Tag: Meditation

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Yoga for Back Pain Research

Yoga for Back Pain Research came out this past week and the results were very interesting. According to the latest research, doing yoga daily is more effective in healing your chronic back pain than other conventional back pain treatments. There are also more side effects as a result of using the conventional treatments, such as painkillers and muscle relaxants.

Yoga for Back Pain Research

The researchers closely monitored 228 adults who suffer from acute and chronic back pain problems. They were separated into three groups with two groups attending daily yoga sessions and the remaining group doing different exercises for a few weeks.

At the end of the program they discovered that 50% the participants who attended yoga sessions felt much better compared with only 20% of the other group.

Yoga is More than Meditation

Yoga for Back Pain Research

Yoga for Back Pain Research

The Yoga for back Pain research forces us to look more deeply into what Yoga actually is. Yoga is not just a form of meditation as some people perceive it and the benefits are not just limited to strengthening muscles, improve flexibility and balance. Yoga is an extremely good therapy for relieving back pain, shorten recovery time, reduce swelling and increase blood circulation. Practising yoga daily will help improve your posture and keep your spine in proper alignment.

There are many forms and poses of yoga and not all can help your back condition. In fact some can even worsen it. It is best to attend classes under the guidance of certified yoga instructors as they can advise on what poses are suitable for you.

Back strengthening poses serve not only to strengthen your muscles around the spine, but also help to activate your kidneys and increase the energy in your body. Back releasing poses will help to reduce tension and muscle spasm and improve spinal mobility. These exercises will help to nourish your back muscles and muscle tissues, and are good for people suffering from lower back pain. Stretching other muscles in your body such as the hamstring and thigh will make them stronger and more flexible and lessen the amount of stress on your back. This will finally reduce the tension and relieve your back.

Easier Way to do Yoga

Performing poses on the floor are easier than standing poses as they require less strength and balance. One very important aspect of doing yoga is to learn how to breathe properly, especially when holding the poses. Choose poses with longer hold times (inhaling and exhaling) as they are easier to do.

When you master the art of deep and rhythmic breathing, your body will relax, freeing you of pain-inducing restrictions and eases proper circulation.

Do not eat at least one to two hours before you practise yoga and refrain from drinking too much water before the session.

You should practise yoga daily for an average of 30 minutes, depending on your schedule, objective and fitness level. It is better to practise more often with shorter duration than less often with longer duration as this will produce better result.

If you are seeking relief from back pain, yoga is certainly one of the best lower back pain exercises. Like all forms of exercises, do not push your body to the limits. If you still experience pain after doing yoga, stop and consult your doctor.

Back Pain Treatment is a blog full of interesting information on back pain problems, treatment options and prevention tips. Visit this site for current events and stories relating to back pain and share your thoughts. So now that we have this interesting Yoga for back pain research it is time for you to learn to do Yoga

  • Yoga for Back Pain Research


Yoga for Back Pain Research

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Weight Loss Exercise

Do I stay in better health with exercise?

I was off sick yesterday. Sometimes there will be a bug in the office and everyone seems to eventually catch it over a couple of month span. Over the last few years I have been able to stay away from getting sick very often at all using a couple rules:

Rule one is that I always try to exercise well. I have some really tough workouts and some not so tough workouts but I never try to push myself to hard over an extended period of days, the way that I look at it is that I can’t heal fast enough to get away with that and I know because I will get more and more tired as the week goes on.

Rule two is that I make sure that I sleep well so that I do not get tired during the day. I make sure that I get 7-8 hours sleep every night and as we all know that is not always possible. I make sure that after a few bad nights of sleep that I will cut back my exercise and get tow great nights sleep and start ramping up my exercise schedule again.

Sometimes you will not avoid a flu but over time I believe that I have caught fewer flues and recovered faster. Most of my sick days are more the mental health variety where I take a day off to recharge and make sure that I am doing all of the things that I write here about, exercise, vitamins, relaxation, sleep, meditation, and of course reflecting on all of these together with my exercise to make sure that I am not deficient in one or to strong in one at the determent of the others.

