Meditation
Can a calmer mind help bring about a calmer bowel?

Rick has recently made a significant breakthrough concerning IBS and Meditation. Click here to see the brand new article he wrote about it.

Recently Rick, Sian and I discovered the joys of regular meditation.

Now, before we started to try it out ourselves we'd always imagined it to be some kind of 'Way out there' process which involved sitting cross-legged for hours on end underneath an Oak tree while visualising that we were hovering above the ground and then floating away over the mountain tops.

We'd believed that it wasn't something that was really relevant to us based on our misconceptions of exactly what it is.

How wrong we were....

On our search for the best treatments and therapies to help IBS sufferers, we stumbled across an article on the internet that described a recent study that was carried out specifically to test if Meditative techniques were beneficial for sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

People in the study had training in meditation at six weekly sessions and after a year of doing the regular daily exercises, 8 in 10 people found their IBS symptoms had improved.

So what is Meditation?

In a nut shell though, it's basically a state of complete relaxation that is attained by focusing your attention on one thing only.

In normal day to day life you have a constant mental chatter going on in your head. Your thoughts tend to move from one thing to another throughout the whole time you're awake.

By practising meditative relaxation techniques for about 15 - 20 minutes each day; preferably at about the same time each day; you can learn to completely relax your mind and enter into a complete state of relaxation.

This can be achieved in many ways, including counting your breaths, following a mantra, listening to Binaural tones, or listening to a guided meditation. There are numerous ways to achieve a complete state of relaxation, and it might be worth trying several different methods of learning to focus your attention, to find out which works best for you.

Guided Meditation works well for beginners

We've tried a variety of meditative techniques and found that by far, Guided meditations worked best for us.

A guided meditation is as it sounds, where you are gently guided through the meditative process, often this will be in the form of a short story or description where the narration is often complimented with serene music and sound effects to give you the impression that you're actually in the place being described.

You could get taken away in your minds eye to a desert island, or a paradise beach, and get to experience it completely through the expert use of sound and your own imagination.

Meditainment

We have recently discovered a company called Meditainment who produce some amazing guided meditations that are a joy to listen to, and leave you feeling great about yourself. The music, narration and sound effects that accompany your restful journey into relaxation are truly awesome. They are ideal for helping people to relax and could really help IBS sufferers who attribute most of their symptoms to stress and worry.

A typical Meditainment program lasts 21 minutes:

0 - 5 min
Simple relaxation exercise that relaxes the body and calms thoughts

6 - 12 mins
Story-line that captivates attention and encourages feelings of contentment and deep relaxation

13 - 15 mins
Narrative about well-being topic for reflection in the meditative state

16 - 21 mins
Story-line leads out of meditative state and a return to awakened state

(They are currently offering a superb, and FREE, "Secret Garden" Guided relaxation Sample on their website…)

Long term Benefits?

There are many short and long-term benefits linked with the regular practice of meditating. A calmer temperament, a more relaxed mind, and a general decrease in stress are all obvious benefits which to some IBS sufferers could be very useful in relieving their symptoms.

Regular meditating also reduces blood pressure and lowers the resting heart rate which takes stress off the heart. Breathing is improved due to the increase of air flow that gets to the lungs and people tend to feel much better about themselves.

Meditating gets the IBS-Life Thumbs-up!

So, can a calmer mind help bring about a calmer bowel?
- we certainly believe so!

We highly recommend trying these relaxation techniques for yourself. Just aim for a few minutes every day; at roughly the same sort of time and place, and see how you feel after doing it for a few weeks.

Be sure to Download the free 'secret garden' relaxation program from meditainment, and sit or lay down somewhere comfortable where you won't be disturbed for about 20 minutes. Plug in some headphones, close your eyes and follow the gentle guiding voice on your journey of relaxation..

You will have a most pleasant experience, your blood pressure will lower, your stress will decline, and you will feel as refreshed as if you had just woken from a 1 hour deep sleep.

Enjoy!

Rick has recently made a significant breakthrough concerning IBS and Meditation. Click here to see the brand new article he wrote about it.

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