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Meditation mainstream in America What do Goldie Hawn, Heather Graham, Shania Twain, Phil Jackson, Richard Gere, Al Gore and ten million Americans all have in common? They meditate every day. So popular is meditation now becoming in America, that TIME magazine ran a full cover feature on it in the August 4 issue, and the NEW YORK TIMES Sunday magazine ran a feature "Is Buddhism Good for your Health?" in the September 14 issue. Here are some extracts from the TIME article: ..."Meditation is being recommended by more and more physicians as a way to prevent, slow or at least control the pain of chronic diseases like heart conditions, aids, cancer and infertility. It is also being used to restore balance in the face of such psychiatric disturbances as depression, hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorder (ADD). In a confluence of Eastern mysticism and Western science, doctors are embracing meditation not because they think it's hip or cool but because scientific studies are beginning to show that it works, particularly for stress-related conditions. "For 30 years meditation research has told us that it works beautifully as an antidote to stress," says Daniel Goleman, author of Destructive Emotions ..."But what's exciting about the new research is how meditation can train the mind and reshape the brain." Tests using the most sophisticated imaging techniques suggest that it can actually reset the brain, changing the point at which a traffic jam, for instance, sets the blood boiling. Plus, compared with surgery, sitting on a cushion is really cheap. "The brain, like the body, also undergoes subtle changes during deep meditation. The first scientific studies, in the '60s and '70s, basically proved that meditators are really, really focused."

Meditation is the key "Meditation is the key that opens the door to a vast ocean of pure consciousness, pure bliss," Lynch said at an April 2 press conference in L.A. "When the light of peace comes up, negativity just goes away."(David Lynch,director) If you meditate, you do as ten million American adults do, among them film stars Goldie Hawn and Richard Gere, and former Vice President Al Gore. You are also an object of study for serious scientists, who are now discovering that some kinds of meditation have interesting effects that can be measured.

Dr. Herbert Benson According to Dr. Herbert Benson, founder of the Mind Body Medical Institute at Boston's New England Deaconess Hospital, meditation can be an important complement to conventional medical treatment for depression, anxiety, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, migraine headaches, insomnia, and many other conditions. The "relaxation response" technique pioneered by Dr. Benson has been used to reduce side effects of chemotherapy, minimize post-operative pain, alleviate symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, even to treat infertility.