Month: August 2015

Improve Physical Health with Yoga

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Yoga is an ancient practice. Its longevity would suggest that it has observable benefits for its practitioners. Although for years anecdotal evidence supported this notion, it has only recently been demonstrated with modern controlled research studies that yoga indeed is beneficial for health and well-being.

In a previous post, yoga practice was shown to reduce the symptoms of the Metabolic Syndrome a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

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http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/heart-healthy-yoga/

In another previous post, it was demonstrated the yoga practice improves the immune system

http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/healthy-balance-through-yoga/

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and in yet another post, yoga was shown to delay the decline in strength and flexibility on ageing individuals.

http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/age-healthily-yoga/

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In today’s Research News article “Effects of a 12-Week Hatha Yoga Intervention on Cardiorespiratory Endurance, Muscular Strength and Endurance, and Flexibility in Hong Kong Chinese Adults: A Controlled Clinical Trial.”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4475706/

Lau and colleagues demonstrate that yoga improves cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength and endurance, and flexibility in both male and female adults.

One of the keys to any program for physical health is its acceptability. There are a large number of different varieties of fitness programs all of which can improve health if practiced. But many are disliked by participants who discontinue participation or only sporadically engage in the program. Lau and colleagues found that that people like yoga practice and so stick with it. Participants attended 94% of the available classes and only 11% dropped out. A practice is only as good a people’s willingness to engage in it and yoga practice appears to pass this test, making it a very good choice for physical health.

The fact that yoga is often practiced in groups may account, in part, for its enjoyability and the high participation rates. The presence of others provides support and camaraderie. The participant discussions that can precede and follow the practice can be helpful in learning about the progressions and difficulties encountered by others, making one’s own difficulties seem more normal and acceptable and setting more realistic expectations for future progress.

It would be expected that yoga would improve muscular strength and flexibility. After all that is what it’s designed to do. But the improvement in cardiovascular endurance is an important bonus. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S. killing 800,000 people each year. The observed improvement in cardiorespiratory endurance along with the prior findings of effectiveness for metabolic syndrome, suggest that yoga could help prevent cardiovascular disease and increase longevity.

So, practice the enjoyable exercise of yoga and improve your health.

CMCS

 

Burnout Burnout with Mindfulness

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Stress is epidemic in the western workplace with almost two thirds of workers reporting high levels of stress at work. In high stress occupations burnout is all too prevalent. This is the fatigue, cynicism, and professional inefficacy that comes with work-related stress.

Healthcare is a high stress occupation. It is estimated that over 45% of healthcare workers experience burnout with emergency medicine at the top of the list, over half experiencing burnout. With there being a shortage of doctors and nurses preventing existing healthcare workers from burning out is a priority.

How can burnout be prevented or mitigated? One potential treatment is mindfulness training. A study investigating mindfulness’ association with burnout in emergency room nurses is reported in today’s Research News article “Protective benefits of mindfulness in emergency room personnel. Journal of affective disorders”

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Westphal and colleagues report that indeed stress is prevalent in the ER. It is most frequently associated with interpersonal conflicts and large numbers of consecutive days working. But mindfulness appeared to help as high mindfulness was associated with lower levels of anxiety, depression, and burnout in the ER nurses.

Mindfulness may help in this high stress context by helping with the interpersonal conflicts that are reported to be at the root of their stress and burnout. Mindfulness has been shown to improve interpersonal relationships and social connectedness. This may be very helpful in dealing effectively with co-workers and thereby reducing stress and improving social resources for dealing with the stress.

Mindfulness has also been shown to reduce distress contagion. This occurs when one person observes another suffering a disease or injury and experiences in one’s physical body a similar or related distress. This is common in nurse–patient relationship particularly with empathetic nurses. In fact, this distress contagion is the physical equivalent to empathy. By reducing this distress contagion mindfulness may be reducing stress and burnout.

Mindfulness has also been shown to improve emotion regulation. Mindful people are better at recognizing their emotions and responding to them effectively. Mindful people experience emotions fully, but recognize them and don’t let them dictate what they do. This allows them to work effectively in an emotionally charged environment like the ER.

