“Gathering the Light” from the Taoist book The Secret of the Golden Flower, translated by C. G. Jung and Richard Wilhelm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
According to a recent study, meditation can help prevent cold and flu.
Participants who had meditated missed 76 percent fewer days of work from September through May than did the control subjects. Those who had exercised missed 48 percent fewer days during this period. The severity of the colds and flus also differed between the two groups. Those who had exercised or meditated suffered for an average of five days; colds of participants in the control group lasted eight. Lab tests confirmed that the self-reported length of colds correlated with the level of antibodies in the body, which is a biomarker for the presence of a virus. -Scientific American
Anything you do for your health is best when you incorporate it into your regular routine. The idea here is not to start meditating when your throat feels scratchy – that’s called “starting to dig a well when you feel thirsty”. For both meditation and exercise, a little bit everyday is far and away better for you than 2-3 hours once a week.
Meditation can be a daunting thing to try if you’ve never done it before. There are many books and tapes out there about the subject, but I highly recommend a teacher. A quick google search for “meditation class east bay” brought up a slew of results. Go with an open mind as well as your BS detectors on – there are so many different ways to experience meditation, some you will connect with, some you won’t.
I first experienced meditation as a martial arts student at Wu Tao Kuan. We would always have a short meditation at the end of class. This is still the primary way that I experience meditation, and I find that it is extremely relaxing and helps to settle the qi after a good workout. Other good times to meditate are dawn and midnight, or almost any time at all.
Here is a link to the full text of the study, which appeared in the July 2012 issue of The Annals of Family Medicine.
Related articles
- Meditate That Cold Away (scientificamerican.com)
- Using Meditation to Change Emotional Response (Video) (blogs.psychcentral.com)
- Don’t Look for it; It’s Already There (alongthetao.wordpress.com)
