What if we could replace morphine and other pain-relieving drugs with meditation? Fadal Zeidan, PhD from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center recently conducted a study in which he found that a form of mindfulness meditation, known as focused attention, drastically diminished subjects’ experience of pain. In previous findings morphine has been shown to reduce pain by about 25%. In this study, meditation lessened pain by about 40%. Dr. Zeidan’s study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience. He took 15 healthy volunteers, who had no meditation experience, and had them attend four, 20 minute sessions where they learned the…

I know that mindfulness and meditation practices have positive effects not only on the spirit, but also on the brain and body, but some of my patients were not always so certain. Some would be willing to try anything once, but then there were the others who would kind of look sideways at me with a raised eyebrow, as if to say: “you want me to do what?” Back a number of years, I had little scientific “proof” to back me up when suggesting meditation to a patient. How times have changed. Within the last decade, the research community has…

In the midst of the 10 Day Challenge that we issued to the global practitioner community a few weeks back, I started thinking about the need for improved health closer to home. We all spend lots of time in the office, so where better to promote healthy habits than in the setting where we toil for 8-10 hours a day? That’s when we came up with the Smoothie Challenge. We bought Magic Bullets for everyone on the team – these mini blenders make single-serving smoothies pretty easy to whip up on the go. The charge was to use two handfuls…

If you read my last blog, you would have seen the video about Dance for PD®, an innovative program for people battling the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. Dance for PD® is so effective because it allows participants to step out of the patients’ role and just move – creating beauty while engaging mind, body, and spirit. Friends and spouses of program participants enjoy taking these classes, too. The freedom of movement is something that many of us may take for granted. After seeing the video, I’m feeling much more mindful of the joy of moving. The video brought up five…

It’s funny how many people feel a pang of hesitation, reluctance, or even fear when they’re invited to dance. Who hasn’t heard someone say, when being pulled onto the floor, “oh no, I can’t dance!” I’ll admit, I leaned that way, too. I left the dancing to those with natural rhythm and “moves.” My view has changed, though, because I’ve realized how much dancing embodies what our NICABM community is about – the connection between the mind, the body, and the spirit. Others have realized this connection, too. I invite you to watch the brief video below, which will provide…