How to Incorporate Meditation Into Your Busy Life

For its well-documented benefits of improved health and emotional equilibrium, many people become interested in meditation but find it too difficult. Their mind wanders. They feel impatient. Their body gets twitchy. They can't release their worries enough to focus. Or they feel out of tune with the spiritual overtones of a particular meditation tradition they may have sampled.
People have been practicing meditation for centuries. It is the most popular and effective way to combat stress. It is the process of achieving calmness and tranquility of the mind. In many parts of the world, doctors prescribe meditation along with other medicines for treating diseases. However, it is not so easy to make it a daily routine, especially for those who are new to meditation.
Advantages of Meditation
The medical and psychological benefits of meditation include reduction in stress, less tension, lower blood pressure, increased energy, improved ability to concentrate, less anxiety and a better mood.
The good effects of meditation are not a secret. Even those who do not meditate know what it can do to your mind and body. On the other hand, people who meditate regularly rely on it to achieve peace of mind and body. It can have magical effects on your mind. It helps to maintain a balance between your subconscious mind and conscious mind.
Meditation can also help you to tackle everyday stress and other emotional problems of life. Emotional wellbeing is very important to have a good, successful life. Meditation can slow down aging, which has been scientifically proven. It also reduces blood pressure in people with hypertension.
How Meditation Works
The environment where the meditation is done is a very important factor that affects its outcome. It is usually done in a silent room away from noise and other disturbances. Even the lights are dimmed to get a calm, serene environment. Such an environment will make meditation easier for anyone new to it.
During meditation, an invisible connection is made between the body and the mind. It affects the mind at the subconscious level. It produces a change in brain waves which leads to relaxation. It also has a calming effect on the nervous system. With this, the amount of stress hormones in the body is lowered, thus eliminating stress.
Even a beginner can experience the amount of change it makes with just one session. Daily meditation can have long term benefits. When you experience the real benefit of meditation, the negative thoughts in the mind are eliminated and are replaced with a positive attitude towards life. In turn, your whole body benefits.
Using Guided Meditation
Guided meditation makes it far easier to drop into a deep, stress-releasing state of calm. All you have to do is close your eyes and listen. It's compatible with any religious faith. An interesting, soothing narration invites you to envision scenes of serenity, and your body responds with a slower heartbeat and relaxed brain waves.
There are many guided meditation options in the market. It is not difficult to find something that will make it much easier to set aside regular time for meditation by offering a variety of approaches to achieving relaxation and peace.
The four part guided meditation program, "Pure Meditation" includes a focus on relaxing the body, achieving a positive outlook, letting go of negative feelings like anger, bitterness or resentment, and taking a healing journey through tranquil landscapes. Users can either cycle through the four recordings to keep their sessions fresh or choose the one that best corresponds to their mood and needs that day.
Whatever you choose to use, it is possible to enjoy the incredible, scientifically proven benefits of meditation regardless of your schedule.

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Meditation Shows You Yourself

Meditation shows you yourself and all your inner and outer restlessness. The simple practice of sitting quietly within oneself is surprisingly difficult. Physical discomfort arises, mental distraction too, and emotional turbulence sometimes overwhelms us.
Perhaps the biggest difficulties are found among the small, insidious phenomena -- irritability, planning, not being able to resist making a phone-call or writing down a reminder to do something. If -- and it may be a big if -- we can surmount all these obstacles then the rewards are great; a tranquil sense of inner abiding, or being in oneself, a serenity which no amount of pretence can get close to and an experience of inner peace of rectitude and honoring life, movements of grace and wisdom that surfaces in you like reflections of the sky in a still lake. Finally meditation shows you yourself, so what are you waiting for?
It is a flawless guide to your ego's attempts to fail you in becoming your true self, learning to live from the stillness of compassion, centering, learning and practicing inner guidance and cultivating inner peace. Only through thorough in-turning do we learn who we really are, beneath the level of facade and disguise we have presented to the world for so long. This experience is a great home-coming and a simple gift of authenticity. When we arrive the heart opens in an unmistakable way and we become capable of compassion, quietly caring, profoundly kind. The heart becomes our new and constant, genuine center and a reservoir and source of inner peace and guidance.
Meditation is the dependable link to your source and self-abiding truth; it is the essential spiritual practice for all serious aspirants on the spiritual path, because it urges you towards awakening to transcendence, and ultimately to the divine. What other way, other than sitting quietly, can direct us to ourselves? It is openly available at any time. When we practice just sitting, quietly allowing thoughts, feelings and all kinds of experiences to go by, we become identified with our awareness which in turn lodges us firmly in truth. It is the central practice in spirituality because it is the closest we can get in holistic form to the experience of complete emptiness and profound fullness, both at the same time.
This presence, residing in the opposites short-circuits the rational mind and expands into areas of truth, the unknown and the truly spiritual. For there are no truly spiritual experiences, and no rationally or intellectually expressed truths. We can only point at the moon, only speak in image and metaphor, simile and symbol to express the timeless truths of the perennial philosophy; that which has always been, always is and always will be.