Finally, mindfulness is known to reduce the psychological and physical responses to stress. Being mindful doesn’t inoculate the individual from stress. Rather it blunts stress’ effects on them. This occurs on a physical level with lower stress hormone responses and lower sympathetic activation in response to stress. It also occurs on the psychological level with less anxiety and depression produced by the stress.

So, burnout burnout with mindfulness!

CMCS

What’s wrong with the Idea of an Afterlife

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“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” – Stephen Hawking
“I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.” – Karen Armstrong

The idea of an afterlife has been important throughout history and is a dominant theme is most religions. It is also a recurrent theme in literature and the media. The question of whether there is an afterlife has been discussed, argued, and preached about for centuries. Yet we do not have clearly verifiable empirical evidence to confirm or deny the concept. Some rely on scriptures as their evidence, but many are skeptical of writings dating from primitive times. So, the argument rages.

The biggest problem with the idea of an afterlife is the word itself (I prefer to use the word afterexistence). The idea of an afterlife can be interpreted, I believe correctly, as referring to what if anything transpires after life is over. The problem is that it can also be interpreted as a life that occurs following death. This is where the problem begins. People think of it as a life. This should be easily seen a patently incorrect. Life ceases at death. All of the physical processes that make up a living thing are either terminated or in the process of termination at the point of death. Death clearly means life is over. So the belief that there is life after death is completely contradictory to what actually happens in death.

Much of the argument follows from this misinterpretation. Atheists see that the physical processes cease and conclude, with impeccable logic, that there is no life after death. But, theists believe, and I emphasize the word believe, that the deity will somehow preserve us, pretty much as we are (“in his own image and likeness”) and bring us to a reward for our actions during life.

Maybe the problem with answering the question of an after existence comes from a reliance on logic, reason, and concepts that have their origin and existence in the physical realm. We’re in essence using the tools from the physical processes of the brain to try to reach a conclusion about whether there’s a non-physical reality. These processes were developed to understand and control the physical world. So, they would seem unsuited to exploring whether there’s something beyond the physical. Perhaps if we rely instead upon what we’re experiencing in the present moment, not what we think about it, but experience itself, we might be in a better position to explore the questions.

There is an important reframing of the question characterized by the quote “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. What this quote captures is a notion to turn existence as we see it inside out. Rather than see the physical world as true and wonder whether there’s something more, whether the spiritual is real or imagined, we can see the spiritual world as true and wonder whether there’s something more, whether the physical is real or imagined. If you take the later interpretation it radically changes how we view an after existence.
What prompts the strong human tendency to believe in an afterlife is the sense we have from our experience that there is something more. That sense comes from a clear experience we have that there is a presence, an awareness, an essence, a spirit that is aware of all that is going on but is not part of it. We can see the impermanence of all things physical. They rise up and they fall away. But this presence, this awareness is unchanging. It has been the same since birth to the present moment. What it is experiencing has changed and is impermanent, but what’s experiencing it has not.

If something is always the same even as the physical makeup of our bodies change from birth, to maturity, to old age, then it’s a simple extrapolation that that something should continue when the ultimate physical change, death, occurs. The presence, the awareness, the essence, the spirit persists. What that would be like is hard to imagine, an existence without input from the senses, without thought or memory, without concepts or language, without motivations or choices, without a self or personality. But, this is exactly the conclusion that this logic leads to.

Could there be a rebirth or what some people call a reincarnation. Why not? If the spirit, the awareness, the presence, can create a physical existence once, why not do it again? For that matter, why not thousands of times? We don’t have an answer to these questions. We can only judge its logical possibility if you assume that “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

All of this leads back to the problem with the idea of an afterlife; that there’s continuing physical existence after death. This seems, to put it mildly, unlikely. But, if we simply look at our experience, our awareness, we can come to a completely different way of looking at life and death. We can see that the one core real thing that escapes impermanence, the awareness, the presence, the essence, the spirit, the essence, that is always the same and never changing will not stop or change due to death, but will continue into an after existence.

