more peaceful mind and stress reduction. Meditation has benefits in a number of areas of health, including:
• Reduce blood pressure • Reduce cortisol levels • Reduce pain • Enhance the body's immune system • Reduce feelings of depression, anxiety, fear, anger and confusion • Increase blood flow and slow heart rate
• Help reverse heart disease • Increase energy • Enhance memory and prevent cogni- tive decline
• Reduction of crime in areas where people regularly practice
... all with a profound impact on medi- cal costs.
There have been numerous studies of
the financial benefits of meditation includ- ing: 28% cumulative decrease in physician fees, 55% less medical care utilization with lower sickness rates, including 87% less hospitalization for heart disease and 55% less for cancer. Having been practiced for thousands
of years, meditation continues to evolve. One of the leaders in the field of medita- tion is Jon Kabat-Zinn. He has been teach- ing a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program which has been used in major University studies since the late 1970's at the University of Massachusetts. He and his colleagues have been leading the way in the integration of meditation in mainstream medicine and healthcare. A new mindfulness based intervention has been created and implemented by Eric L Garland Ph.D to help patients manage pain as well as reduce chances of pain medication abuse. Called, "Mindfulness- Oriented Recovery Enhancement," this program is designed to train people to respond differently to pain, stress and opioid (painkiller)-related cues, resulting in a 63 percent reduction in opioid misuse, as well as a 22 percent reduction in pain- related impairment.
Hypnosis Plus Meditation May Boost Relaxation Benefits
Too stressed to meditate? A new treat- ment combining hypnosis with mindful- ness has delivered promising results and
may be a faster, easier way to chill out than traditional meditation Researchers from Baylor University in
Waco, Texas, explored the feasibility of an intervention called "mindful hypnothera- py" as a calming technique for highly stressed people. Mindful hypnotherapy is a novel inte-
gration of two practices: mindfulness, a type of meditation that involves focusing on awareness of the present moment, and hypnotherapy, which uses hypnosis to relax an individual's conscious mind so that suggestions for symptom reduction may be introduced to the subconscious mind.
Published in the International Journal
of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, the randomized, controlled pilot study, titled, "Mindful Hypnotherapy to Reduce Stress and Increase Mindfulnes", hypothesized that adding hypnotic suggestion during meditation can deliver more impactful results in less time than a typical mindful- ness routine, which often requires months of practice and training in order to achieve deeper states of relaxation. Head researcher Gary Elkins, Ph.D., director of the Mind-Body Medicine Re- search Laboratory at Baylor University, believes this new approach to treating anxiety and symptoms associated with high stress could be a valuable therapeutic option for stress disorders. "Combining mindfulness and hypno-
therapy in a single session is a novel inter- vention that may be equal to or better than existing treatments, with the advantage of being more time-effective, less daunting and easier to use," he stated in a news release.
No Surprise: Americans Are Stressed According to a 2019 Gallup poll, feel-
ings of anger, stress and worry in the U.S. have reached their highest levels in a de- cade. The year 2020 has seen greater challenges for much of the nation, leaving a record number of individuals feeling stressed out and uncertain about the fu- ture.
Conventional clinical interventions for
symptoms of high stress may involve long- term cognitive behavioral therapy, often in combination with mood-regulating phar- maceutical prescriptions. Holistic ap- proaches may encourage the adoption of stress-regulating practices like mindfulness meditation, which, Elkins noted, can be
effective, however the required time com- mitment -- more than 24 therapy hours -- can be a barrier to adoption for many individuals. Clinical hypnosis, another integrative
stress therapy, is "a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness [with] enhanced capacity for response to suggestion" that is induced in a therapeutic setting. When mindfulness meditation is prac-
ticed after hypnotic induction, in combina- tion with verbal suggestions for greater mindfulness, the combination has been called "a natural marriage with excellent prospects." The Baylor research team ex- plored these prospects for stress relief in a pilot study on highly stressed students on the Baylor college campus.
Mindfulness: A Path to Deeper Self- Awareness
Despite the promise that both medita-
tion and hypnotherapy have demonstrated in extant research, no prior studies have explored the integration of mindfulness treatment with hypnosis. To fill the scien- tific gap, the Baylor research team devised
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MARCH 2021 21
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