Biomedical Cooptation of the Psychosocial Care and Support Continuum for Severely Distressed Persons

Abstract:
In this issue of Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Lehrman describes his vision, focusing on continuity of care, of a mental health care system for psychosis. His main argument is that the same psychiatrist should treat an individual patient whatever the settings (hospital, community) that the patient shifts through, and that the psychiatrist is the key treating professional and as such should manage and direct care over the continuum. While continuity of psychiatric care is desirable and indeed noncontroversial and feasible, psychiatric services are not central to the care continuum, and its psychiatric control will lead to an even more biomedical orientation in patient care. This would undermine another key aspect of Lehrman's vision: a mental health system focused upon the whole person in interaction with the environment. The history of psychiatry shows that, as a medical specialty, psychiatry will inevitably focus upon the brain rather than the person. Psychiatric care could serve as adjunct to appropriate supports, services, and treatment, but if it determines them, they will merely become a downplayed accessory of biomedical (i.e., psychotropic drug) treatment.

Document Type: Miscellaneous
Affiliations: 1: CLSC Haute-Ville-des-Rivières (GRIOSE-SM) and Laval University Québec City, Canada
Publication date: 2003-01-01

Biomedical treatment autism (DAN doctor)

I am a physician specializing in the biomedical treatment of autistic children. I have offices in arizona , nevada, and california. I need articles to post on my website trinityalternative.com relating to the biomedical treatment. Articles can be on the special diets, SCD, GFCF, low oxalate etc, yeast treatment, testing, treatments or other relavant issues. I think the best qualified person has an autistic child and is doing the biomedical treatments. This is very specific and i hope i can find the some qualified writers. I do not have the time to write what i need because i am extremely busy with patient care. I have two M.D. degrees, one traditional allopathic and i am the only Homeopath who combines these skills to treat patients.

Geoffrey P Radoff, M.D., M.D. (h)

What is Biomedical Treatment?

