Yoga Improves Sleep And Quality Of Life For Cancer Survivors
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When the space shuttle Atlantis returns from the International Space Station it will mark the end of an era for American space travel. We will all be holding our breath for its final safe landing to end a brilliant 30 year career. Reflecting on this, Lawrence Klein, Vice President and Co-Founder of Thought Technology Ltd., recalls, “One of our company’s proudest achievements was to have its FlexComp Infiniti system chosen as the physiological monitoring equipment used in NASA’s NEEMO-9 project.” Included in this report is a video that explains how biofeedback was used in support of the NASA mission.
Competitive athletes should not only practice their sport to improve performance; perhaps they should also practice heart rate variability (HRV). Studies have shown that learning to increase heart rate variability through biofeedback can improve sport performance and help athletes cope with the stress of competition. A link to download the original study is included in this report.
The persistent fatigue that plagues one out of every three breast cancer survivors may be caused by one part of the autonomic nervous system running in overdrive, while the other part fails to slow it down. That imbalance of a natural system in the body appears linked to the tiredness and exhaustion that can burden cancer patients as much as a decade after their successful treatment.
In 2004, I introduced the concept of the “bridge.” Since that time, this author and others have been working with bridges to understand their significance in facilitating conscious influence of the body/mind. Humans, in fact vertebrate life in general, interact with the environment via fifteen bodily functions or “interfaces”. These input/output functions include the eyes, the nose, the lips, the jaw, the ears, the tongue, the throat (larynx and glottis), the hands, the breasts, the diaphragm, the urethral sphincter, the vaginal sphincter, the anal sphincter, the feet, and the skin.
When faced with decisions, we often follow our intuition – our self-described “gut feelings” – without understanding why. Our ability to make hunch decisions varies considerably: Intuition can either be a useful ally or it can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that the trustworthiness of our intuition is really influenced by what is happening physically in our bodies.
“Coherence”, a measure of the consistency of wave phenomena, is often used in the context of the heart beat. Here, it can pertain to the beat itself, i.e. the physical consistency of consecutive beats where each beat is a wave, or it can pertain to the longer term cycle of variation in the heart beat. Note that the latter is not itself a wave but a mathematical abstraction of the heart beat rate. Yet, when breathing slowly, deeply, and rhythmically, the abstraction certainly resembles a wave – why?
In physics, “coherence” is a complex measure of wave phenomena. Specifically, its a measure of the correlation between all of the physical properties of waves, e.g., amplitude, phase, and frequency. If two perfectly “coherent” waves collide, waves that are exact in every respect, they will negate each other perfectly, this “stationary interference” being proof positive of their exactness or “coherence”. Another way to think of it is if we take two perfectly coherent waves, invert one, and add them, the result is exactly “zero”.
Hypertension is of epidemic proportions affecting 29% of the US population 18 and older and 67% of those over 60 years of age, making it one the single largest health concerns. [Data from NHANES 2005-2006, summarized in the January 2008 issue of the NCHS Data Brief].
Social rejection is not just emotionally upsetting; it also upsets your heart. A new study finds that being rejected by another person makes your heart rate drop for a moment. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The Army’s health-care system may soon see changes in how Soldiers are treated for pain, according to a report released by the Army’s surgeon general Wednesday which recommends 109 changes. The Pain Management Task Force’s final report, which was initiated by Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker in August of 2009, addresses the lack of a comprehensive pain-management strategy across the Army, and suggests alternative treatments to medication such as acupuncture, meditation, biofeedback, and yoga.
