Qigong in the News: find the right kind of meditation

The right kind of meditation for you; Mantra, mindfulness, zen, and qigong visualization are different ways to relax

New research suggests you could be missing out on all the health benefits of meditation by simply starting out with a technique not well matched to your personal tastes.

NY Daily News : Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 11:32 AM

Did you give meditation a chance and decide it's not your cup of tea? New research suggests you could be missing out on all the health benefits of meditation by simply starting out with a technique not well matched to your personal tastes.

Adam Burke, director of San Francisco State University's Institute for Holistic Health Studies, suggests trying another method to see which one is best suited to you.

"If someone is exposed to a particular technique through the media or a health care provider, they might assume because it's popular, it's the best for everyone," he said. "But that's like saying because a pink dress or a blue sport coat is popular this year, it's going to look good on everybody. In truth, different people like different things."

Burke and colleagues recently conducted a study of college students new to meditation and their preferences among four meditation techniques -- mantra, mindfulness, zen, and qigong visualization.

The participants learned all four different techniques, with 31 percent rating mantra as their preferred choice and another 31 percent choosing mindfulness. However, 22 percent said zen was their favorite, and 15 percent voted for qigong. Participants who opted for mantra and mindfulness said they thought the techniques were easier to practice, more calming, and less complex.

Partly accounting for the differences in tastes, the researchers note, is age, with older participants opting for zen, while younger participants preferred mindfulness. The results of the study appear in the July 7 issue of the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.

Another type of mindfulness meditation known as integrative body-mind training (which focuses on breathing and posture awareness) has recently been a hot topic in the media with a new study that found that the technique can have a positive physical effect on the brain, boosting connectivity and efficiency. The study appears in the June issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Meditation shopping? While it may seem strange, it is perhaps the best approach to finding a technique that works for you, at least according to a new study from San Francisco State University's Institute for Holistic Health Studies.

Published on July 7 in the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, the findings reveal that by finding a form of meditation that works for you, you are less likely to quit. The result of sticking with it? Research-backed benefits of reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and help with addiction problems.

While meditation styles vary, you'll want a comfortable, quiet room, perhaps a cushion to sit on, and anywhere from five to 20 minutes for beginners.

Here are a few traditional seated meditation techniques used in the study that you may want to try:

Vipassana (or mindfulness) - This meditation dates back to the times of Gautama Buddha and translates to "seeing deeply." You can start out by breath awareness and then advance to stages of being mindful of your perceptions and thoughts at any time, regardless of what you are doing. Some people attend 10-day Vipassana retreats, or "bootcamps," to delve deeper into the practice.

Mantra - This style involves the repetition of a word, phrase, or sound, or repeatedly envisioning a specific image. In the San Francisco State University study, participants imagined a ball of light in the area of their heart. For sounds or words, basically every sound-vibration you can think of is a potential mantra, but one of the most popular ones is Om.

Zen - Zen is similar to mindfulness in its focus on presence of mind, but it involves a more general awareness, rather than a focus on something specific. The practice typically asks you to silently focus on breathing and posture with eyes open in a quiet place and to dismiss any thoughts that pop into your head, essentially "thinking nothing."

Qigong visualization - This Taoist practice utilizes several techniques to help restore health and balance to the body, including the Inner Smile, visualizing "smile-energy" penetrating your internal organs; Moon on Lake, visualizing the moon's reflection on a lake; and Holding Heaven in the Palm of Your Hand, imagining the energy of the galaxy in the palm of your hand. Other simpler techniques, such as those used in the study, involve imagining a beam of light running along the spine.

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Making Yourself at Home with Acupuncture by Ken Rosen

Acupuncture is both clinical and mysterious. It has a long lineage practiced differently around the world by different schools of practice – five-element, Chinese, Korean hand, and Japanese Toyohari to name but a few. I recently found out that there are 30 different schools of acupuncture in Japan alone. And, of course, acupuncture is practiced differently still by individuals. The big point here is that people are getting relief; no matter what style of acupuncture or what individual. 

Acupuncture is rooted in a larger system of medicine which is known globally as Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM. Traditional Chinese Medicine comprises five distinct branches of medicine to help people govern their health. The five branches of Traditional Chinese Medicine are exercise, nutrition, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and structural medicine like massage. Acupuncture, as a branch, has grown globally as well. I have met TCM practitioners from far-away places like Norway, England, India, America, Germany, Israel, Iceland and Thailand, to name a few. People from all over the world are finding relief from serious physical and mental illnesses with this ancient therapy. Acupuncture treatment most likely started with people poking each other in places that hurt with tools in a form of crude massage, or as way to lance boils. Eventually, the Chinese mapped rivers of energy called meridians, or channels, on the body. Much the way energy flows down a river, the same is true in the body. Energy moves quickly in some places, deeply in others, and also stagnates in common acu-point locations. As time passed, the ancients refined specific points on these meridians that created a broad range of action on both physical and emotional conditions. Needles used to be made from bones, then eventually metal. Today, they are made from stainless steel, making them also sterile and disposable. What Happens During an Acupuncture Treatment? After a series of questions, a practitioner of Chinese Medicine will look at your tongue, feel your pulse, and reach a diagnosis. Then an acupuncture prescription will be matched to your diagnosis. The combination of acupoints are needled and heat therapy (moxibustion) or mild electrical stimulation may be added to the needles. Needles are retained in the body for a period of 20 to 30 minutes. During that time, the nervous energy of the whole body tries to push these needles out and tunes into itself for healing. When the needles come to equilibrium with the body and mind, a healing message has been received. Unlike a needle that takes blood out of your body, an acupuncture needle is solid. It is not designed to cut through flesh. It is like putting a chopstick into a bowl of noodles. Instead of cutting into your body, it pushes tissue aside, letting your body’s nervous system grab it, reject it, accept it, and thereby reboot your whole system. This is how acupuncture is able to treat such a wide range of conditions. Needles vibrate within your body to help bring you into balance. The needles vent out built-up qi, which could be manifested in muscular pain, emotional tension, or a chest cold. Ultimately an acupuncture treatment should catapult your whole being into a deep state of ease so your body and mind can overcome energy imbalances, pain and disease.

The soft overcomes the hard – Tao Te Ching

These words from this ancient classic remind me of the tremendous power of acupuncture. Hard needles go into tight or hard acu-points or muscles, but it is the power of your soft body rejecting and then accepting these needles that makes the treatment effective. Your body has to become soft in the reaction to the hard needles. It is only natural.