Childhood neurological disorders (NDs) are typically diagnosed by professionals with psychology and psychiatry backgrounds. Parents are often told that their child’s diagnosis is the result of genes and is psychological in nature. Typical “psychological” manifestations of these NDs in children may include delayed speech, lack of eye contact, impaired or non-present social skills, shyness, perseverative behavior (doing the same thing repeatedly), delayed gross or fine motor skills, sensory integration issues (sound and touch sensitivity, etc.), not responding to one’s name, inflexibility with transitions, and major, often unexplained, changes in mood.
Yet, the physical or medical issues that these children often share are rarely noted or discussed. Typical physical manifestations of children with NDs may include food allergies and eczema, general gastrointestinal distress, constipation and diarrhea, yeast overgrowth, immune system disregulation, and sleep disturbances. Typically, proper testing also reveals high levels of environmental toxins relative to neurotypical children.
What has happened to our children? We believe our children’s bodies are overwhelmed by a combination of heavy metals (mercury, lead, aluminum, etc.), live viruses (particularly from vaccines), and bacteria. These toxins serve to slow or shut down normal biochemical pathways in the body and lead to the physical and mental manifestations we call NDs. Perhaps the best description of what happens to our children is Autism: A Twisted Tale of Virus and Thimerosal, by Dr. Amy Yasko.
Biomedical intervention for NDs is based on the belief that the psychological symptoms of NDs are a product of the physical issues the child is experiencing and that addressing the physical issues will lead to an improvement in the psychological symptoms. (We were very pleased to read the recent cover story in Discover magazine that clearly spells out that autism is “not just in the head” but may actually originate in the gut and from environmental toxins.)
The following is our best attempt to get you started on the path to healing your child. This is not medical advice. It is the opinion of parents, not doctors. The most important thing you can do as a parent is find a qualified physician to help you treat your child. All that is written here is for informational purposes only.
The ultimate goal of biomedical treatment is to remove environmental toxins from your child’s body and repair the damage that has been done. Today, there is a bewildering array of potential treatment modalities for parents to follow. Some of the most popular include:
The DAN Protocol. DAN, or Defeat Autism Now!, is a project of the Autism Research Institute. The DAN Protocol is not a clear and explicit protocol, per se, but rather a general approach to treating children that is being followed by a group of doctors known as DAN doctors. The best resource to get a background in the DAN approach is the book Children with Starving Brains, written by Jaquelyn McCandless, MD, a DAN doctor. A complete list of DAN doctors is available at www.autism.com/dan/ danusdis.htm. DAN Conferences are held for parents twice a year. Yahoo discussion groups that include parents working with DAN doctors include ChelatingKids2 and ABMD.
The Cutler Protocol. Andy Cutler is a scientist who developed a protocol for removing heavy metals from the body. His protocol is detailed in his book, Amalgam Illness, and through the Yahoo discussion group Autism-Mercury. Many of the parents using the Cutler Protocol to remove toxins from their child’s body are also using a DAN doctor and many of the DAN approaches to treatment.
Dr. Amy Yasko. Dr. Yasko’s approach to treating children with NDs has many similarities to DAN, but focuses treatment on the specific genes of the child, providing a roadmap that some parents believe is more customized. Her approach is also more focused on the removal of viruses and bacteria from the child’s body. Learn more through her websites, www.dramyyasko.com and www.holistichealth.com, her parent discussion group, and her book, The Puzzle of Autism: Putting It All Together.
Michael Lang’s Natural Detoxification Program. Michael Lang is the founder of Brainchild Nutritionals, a supplement company serving children with NDs. Recently, he published a helpful guide with his own recommendations for how to detoxify a child with an ND safely and effectively.
Methyl B12 and Valtrex. A number of parents have experienced particular success using a combination of Methyl B12 (a vitamin) and Valtrex (a prescription drug that suppresses viruses). This approach has been spelled out by a parent who recovered his son from autism, Stan Kurtz.
Homeopathy. Many parents report great results using homeopathy. The best description of this approach is available in a book written by a parent, The Impossible Cure. Also, check out the discussion group run by the Homeopathy Center of Houston serving children with NDs.

Most parents employ some combination of the above approaches in treating their child. It can be frustrating for a parent to realize how varied the treatment approaches can be, which is why it’s critical to find a doctor to work closely with to find the right approach for your child. Reading about biomedical treatments for NDs is very overwhelming and it is helpful to keep the “big picture” in mind. The 4 most important things you can do to help heal your child are:
1. Bring down the toxin load.
2. Help the gut heal.
3. Get the nutrients up.
4. Get the metals and other toxins out.

