Let me hear an oooom

It's science, people.

Researchers who tracked 201 people as they underwent either transcendental meditation or health education classes found that those who meditated had lower blood pressure and a 47% reducation in strokes, deaths and heart attacks, which they calculated together as one result.

A previous study, in 2009, found that meditation can cut the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death by almost 50% in patients with existing coronary heart disease, according to a new clinical trial. The findings indicate that relaxation and mental focusing can be as effective as powerful new drugs in treating heart disease.

The reason for such a dramatic improvement isn't obvious, but the researchers note that the meditating patients had lower blood pressure, a key risk factor for heart attacks and stroke. Past studies have also indicated that meditation reduces stress hormone levels and dampens the sympathetic nervous system, which triggers the body's stress response. "We've shown that the brain has a direct positive influence on clinical outcomes," says Schneider, whose team presented its findings at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.

Meditation has also been found to:

• significantly reduce depressive symptoms. 
• have greater pain relieving effects than morphine.
• decrease the levels of the stress-causing hormone, cortisol.

The most important discovery, however, is that cats that were unwell became less stressed when they listened to yoga meditation music. The poorly felines calmed down and began to breathe more slowly.

Give your mind a break

About one in ten Americans practice meditation, and the number seems to be growing. The practice has been around since antiquity, and today the term means different things to different people. It's become an avenue of research looking into its health benefits. According to Wikipedia:

Since the 1960s, meditation has been the focus of increasing scientific research of uneven rigor and quality. In over 1,000 published research studies, various methods of meditation have been linked to changes in metabolism, blood pressure, brain activation, and other bodily processes. Meditation has been used in clinical settings as a method of stress and pain reduction.

A new research report finds that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.

Britta Hölzel, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, said the participants practiced mindfulness meditation, a form of meditation that was introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. It traces its roots to ancient Buddhist techniques.

“The main idea is to use different objects to focus one’s attention, and it could be a focus on sensations of breathing, or emotions or thoughts, or observing any type of body sensations,” she said. “But it’s about bringing the mind back to the here and now, as opposed to letting the mind drift.”

Other research: a 2009 study suggests that meditation may reduce blood pressure in patients with coronary heart disease. And a 2007 study found that meditators have longer attention spans.

It makes sense when you consider that from waking to sleeping we are bombarded with artificial sensations and distractions created by other human beings. Which is why simply walking in unstructured nature also contributes to our well-being.