New meditation research

Please go on over to Huffington Post and read the following article:

New meditation research: puttying the 'Om' in chromosome

Here are some snippets:

The Shambhala Mountain Center sits nestled among the remote lakes and pastures of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, where for four decades it has offered instruction and retreat to serious students of meditation and yoga. Starting in February 2007, it became a scientific laboratory as well. The center began hosting the Shamatha Project, one of the most rigorous scientific examinations of meditation's effects ever undertaken.
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For example: Those who intensely practiced meditation got better at visual perception, and as a result their attention improved.
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Tonya Jacobs, a scientist at UC Davis's Center for Mind and Brain, has just reported (on-line in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology) that meditators show improved psychological well-being, and that these improvements lead to biochemical changes associated with resistance to aging at the cellular level. Specifically, an analysis of meditators' white blood cells showed a 30 percent increase in an enzyme called telomerase, a chemical essential to the long-term health of the body's chromosomes and cells.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of giving a couple of workshops for the Alzheimer's Association here in Tulsa. We explored how meditation can help with stress over the holiday season that is experienced by almost everybody but especially the caregivers of dementia patients. Participants were able to feel positive effects just after the few exercises we did in the workshops.