Autism Treatment - Biomedical Treatments for Adults With Autism

I would like to talk a little bit about something with respects to adults who are on the Autism spectrum. The issue is the word "cure" that has been used within the biomedical community for several years. Not all doctors use the word cure but also some individuals who use the word cure as a goal or potential for those with Autism. I understand that the use of this word has created controversy and/or sparked anger within our Autism community, especially from adults who have Autism.
I want to state my perspective clearly, I have never used the term "cure" in any of my dialog regarding the biomedical treatments for Autism. While I have seen people "recover" from the underlying medical issues they were dealing with, the term "cure" implies a complete change of the underlying personality or the issues that are occurring in someone with Autism. I choose not to use that word and can certainly understand the frustration or disagreement some individuals with Autism have with its use.
I see biomedicine as more than just a diet, giving supplements, or giving certain medications. It really is about exploring the clinical health of an individual. And many times there are underlying issues that need to be addressed like biochemical imbalances, vitamin and amino acid deficiencies, dietary allergies, digestive problems or whatnot, and when they are addressed you see changes in cognition and improvement in their quality of life, whether they are a child, teen or adult with Autism. We are talking about optimizing someone's health, not "cure", and to me, there is nothing wrong with trying to optimize someone's potential. I believe that improving the overall health of an individual should be the focus of every health pursuit, not to alter someone's personality. When you make these changes you find that the brain, immune system, gut, heart, lungs and body all function better.
The fact is that many people with Autism suffer from, for example, issues with their digestive tract. By addressing those issues you don't have "recovery" necessarily but you do have an individual who feels better. And when you decrease pain and discomfort in their gut, they can then digest food better and they have less bowel issues and function better. It almost goes without saying that if you remove the physical pains, you can increase mental capacity and mental harmony.
So I wanted to talk about these issues in adults with Autism because I mostly see children in my practice but I have worked with adults who face the same health challenges as the children. And occasionally I will see an adult with Autism who has a child on the spectrum as well which then can show you just how much these things go hand in hand. So it is all about optimizing health, improving function so that the individual is able to reach their full potential, whatever that may be. We don't have to use the term "cure" but rather we can talk about the improvement in health and functionality.

Autism really is treatable! Biomedical Autism treatments and therapies have resulted in many, many children improving, or even even losing their autism-spectrum disorder diagnosis. For lots more free biomedical autism intervention information and videos from Dr. Woeller, go to http://www.AutismRecoveryTreatment.com.
Dr. Kurt Woeller is an biomedical autism Intervention specialist, with a private practice in Southern California for over 10 years. He has helped children recover from autism, ADD, ADHD, and other disorders, and has the information you need to help your child. Download his free ebook at http://www.AutismActionPlan.org.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Kurt_Woeller

Recognizing speculative language in biomedical research articles: a linguistically motivated perspective Citation: BMC Bioinformatics

Abstract Background Due to the nature of scientific methodology, research articles are rich in speculative and tentative statements, also known as hedges. We explore a linguistically motivated approach to the problem of recognizing such language in biomedical research articles. Our approach draws on prior linguistic work as well as existing lexical resources to create a dictionary of hedging cues and extends it by introducing syntactic patterns. Furthermore, recognizing that hedging cues differ in speculative strength, we assign them weights in two ways: automatically using the information gain (IG) measure and semi-automatically based on their types and centrality to hedging. Weights of hedging cues are used to determine the speculative strength of sentences. Results We test our system on two publicly available hedging datasets. On the fruit-fly dataset, we achieve a precision-recall breakeven point (BEP) of 0.85 using the semi-automatic weighting scheme and a lower BEP of 0.80 with the information gain weighting scheme. These results are competitive with the previously reported best results (BEP of 0.85). On the BMC dataset, using semi-automatic weighting yields a BEP of 0.82, a statistically significant improvement (p <0.01) over the previously reported best result (BEP of 0.76), while information gain weighting yields a BEP of 0.70. Conclusion Our results demonstrate that speculative language can be recognized successfully with a linguistically motivated approach and confirms that selection of hedging devices affects the speculative strength of the sentence, which can be captured reasonably by weighting the hedging cues. The improvement obtained on the BMC dataset with a semi-automatic weighting scheme indicates that our linguistically oriented approach is more portable than the machine-learning based approaches. Lower performance obtained with the information gain weighting scheme suggests that this method may benefit from a larger, manually annotated corpus for automatically inducing the weights.