“I don’t believe in any particular definition of the afterlife, but I do believe we’re spiritual creatures and more than our biology and that energy cannot be destroyed, but can change. I don’t know what the afterlife is going to be, but I’m not afraid of it.” –Alan Ball
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Building a Better Adult with Elementary School Mindfulness Training

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“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”  Aristotle

Childhood is a special time of dynamic learning. It is here that behaviors and attitudes are developed that shape the individual. If we wish to build better adults we need to focus on what is experienced during childhood. It is difficult to affect the family and what is learned at home, but we can affect what is learned in school. So, to build a better adult we need to build a better childhood education.

Childhood education rightly focuses on building knowledge and understanding of academic importance. But there is little effort to develop cognitive, emotional, and social skills. This is unfortunate as these skills are important unto themselves’ and also turn out to be very important in developing academic skills. In addition, it’s been shown that cognitive, emotional, and social skills in childhood predict health, financial stability, and educational attainment into adulthood.

Elementary school is a wonderful time to develop these skills. In today’s Research News article “Enhancing Cognitive and Social–Emotional Development Through a Simple-to-Administer Mindfulness-Based School Program for Elementary School Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial.”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4323355/

Schonert-Reichl and colleagues test the effectiveness of a social and emotional learning with mindfulness program in 4th and 5th grade students. The results were remarkable, with the mindfulness training producing improvement in a wide array of academic, social, emotional, cognitive, and physical measures.

Mindfulness training improved executive function, improving the children’s working memory, and cognitive flexibility. In addition they showed improved ability to control their behavior. The heightened inhibitory control led to the better control of their emotions as evidenced by a decrease in aggression. If that was not enough improved executive function and control resulted in the mindfulness trained children performing better in the only academic subject measured, math, achieving higher grades.

The mindfulness trained children showed greater social and emotional maturity with increased levels of empathy, perspective-taking, optimism, emotional control, school self-concept, and mindfulness and significantly lower depressive symptoms. In addition the other children rated the mindfulness trained children as higher in sharing, trustworthiness, helpfulness, taking others’ views, and were liked more, and lower aggressive behavior and were less likely to start a fight.

These results are nothing short of spectacular. A simple, easy to administer program to elementary school children produced major improvements in every aspect of the child’s performance in school, from academic, to social, to emotional. It remains to be seen how lasting these effects are but regardless, even if they only occur in conjunction with mindfulness training they indicate that this kind of training is extraordinarily important in promotion the child’s school performance and well-being.

So train your children in mindfulness and produce a better adult.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein

CMCS

Pain is a Pain – Relieve it with Meditation

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In a previous post we discussed the application of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for the relief of pain in adult women.

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It was demonstrated that the combination of meditation, body scan, and yoga contained in MBSR was effective for pain management.

Not everything that is effective with adults is also effective with children and adolescents.

Hence, it is important to establish if mindfulness training is also effective with adolescents. In today’s Research News article “The Effects of Mindful Attention and State Mindfulness on Acute Experimental Pain among Adolescents”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4027879/

Petter and colleagues investigated whether a very brief mindfulness session would affect pain sensitivity in 13-18 year-olds. Although the brief manipulation was not effective, they found that adolescents who were meditators and high in mindfulness had significantly lower pain in a standardized pain manipulation.

Hence it appears that mindfulness is associated with lower sensitivity to pain even in adolescents. It is noteworthy that meditation practice alone was associated with the reduction in pain perception. Hence, although the other components of MBSR, body scan and yoga, may also be helpful, they are not necessary for pain relief.

McGrath and colleagues then addressed how mindfulness might produce lower pain levels. They found that mindfulness reduced catastrophizing, the tendency to magnify the threat value of pain, to feel helpless in the face of pain, and to ruminate about pain. It was this reduction in catastrophizing that produced the pain relief. In other words catastrophizing mediated the effect of mindfulness on pain. These findings complement the theoretical work which places catastrophizing as playing a central role in adolescent chronic pain.

Hence, it appears that in adolescents pain is magnified by catastrophizing. In this form of thinking, the presence of pain brings forth unsettling memories of past pain and rumination about future pain. The individual then becomes focused on the pain and thoughts about the pain. This form of thinking builds on itself in a vicious cycle of catastrophizing magnifying pain which in turn magnifies catastrophizing.