So this weekend as you are going through the paces of your regular off work week time eating and exercising try to take a few minutes to reflect how you are doing these things both during the week and during the weekend.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Meditation in 8 Weeks Can Create Huge Change | 8 week meditation study

Meditation in 8 Weeks Can Create Huge Change

8 week meditation study

Cool new 8 week meditation study came out today. I have mentioned before that I have meditated a fair amount in the past. Nothing like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, but enough to know the affect that it can have. Meditation is great. Anyway one of the big things that meditation does is still the mind so that you are much better able to keep your concentration as well as creativity.

Studies tend to be inconclusive on the physical effect to your brain from meditation but a new report seems to show that in just 8 weeks it can make a big difference.

8 Week Meditation Study

An eight-week pro­gram of medita­t­ion led to brain struc­ture changes in peo­ple par­ti­ci­pat­ing in a stu­dy, re­search­ers say. It’s the first time that medita­t­ion, a prac­tice ad­vo­cat­ed by a range of re­li­gious tra­di­tions, has been shown to lead to such changes, ac­cord­ing to the sci­en­tists.

Pre­vi­ous re­search, they said, had re­vealed struc­tur­al dif­fer­ences in the brains of med­i­ta­tors, but could­n’t doc­u­ment that medita­t­ion had ac­tu­ally caused those changes. The re­search­ers re­ported that par­ti­ci­pat­ing in an eight-week medita­t­ion pro­gram ap­peared to make meas­ur­a­ble changes in brain re­gions as­so­ci­at­ed with mem­o­ry, sense of self, em­pa­thy and stress.

“Al­though the prac­tice of medita­t­ion is as­so­ci­at­ed with a sense of peace­ful­ness and phys­i­cal re­laxa­t­ion, prac­ti­tion­ers have long claimed that medita­t­ion al­so pro­vides cog­ni­tive and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits that per­sist through­out the day,” said Sara Laz­ar of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Psy­chi­at­ric Neu­roimag­ing Re­search Pro­gram, the stu­dy’s sen­ior au­thor. “This study demon­strates that changes in brain struc­ture may un­der­lie some of these re­ported im­prove­ments and that peo­ple are not just feel­ing bet­ter be­cause they are spend­ing time re­laxing.”

The study is to ap­pear in the Jan. 30 is­sue of the jour­nal Psy­chi­a­try Re­search: Neu­ro­imag­ing.

Meditation Study Shows Changes to the Brain

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors scanned the brain struc­tures of 16 study par­ti­ci­pants two weeks be­fore and af­ter they took part in the eight-week Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Re­duc­tion Pro­gram at the Uni­vers­ity of Mas­sa­chu­setts Cen­ter for Mind­ful­ness. In ad­di­tion to weekly meet­ings that in­clud­ed prac­tice of mind­ful­ness medita­t­ion – which fo­cus­es on non­judg­men­tal aware­ness of sensa­t­ions, feel­ings and state of mind – par­ti­ci­pants re­ceived au­di­o record­ings for guid­ed medita­t­ion prac­tice and were asked to keep track of how much time they prac­ticed each day. A group of non-med­i­ta­tors al­so had their brains scanned dur­ing the same time pe­ri­od.

The med­i­ta­tors in the 8 week meditation study re­ported spend­ing an av­er­age of 27 min­utes each day prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness ex­er­cises, and their re­sponses to a “mind­ful­ness ques­tion­naire” in­di­cat­ed sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments com­pared with pre-par­ticipa­t­ion re­sponses, the sci­en­tists re­ported.

Anal­y­sis of the brain scans, which fo­cused on ar­eas where medita­t­ion-as­so­ci­at­ed dif­fer­ences were seen in ear­li­er stud­ies, found in­creased grey-mat­ter dens­ity in the hip­po­cam­pus, known to be im­por­tant for learn­ing and mem­o­ry, and in struc­tures as­so­ci­at­ed with self-a­ware­ness, com­pas­sion and in­tro­spec­tion. Grey mat­ter is the brain tis­sue that con­tains nerve cells.

If you are interested in learning more about meditation then check out this article on meditation for fitness that I wrote a while ago that is of course still relevant. Also There was a past study on meditation for stress relief and the science of meditation.

After seeing this 8 week meditation study I say find a quiet corner in the house and just sit quietly and see what meditation can do for you.