Health News: Top Stories

Expanding awareness: A wide-angle lens to view life
by Nancy Liebler, PhD

Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way Translate This Article
27 September 2011

Nancy Liebler, PhD, a clinical psychologist, professor, and authority on depression, continues to describe her experience learning Transcendental Meditation along with her husband Bud Liebler, a top business executive, almost thirty years ago. Dr Liebler is co-author with Sandra Moss, MSPH, of the book 'Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way: Creating Happiness with Meditation, Yoga, and Ayurveda'.

Please see Part I of this article.

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Immediately after we learned Transcendental Meditation, we realized that this technique was extraordinarily powerful. We realized immediate effects and we clearly sensed that the benefits would be cumulative. We realized this but neither of us thought much about it. We simply meditated. Meditation became a regular part of our lives.

A few months after we began meditating, Bud and I noticed changes in each other. When we commented on these changes we both realized that we did feel quite different from how we had felt in the past.

The experience of ourselves is what we know. How we feel, how we experience ourselves is our reality. When the experience of self changes, and changes significantly and permanently, it changes by degrees. Because we are changing from within, we do not have full realization of the change until it is so profound that it is noticeable to others.

In our book Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way, Sandra and I discuss several ways that the TM technique helps us to change. Transcendental Meditation has the following proven benefits:

∙ Dissolving deep-seated stress
∙ Providing deep rest
∙ Alleviating anxiety
∙ Expanding awareness
∙ Increasing the internal locus of control
∙ Enhancing physiological adaptability
∙ Enhancing psychological adaptability
∙ Purification of the mind
∙ Integration and personal growth

Each of these benefits translates into a holistic change in the mind-body. For instance, when we expand our awareness we acquire a wide-angle lens with which to view life. Expanding awareness opens the ''shutter'' in the mind's eye. When we have a panoramic view of an event, our understanding is enhanced. This deeper viewpoint gives us more flexibility in the face of change, allowing the stress of life's transitions to roll off our backs more easily. When stresses roll off of us more easily then we are not inclined to be reactive to others. Our relationships improve and we don't integrate stress into our physiology. Our health also improves. These are profound changes.

The TM technique has been shown to increase physical, emotional, and psychological resiliency. What can be better than increased resiliency? To be able to roll with life's punches and spring back to action without integrating stress into the physiology is a great gift.

I hope [people will not] be like Bud and me and have to hear about TM over and over before [they] decide to take the plunge. Positive research on this technique is still being reported in scientific journals and the technique is available for all interested parties. Click here to learn more and locate a teacher in your neck of the woods.

Our family is delighted to welcome a new meditator into our fold this week . . . Ivy, age 13. She recently decided to learn TM. The TM technique will provide a natural basis for Ivy's formation of her adult identity. It will give her increased energy, self-confidence and a general feeling of well-being. She'll be able to recognize how people can be identical at their core and yet uniquely different in their personalities. This recognition will help her to have positive relationships throughout her high school experience and beyond.

We believe that practice of the TM technique will help Ivy sail through adolescence unencumbered by the stresses many teenagers experience. She'll be able to access her internal wisdom, rid herself of stress, and reach her full potential!

Dr Nancy Liebler's article, 'Meditation: Transcending darkness', originally appeared 27 September 2011 on the website Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way. Reprinted with permission.

© Copyright 2011 Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way

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