By Sara Martin
A behavioral medicine pioneer reports on a time-tested technique that reverses aging and improves health.
Read on www.apa.org
CLEAR ALL
[Porges'] widely-cited polyvagal theory contends that living creatures facing or sensing mortal danger will immobilize, even “play dead,” as a last resort.
When a team of scientists in Finland asked people to map out where they felt different emotions on their bodies, they found that the results were surprisingly consistent, even across cultures.
Dutch adventurer Wim Hof is known as ‘The Iceman’ for good reason. Hof established several world records for prolonged resistance to cold exposure, an ability he attributes to a self-developed set of techniques of breathing and meditation—known as the Wim Hof Method.
A growing body of scientific research suggests that our mind can play an important role in healing our body — or in staying healthy in the first place.
1
Adversity in childhood can create long-lasting scars, damaging our cells and our DNA, and making us sick as adults
The meditation-and-the-brain research has been rolling in steadily for a number of years now, with new studies coming out just about every week to illustrate some new benefit of meditation. Or, rather, some ancient benefit that is just now being confirmed with fMRI or EEG.
Nowhere is this relationship more essential yet more endangered than in our healing from trauma, and no one has provided a more illuminating, sympathetic, and constructive approach to such healing than Boston-based Dutch psychiatrist and pioneering PTSD researcher Bessel van der Kolk.
When neuroscientists tested expert meditators, they discovered something surprising: The effect of Buddhist meditation isn’t just momentary; it can alter deep-seated traits in our brain patterns and character.