What Meditation Can Do For You
Body & Mind
In an analysis of meditation and health ('Good Thinking' by Guy Allenby The Sydney Morning Herald 24 July 2003), Dr Craig Hassed, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Melbourne's Monash University, says: "Meditation is a great adjunct for a lot of things, from chronic pain to improving sleep, helping reduce blood pressure and coping with stress, anxiety and depression." At Monash, meditation is in the undergraduate curriculum for students, he says.
Research into meditation's physiological and therapeutic effects has turned up some impressive results, and increasingly the technique is seen to have a role to play in modern medicine. For instance, a study of Australia 's oncologists published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2000 found that 82 per cent of respondents believed relaxation, meditation and visual imagery therapies were "helpful" for palliative cancer patients (the figure was 69 per cent for patients on the mend).
A University of Melbourne survey published the same year found that 80 per cent of Victorian GPs had referred patients for complementary therapies, with acupuncture, hypnosis and meditation considered the most effective.
At the Pain Management Centre at Sydney 's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital , patients are taught "mindfulness" meditation to manage their chronic pain. Tony Merritt, the centre's clinical psychologist, says they use it as part of their program "to help people think about their pain differently", saying that meditation helps patients to see that pain is something "you don't have to be afraid of and is something that you can live with and cope with". (All above from 'Good Thinking' SMH 24 July 2003 ).
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