Mindfulness can break this vicious cycle by focusing the individual on the present moment. This reduces the amount of thinking about the past and future which is the source of catastrophizing, which then tends to reduce the perception of pain. Hence, mindfulness emphasizes present moment awareness, reducing catastrophizing, and in turn reducing pain.

Mindfulness training is also known to directly affect the brain pathways and cortical areas that underlie pain perception and thereby reduce the magnitude of the pain signal in the brain. In addition, mindfulness reduces the emotional reactions and the arousal response to pain. This also mitigates pain perception.

This is important to discover a method to treat pain without drugs. The prescription pain medications, primarily opiates, are addictive, disorienting, and very dangerous with thousands of deaths each year attributable to overdoses of prescription pain medications. Mindfulness training is a great alternative, effective and safe. But beware, it has such positive benefits that it may become addictive!

So, practice mindfulness and stop pain being a pain.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Age Healthily – Treating Insomnia and Inflammation

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Disturbance of sleep is common in the elderly. It directly produces impairments in daily activities. But, it also increases the risk for chronic disease and mortality in older adults. In particular insomnia appears to increase inflammation. Heightened markers of inflammations are associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes and autoimmune diseases such as arthritis. In fact, inflammation is either directly or indirectly involved in nearly all diseases.

Chronic inflammation is the real problem. On the short term inflammation can be helpful in fighting off initial infection. But, if it continues over a prolonged period of time it can produce or exacerbate many health conditions. Since sleep disturbance in the elderly tends to be chronic and it increases inflammation it can be very detrimental to the individual’s health and thereby can increase mortality.

Obviously, it is important to the elderly to routinely get a good night’s sleep.  In a previous post we discussed how insomnia affects older adults and contributes to decline in aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/aging-healthily-sleeping-better-with-mindful-movement-practice/

In this post we reported that mindful movement practices such as Tai Chi was effective for the treatment of insomnia in the elderly. This study, however, did not compare mindful movements to other potential treatments and did not measure inflammation.

In today’s Research News article “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy vs. Tai Chi for Late Life Insomnia and Inflammatory Risk: A Randomized Controlled Comparative Efficacy Trial”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4153053/

Irwin and colleagues demonstrated that indeed Tai Chi was effective for insomnia in older adults but that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was far superior, producing remission from insomnia in over half the participants treated with CBT compared to 30% for Tai Chi.

Importantly, Irwin and colleagues demonstrated that a marker of inflammation, C-reactive protein (CRP), was markedly reduced. CBT cut in half the proportion of participants with high inflammatory responses. In addition, the participants who had remission of insomnia had CRP levels that were nearly 50% lower. This is remarkable and indicates that CBT is highly effective in reducing not only insomnia but also the inflammatory response that frequently accompanies it. tai chi was also effective, but not to the same extent.

Although tai chi was not as effective as CBT it has marked advantages. CBT requires a formal treatment program with a trained therapist. This can be costly and inconvenient. Tai chi on the other hand can be engaged in without a therapist, at the convenience of the individual, and at virtually no cost. So, although CBT is superior in effectiveness, tai chi might be a better, more practical, alternative for many elderly.

So, it is important to treat insomnia in the elderly for their health and wellbeing. If practical choose Cognitive Behavioral Therapy but if that isn’t practical engage in tai chi practice.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Feeling Feelings: Getting in Touch with the Body

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Most of us spend the majority of our lives lost in thought. Even when we become aware of our surroundings it is principally of the sights and sounds surrounding us. It is usually only when something is very wrong that we become aware of our bodies, what is called interoceptive awareness. We are generally unaware of the signals from our bodies such as the breath, movements in the GI tract, heart beats accompanied with surges in blood pressure, the sensations from our muscles and joints, even the sensations from our skin. Adding to the lack of awareness of our bodies we are also unaware of our implicit beliefs and attitudes about our bodies and the emotions that accompany these attitudes.

To exemplify this, just for a moment start paying attention to the sensations coming from the contact of your clothing with your skin. You were in all probability totally unaware of these sensations until your attention was directed toward them. Now notice the feelings from your facial muscles. Are they tense, relaxed, or something in-between. You probably were not aware of their state yet they can be good indicators of stress and your emotional state.

