As brought lately in another thread, meditation has been proven beneficial for many health conditions, in particular, meditation centered on nurturing feelings of compassion and loving kindness, for self and others.
See some interesting scientific findings:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081007172902.htm . Quotes from this article: "Our findings suggest that meditation practices designed to foster compassion may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and are relevant to disease," and "But these initial results are quite exciting. If practicing compassion meditation does reduce inflammatory responses to stress it might offer real promise as a means of preventing many conditions associated with stress and with inflammation including major depression, heart disease and diabetes."
In order to find information on how to practice this type of meditation, you can simply search for "compassion meditation", or with the traditional names, like Metta meditation ( Metta is the Pali word for loving kindness) or Karuna meditation ( karuna is the Pali word for compassion).
Some examples of basic instructions:
http://www.mettainstitute.org/mettameditation.htmlhttp://www.clear-mind-meditation-techniques.com/metta-meditation.html Here is John Kornfield short, but excellent, description of compassion meditation:
https://jackkornfield.com/meditation-compassion/ . John Kornfield is a well known and respected meditation teacher, teaching at the international level since 1974.
http://thedailymeditation.com/compassion-meditation-karuna-meditation-technique/ ( I do not like the commercial side and general presentation of this website, but the article about Karuna meditation, in particular the 9 basic steps, are OK. I wanted to include it to show that, basically, Karuna meditation is the same as Metta meditation, compassion meditation, and loving kindness meditation).
I do not use guided meditation tracks, but if you wish to do so, you can easily find some on the internet. Here is a short one that feels ok to me :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz7cpV7ERsM . If you are not used to meditation, this will help you get started.
Ten to twenty minutes a day can make a huge difference after some time. And results are cumulative.
I think one of the things that is the more overlooked by modern medicine is the effects of emotions on our health - both positive and negative emotions. Nurturing positive emotions, and limiting the "mind space" we allow to negative feelings and negative judgements of ourself and others, has a direct impact on our health. Some scientific studies are slowly raising the awareness about this important piece in the health puzzle.
