | August 18, 2008 11:30 AM
This posting and the findings discussed come as no surprise to me. The mind-body connection is tremendously powerful as is evident in the multitude of dis-eases that are catalyzed and/or exacerbated by stress. Conditions ranging from peptic ulcers to lupus to irritable bowel syndrome are affected by our fight or flight response, which, when sustained, leaves the body rife for illness.
Yoga is an amazing tool to keep our stress response in check as it serves as a constant reminder to stay in the present moment, away from future fears and past regrets. I teach corporate yoga and see firsthand the joy and relaxation a lunchtime practice brings to employee practitioners. Even if you don't have that benefit at your place of business, lunchtime pranayama can be a wonderful option to de-stress and revitalize.
Posted by: Michelle Laxton | October 2, 2008 12:09 AM