This can be a real problem as interoceptive awareness is extremely important for our awareness of our emotional state which is in turn needed to regulate and respond appropriately to the emotions. Being aware of the state of our bodies is also important for maintaining health, both for recognizing our physical state and also for making appropriate decisions about health related behaviors. Interoceptive awareness is even fundamental to our sense of self and world view.

Obviously it is important that we find ways to improve our poor body awareness. Most contemplative practices focus attention on our internal state and thus should improve our body awareness. But, in fact there is little empirical evidence on the issue. In today’s Research News article “Differential changes in self-reported aspects of interoceptive awareness through 3 months of contemplative training”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284997/

Bornemann and colleagues examine the effect of a 3-month training employing focused meditation and body scan meditation on interoceptive awareness. They found significant increases in five of the eight scales of interoceptive awareness compared to a control group.

It was found that meditation and body scan practice improved the regulatory aspects of interoceptive awareness. These include Self-Regulation which is the ability to control distress by paying attention to sensations from the body, Attention Regulation which is the ability to focus in a sustained way on the sensations from the body, and Body Listening which is the ability to gain insight into the physical and emotional state by listening to the signals from the body. These are important skills involved in being able to not only be aware of body sensations but to use these sensations to better understand and control their internal state and physical wellbeing.

Contemplative practice also improved Emotional Awareness, which is the ability to be aware of and understand the connection between body sensations and emotions, and Body Trusting, which is experiencing one’s own body as a safe place. These are also important abilities as they allow us to trust in the usefulness of the information from the body to better understand and control our emotions.

It is interesting that the contemplative practice did not increase Noticing of body sensations such as heart beat and breathing. Rather it appears to markedly improve our ability to use the information from our bodies to understand and regulate our emotional or motivational state. This is very important to our wellbeing both mental and physical. It puts us better in control by providing the signals we need to be better able to regulate our state.

These improvements in interoceptive awareness could also explain to some extent how mindfulness practices produce their well-documented significant improvements in physical and psychological health and wellbeing. It simply makes us better able to respond to and control our bodies and our emotions.

So engage in contemplative practice and learn how to feel your feelings and benefit your body’s signals.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Get Out of the Dumps with Loving-Kindness Meditation

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Depression is epidemic. It’s been estimated to affect one in ten Americans at one point or another.  Eleven percent of adolescents in the United States experience a depressive episode before the age of 18. If that isn’t bad enough somewhere up to 15% of those who are clinically depressed die by suicide.

The most common treatment for depression is antidepressant drugs. But they are not always effective, can actually increase the risk of suicide, and often have troubling side effects. As a result there is an ongoing search for alternative treatments for depression.

Recently, meditation, particularly in the form of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has emerged as a viable alternative treatment. There is also interest in another form of meditation, Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM). In depression, the individual is usually very unhappy with themselves and their lives regardless of the actual conditions. LKM has been shown to help the individual show compassion and understanding toward themselves and others. It has also been shown to improve mood. Hence, LKM would appear to be well suited as a treatment for depression.

In addition, we recently posted a discussion of some research that LKM improves social interactions. https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1043328429024416/?type=1&theater

In depression, the individual frequently withdraws from social contact. This removes from the individual compassionate social contact that is actually essential for healing. So, LKM, again appears on the surface to have potential for the treatment of depression.

In today’s Research News article “Loving-Kindness Meditation to Target Affect in Mood Disorders: A Proof-of-Concept Study”

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2015/269126/

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Hofmann and colleagues pilot the use of LKM for the treatment of depression and found very promising results. They found large, clinically significant effects of LKM in reducing both self-reported and clinician-reported depression. In addition LKM reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions, increased emotion regulation, and markedly decreased the rumination that is so characteristic of depression.

These pilot results are exciting. They certainly stand as strong justification for a controlled trial being conducted in the future. LKM by having the individual wish themselves and others well repeatedly appears to improve self-compassion and compassion for others. It is impossible to have true compassion for oneself and at the same time not like oneself. This would seem to be a wonderful antidote for the issues present in depression.

