Showing posts with label monks. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

How to Live Better and Wiser for Longer

Monk: I'm 120 thanks to yoga and celibacy

Daily yoga sessions can help you stay strong and supple, but can they help you live to 120? Photo / 123RF.com

Looking remarkably unlined for his claimed 120 years, an Indian monk who says he is the oldest man to have ever lived puts his longevity down to no sex or spices, and daily yoga.

Hindu monk Swami Sivananda was born on August 8, 1896, according to his passport. If true, his life would have spanned three centuries. But despite his apparent age he remains strong enough to perform yoga for hours at a time.

He is now applying to Guinness World Records to verify his claim. It currently lists Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, who died in June 2013 aged 116 years and 54 days, as the oldest man to have ever lived.

India's passport authorities confirmed Sivananda's age from a temple register, the only record many Indians even decades younger have of their date of birth. However, it would be extremely difficult to independently verify his age.

Sivananda was featured by local media this year, with the Times of India noting he looked 50 years younger than his apparent age but taking his claims at face value.

Sivananda, from the holy city of Varanasi, grew up in extreme poverty and chose to become a monk, saying he owed his age to "yoga, discipline, and celibacy".

"I lead a simple and disciplined life. I eat very simply -- only boiled food without oil or spices, rice and boiled daal with a couple of green chillies," he told AFP after a two-hour yoga session in Kolkata, the eastern Indian city where he had come for a short visit.

Standing 1.58m tall, Sivananda sleeps on a mat on the floor and uses a wooden slab as a pillow.

"I avoid taking milk or fruits because I think these are fancy foods. In my childhood I slept many days on an empty stomach," he said.

Sivananda said he had not previously come forward to claim the record because he did not seek publicity, but was eventually persuaded by his followers to apply.

The elderly man lost both parents before he was six and was given away by his relatives to a spiritual guru, whom he travelled with around India before settling in Varanasi.

Fit and without any medical complications, he lives independently and even travels alone on trains.

Sivananda, who was born in colonial-era India without electricity, cars or telephones, says he is not enthused by new technology and prefers being on his own.

"Earlier people were happy with fewer things. Nowadays people are unhappy, unhealthy and have become dishonest, which pains me a lot," he said.

"I just want people to be happy, healthy and peaceful."

- AFP via The New Zealand Herald @ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11696779

Ancient Yogic Practice Proven to Protect the Brain in Breakthrough Study

image: http://www.yogavanam.com/

by Christina Sarich

B R E A T H E

Researchers at the University of South Carolina (USC) have found that an ancient yogic practice called Thirumantharim can protect the neurons in our brains, helping to guard against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Dr. Sundara Balasubramanian, a biochemist and research assistant professor at Medical University of South Carolina conducted a study wherein a control group sat and read quietly for twenty minutes while another group of participants practiced controlled breathing and Om chanting for the same duration. The results they found were quit shocking.

Sixty percent of the group who practiced yogic breathing realized a marked increase in Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), an important protein the body uses to protect the neurons of the brain.

Balasubramanian calls the practice a systematic exercise, and he couldn’t be more correct.

The Himalayan Academy states that Thirumantharim, from the Sanskrit language, literally translates to ‘Holy Incantation.’ The entire yogic practice involves much more than just breathing, and includes the essence of Raja, or ‘royal’ yoga as well as siddha yoga, a practice which was shared only with a few aspirants, and that could give practitioners special powers called siddhis.

Image: http://www.kundalini-nepal.com/

Siddhis are essentially super-natural skills, meaning they are not experienced, sadly, by the common man and woman. Siddhi means ‘accomplishment’ or ‘perfection’ in Sanskrit. These skills are obtained by recognizing the emptiness (or rather zero-point state) of the Universe. It is no wonder that practicing just a small fraction of the exercises from the ancient Thirumantharim text would give someone the ability to avoid one of the most common illnesses of our age.

Maybe breathing like a yogi for ten minutes every day won’t help you walk on water, but Patanjali, a yogic sage who compiled many thousands of years of yogic teachings said in the Yoga Sutras:

“Janma-osadhi-mantra-tapah-samadhi-jah siddayahsamadhi.”

Which translates to:

“Births, herbs, mantras and tapas can help you to attain Samadhi and its accomplishments.”

Tapas, or ‘the disciplines’, include breathing properly. Mantras like ‘Om’ also have a known healing component studied by modern scientists and ancient sages alike for its ability to alter the physiology profoundly. This one chant has been proven to alter us at the molecular level – is it any wonder that a combination of deep, yogic breathing, and the utterance of ‘Om’ can change our neuronal health?

The pharmaceutical industry has tried to develop synthetic forms of Nerve Growth Factor to deliver to the brain in order to reverse Alzheimer’s and other forms of neurodegeneration, but a simple practice can profoundly change the brain, as evidenced by the surprising results found at USC. There is no need for another expensive ‘brain medication.’ Ancient yogic practices hold the keys for healing – and they are free for anyone who wants to try them.

Photo Courtesy of: Oscillation Yoga

From The Mind Unleashed @ http://themindunleashed.org/2016/08/yogic-practice-protect-brain-breakthrough.html

For more information about longevity see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/longevity

For more information about yoga see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/yoga

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Friday, 25 March 2016

Meditation Changes Body Temperature: Mind controls body in extreme experiments

Meditation Changes Body Temperature

Mind controls body in extreme experiments

A Buddhist monk has his vital signs measured as he prepares to enter an advanced state of meditation in Normandy, France. During meditation, the monk's body produces enough heat to dry cold, wet sheets put over his shoulders in a frigid room (Photo courtesy of Herbert Benson).

By William J. Cromie

In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.

If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.

Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monk was required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours.

