Meditations & Thoughts

[Kumar]

How deep meditations & thoughts can be helpful in healing the chronic diseases?? If self hypnosis is helpful for this purpose??

 

[Yahweh]

Meditation and thoughts are not helpful with chronic diseases. You might be able to meditate for a while and trick your body into sheltering the pain, but you wont make the disease go away.

If you have a particularly serious or life threatening disease, dont favor alternative medicines over the mainstream, the sad fact is too many people do this a year and it might as well be considered the equivelant of signing your own death certificate.

 

[Yahzi]

How deep meditations & thoughts can be helpful in healing the chronic diseases?? If self hypnosis is helpful for this purpose??

They are 7.3% more effective than clubbing yourself in the head with a baseball bat.

 

[Some Friggin Guy]

I won't disagree with the assessment of using standard medicine. If you are ill or injured, you really need to see a doctor. End of story.

However...


Deep thought and meditation are a good way of dealing with the STRESS end of an illness. Just don't fool yourself into thinking it can cure you. It can't.

 

[Kumar]

Thanks all. But what do you think, how thoughts & meditations are being practiced which can not effect/cure?

 

[Hardenbergh]

Roy Masters

Have you heard of Roy Masters and the Foundation of Human Understanding? He has a two-hour radio program and a website under the same name. The Foundation of Human Understanding (also known as the FHU) has been in existence for over 40 years. He has a meditation tape, "Be Still and Know" on both CD and cassette. He also has an accompanying book, "How Your Mind Can Keep You Well" and many other books and cassettes. www.fhu.com

 

[Iacchus]

Oh, shame on you!

While I'm surprised nobody wants to pick on him around here? ... This modern, new age, occult type guru. Hmm ... And, while I don't particularly care for his tactics (too blunt and unyeilding), I wouldn't be surprised that he could make a believer out of someone like James Randi. He does profess to have all the answers by the way.

 

[Hardenbergh]

When I listened to his radio program recently, he was touting his book, "Finding God in Physics: Einstein's Missing Relative" and he said that some authority on physics in Moscow had read and reviewed the book and had thought it was a very interesting, enjoyable book but it had just one discrepancy. However, I don't know what the discrepancy was (I didn't quite catch everything that he said about it).

 

[Hardenbergh]

I heard the same program repeated yesterday afternoon on WROL in Boston where Roy talks about his book, "Finding God in Physics: Einstein's Missing Relative" and I heard him say that he talks about dark matter in his book and I remembered that this was also a subject in one of the threads in the JREF forums. He said, "You see, people call it dark matter because they don't know what it is, but I do." He said that it was the General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow that read and reviewed the book.

 

[epepke]

How deep meditations & thoughts can be helpful in healing the chronic diseases?? If self hypnosis is helpful for this purpose??

I'm sure I'm going to hack a few people off by saying that they may be helpful. Not because meditation has any particular magic healing properties, but because psychological stress has been abundantly shown to do some really bad things to the body. If nothing else, it can interfere with sleep, which is a bad thing. It can also lead to depression, which can indirectly lead to not eating properly, etc.

Obviously, if one has some sort of illness, one is not best served by making matters worse by being stressed out all the time. Inasmuch as meditation helps some people reduce their stress, it can ameliorate the negative effects of stress.

This, I think, is relatively uncontroversial. It's only when the tiny-brained reinterpret the ideas that it is a problem.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Meditation isn't any more "helpful" than reading your favorite book or any other relaxing and enjoyable activity. These things only improve your quality of life, it doesn't cure disease.

 

[dmarker]

Oh, shame on you!

While I'm surprised nobody wants to pick on him around here? ... This modern, new age, occult type guru. Hmm ... And, while I don't particularly care for his tactics (too blunt and unyeilding), I wouldn't be surprised that he could make a believer out of someone like James Randi. He does profess to have all the answers by the way.

Everybody has answer, Iacchus, but are they correct answers?

In previous posts, no one has supported the contention that meditation cures anything.

 

[Kopji]

This is slightly off topic.

There was (is?) a common notion that having a hopeful attitude helps people diagnosed with terminal illness live longer. A recent study showed there was no difference in life expectancy by 'attitude'. There was a lot of negative reaction to this information, maybe because quite an industry has grown up around promoting hope.

A positive attitude does not improve the chances of surviving cancer and doctors who encourage patients to keep up hope may be burdening them, according to the results of research released Monday.
Link

A similar study for the chronically ill would be interesting, but if the illness went away it would not be chronic. Not sure what to do with that paradox...

Stephen Gould died in 2002 of a very long running battle with cancer. He is best known for his writings on science but his paragraphs about facing the statistics behind his cancer are some of my favorite words from any author.

It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.
- Stephen J Gould
Link

(& sorry if that is too far off topic)

 

[epepke]

A similar study for the chronically ill would be interesting, but if the illness went away it would not be chronic. Not sure what to do with that paradox.

Except that chronic diseases can be better or worse from time to time.

I'd suggest starting with rosacea and herpes, both of which are chronic and have outbreaks that are widely believed to be mood-related. (I'm pretty convinced that rosacea is mood-related from personal experience, but I don't know about herpes.)

 

[Iacchus]

Everybody has answer, Iacchus, but are they correct answers?

In previous posts, no one has supported the contention that meditation cures anything.

At the very least meditation provides us with the ability to relax and to reduce stress. And, if that provides us with a more suitable environment which allows us to heal, that's fine by me.