Cancer Meditation – Some History

Cancer Meditation may take it easier to live with and therefore allow you to concentrate on the aspects of cancer treatment that you can heal yourself.
During the 1970’s and 80’d an Australian psychologist Ainslie Meares started to study the effects of meditation on the immune system with a specific question as to whether or not it was possible to shrink
the size of tumors by meditation.

The idea behind it was twofold to get excited about the here and now and live in this moment for the
moment, but to plan for the future as well. Living in the moment is savouring the now time which is especially important for cancer patients, the renewed sense of connection that they feel because most families pull together in a crisis.

It is human to dream about the future and plan, but for many healthy people it can bring about a sense of profound depression because it can be very disappointing. Often those that are chasing wistful dreams for the future can forget to live and taste the benefit of the now moments. It can be very easy to take the now for granted and assume that we always have a now, when of course we cannot take that for granted.

The trauma of being told that one has cancer is sufficient to make a lot of people lose their sense of equilibrium for a time, and meditation helps to realign your life to realize what is important. The more positive that you are the more positive the outcome of your cancer treatment will be.

Meditation from a psychological perspective is intentional self-regulation of attention, a mental shift to focus on a particular experience, and the outcome is often the relief of stress and other side effects of cancer treatment. It helps you to sleep more naturally, cancer patients often find that they suffer from insomnia, or they wake up in the night, the relief of stress through meditation often means a deeper nights sleep.

Medical research has shown that meditation is effective it can reduce anxiety and lessen the likelihood of a panic attack, it reduces chronic pain, and lessens overall stress levels.

Meditation is never going to cure your cancer but it may make it easier to live with and therefore allow you to concentrate on the aspects of cancer treatment that you can heal yourself. It seems that meditation affects the brain patterns and clinical trials have shown that healthy people who meditate have a higher level of brain activity in areas of the brain that control emotional states.

The benefits of meditation is the fact that it can be done anywhere, there are no averse side effects, you may find that it does not help you feel better, but it is not going to have an averse affect. The second benefit is that most people feel the benefit immediately. As there are different schools of meditation such as Zen meditation, Transcendental Meditation, Tibetan meditation as well as those from tai chi and other martial arts. Meditation can be practised by all the family because the strain and anxiety of cancer affects everyone.