Why would anyone do this? Herbert Benson, who has been studying g Tum-mo for 20 years, answers that "Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There's another reality we can tap into that's unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation. The heat they generate during the process is just a by-product of g Tum-mo meditation."

Benson is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He firmly believes that studying advanced forms of meditation "can uncover capacities that will help us to better treat stress-related illnesses."

Benson developed the "relaxation response," which he describes as "a physiological state opposite to stress." It is characterized by decreases in metabolism, breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. He and others have amassed evidence that it can help those suffering from illnesses caused or exacerbated by stress. Benson and colleagues use it to treat anxiety, mild and moderate depression, high blood pressure, heartbeat irregularities, excessive anger, insomnia, and even infertility. His team also uses this type of simple meditation to calm those who have been traumatized by the deaths of others, or by diagnoses of cancer or other painful, life-threatening illnesses.

"More than 60 percent of visits to physicians in the United States are due to stress-related problems, most of which are poorly treated by drugs, surgery, or other medical procedures," Benson maintains.

The Mind/Body Medical Institute is now training people to use the relaxation response to help people working at Ground Zero in New York City, where two airplanes toppled the World Trade Center Towers last Sept. 11. Facilities have been set up at nearby St. Paul's Chapel to aid people still working on clearing wreckage and bodies. Anyone else who feels stressed by those terrible events can also obtain help at the chapel. "We are training the trainers who work there," Benson says.

The relaxation response involves repeating a word, sound, phrase, or short prayer while disregarding intrusive thoughts. "If such an easy-to-master practice can bring about the remarkable changes we observe," Benson notes. "I want to investigate what advanced forms of meditation can do to help the mind control physical processes once thought to be uncontrollable."

Breathtaking results

Some Westerners practice g Tum-mo, but it often takes years to reach states like those achieved by Buddhist monks. In trying to find groups he could study, Benson met Westerners who claimed to have mastered such advanced techniques, but who were, in his words, "fraudulent."

Benson decided that he needed to locate a religious setting, where advanced mediation is traditionally practiced. His opportunity came in 1979 when the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, visited Harvard University. "His Holiness agreed to help me," recalls Benson. That visit was the beginning of a long friendship and several expeditions to northern India where many Tibetan monks live in exile.

During visits to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Benson and his team studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo meditation, raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It has yet to be determined how the monks are able to generate such heat.

The researchers also made measurements on practitioners of other forms of advanced meditation in Sikkim, India. They were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent. "It was an astounding, breathtaking [no pun intended] result," Benson exclaims.

To put that decrease in perspective, metabolism, or oxygen consumption, drops only 10-15 percent in sleep and about 17 percent during simple meditation. Benson believes that such a capability could be useful for space travel. Travelers might use meditation to ease stress and oxygen consumption on long flights to other planets.

In 1985, the meditation team made a video of monks drying cold, wet sheets with body heat. They also documented monks spending a winter night on a rocky ledge 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas. The sleep-out took place in February on the night of the winter full moon when temperatures reached zero degrees F. Wearing only woolen or cotton shawls, the monks promptly fell asleep on the rocky ledge, They did not huddle together and the video shows no evidence of shivering. They slept until dawn then walked back to their monastery.

Overcoming obstacles

Working in isolated monasteries in the foothills of the Himalayas proved extremely difficult. Some religious leaders keep their meditative procedures a closely guarded secret. Medical measuring devices require electrical power and wall outlets are not always available. In addition, trying to meditate while strangers attempt to measure your rectal temperature is not something most monks are happy to do.

To avoid these problems, Instructor in Psychology Sara Lazar, a Benson colleague, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of meditators at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The subjects were males, aged 22-45, who had practiced a form of advanced mediation called Kundalini daily for at least four years. In these experiments, the obstacles of cold and isolation were replaced by the difficulties of trying to meditate in a cramped, noisy machine. However, the results, published in the May 15, 2000, issue of the journal NeuroReport, turned out to be significant.

Herbert Benson, who developed a simple relaxation technique to reduce stress, enjoys a quiet moment at a placid stream near his office in Boston. He directs a study of advanced meditation to uncover capabilities that may help treat stress-related illnesses. (Staff photo by Kris Snibbe)

"Lazar found a marked decrease in blood flow to the entire brain," Benson explains. "At the same time, certain areas of the brain became more active, specifically those that control attention and autonomic functions like blood pressure and metabolism. In short, she showed the value of using this method to record changes in the brain's activity during meditation."

The biggest obstruction in further studies, whether in India or Boston, has always been money. Research proceeded slowly and intermittently until February 2001, when Benson's team received a $1.25 million grant from Loel Guinness, via the beer magnate's Kalpa Foundation, established to study extraordinary human capacities.

The funds enabled researchers to bring three monks experienced in g Tum-mo to a Guinness estate in Normandy, France, last July. The monks then practiced for 100 days to reach their full meditative capacity. An eye infection sidelined one of the monks, but the other two proved able to dry frigid, wet sheets while wearing sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism.

Although the team obtained valuable data, Benson concludes that "the room was not cold enough to do the tests properly." His team will try again this coming winter with six monks. They will start practice in late summer and should be ready during the coldest part of winter.

Benson feels sure these attempts to understand advanced mediation will lead to better treatments for stress-related illnesses. "My hope," he says, "is that self-care will stand equal with medical drugs, surgery, and other therapies that are now used to alleviate mental and physical suffering. Along with nutrition and exercise, mind/body approaches can be part of self-care practices that could save millions of dollars annually in medical costs."

From Harvard University Gazette @ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html

Tummo Tutorial

(10:18) @ https://youtu.be/y76FfQRSmHc

For more information about Tum-mo see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/tumo