So, practice Loving-Kindness Meditation and get out of the dumps.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Make the Brain more Efficient with Meditation

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Meditation has been shown to alter the nervous system. It changes the size of brain areas, their connectivity, and their activity. It even appears to protect the brain from the degeneration that normally occurs with aging. These changes are thought to underlie meditation effects on physical and psychological health. These effects of meditation were reviewed in a previous post

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http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/01/this-is-your-brain-on-meditation/

The increased connectivity between brain areas implies that meditation may make the nervous system more efficient, processing information faster and more effectively. But, the prior studies do not directly measure information processing efficiency. In today’s Research News article “Neurophysiological Effects of Meditation Based on Evoked and Event Related Potential Recordings”

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http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/406261/

Singh and colleagues review studies that have used the electrical signals from the brain to track how fast and effectively sensory information is processed in the brain during meditation. They report that the research indicates that indeed the brain processes this information more efficiently while engaged in meditation.

There were two different types of improvements reported with meditation. The first is simple processing on sensory events, sending the signals from the sensory organs to the cortex where complex processing occurs. They found that this simple level processing was improved during meditation.

The second type of processing is more complex and involves making decisions about the sensory information. This type of processing was also found to be improved in meditators. There was improved attention and switching of attention, greater perceptual clarity, lower automatic reactivity to the information and its emotional content, greater emotional acceptance, and lower anticipation and fear of pain. These results are remarkable and suggest that meditation increases the efficiency of the brain, improving the distribution of limited brain resources.

How can such a simple practice such as meditation have such profound effects upon the nervous system. In meditation, information processing is greatly simplified and focused. By reducing intrusions and the onslaught of complex sensory experiences, thoughts, implicit speech, and ruminations, meditation may allow the brain to focus on a reduced number of tasks and thus learn to process them simply and more efficiently.

It is also the case that the nervous system adapts to the kind of processing that it’s asked to do in a process called neuroplasticity. By reducing the complexity of processing the brain may improve and allocate its resources to focused tasks, improving its speed and effectiveness in processing them. Simply put, by making the world simpler, with fewer distraction or discursions the nervous system can better learn how to effectively make sense of what’s present.

So, meditate and make the brain better.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Die More Peacefully

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“At the end of life, our questions are very simple… Did I live fully? Did I love well?” ―  Jack Kornfield

“Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.” – Native American Saying

Many people fear death, in part, because they do not know what if anything will follow. It has long been believed that spirituality/religiousness provides an explanation and thus can be very comforting to the dying. But, there has been very little systematic empirical research investigating the relationship of spirituality/religiousness to the experiences of the dying.

It is very common for dying individuals to have transcendent experiences. It has been estimated that over half of all conscious dying people have these kinds of experiences. Although there are a wide variety of transcendent experiences they all have in common that they are experiences that are beyond the self and/or beyond empirical physical reality. There have been only a small number of empirical research studies into these phenomena and their relationship to the dying process.

In today’s Research News article “A Thematic Literature Review: The Importance of Providing Spiritual Care for End-of-Life Patients Who Have Experienced Transcendence Phenomena”

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Broadhurst and Harrington summarize the research on the effect on the dying individual of having experienced transcendent phenomena.

They found that the literature suggested that transcendence experiences provided psychological strength, peace of mind, and spiritual well-being. This was opposed to hallucinations which produced anxiety, fear, and confusion. The comfort produced by the transcendence experiences also affected the family and the caregivers causing them to feel better about the situation.

They also found that people who have had transcendence experiences had more peaceful and calm deaths. They also found more spiritual meaning in their lives producing greater inner peace. Finally they were better able to deal with unfinished business in their lives, particularly to mend family conflicts. This also led to greater inner peace.

It is clear that spirituality and transcendence experiences are important at the endo of life and can have highly beneficial effects on the dying, the family, and even the caregivers. It is unfortunate that doctors, nurses, and other caregivers have little or no training or experience with end of life spirituality let alone transcendence experiences of the dying. Hence, it is important that this be include in the training of future professionals so that they can better understand and work with the spiritual needs and experiences of the dying.

So, welcome spiritual and transcendence experiences in the dying and help them to a more meaningful, peaceful, and calm passing.

“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” – Native American Saying