I had an inclination of something that might occur when she took out a book on Buddhist wisdom. So it came as no surprise that after laughing about some shared travel experiences, the topic shifted.

“Do you meditate?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I can’t stop my thoughts from swirling around in circles when I do,” she told me. “For instance, my yoga teacher asked me to focus on ’1′, but I just kept thinking — does she mean the number 1 or the word o-n-e?”

I laughed and said, “I totally get it!”

It can be hard to quiet our thoughts, whatever we’re doing, despite our best intentions — whether we’re in a class, in a meeting, behind the wheel, or even sitting in silence. (Sometimes especially when we are trying to sit silently!) My to-do list keeps insisting it needs my attention, or I might find myself ruminating on a past or future event.

But it’s worth it to mentally quiet down. It’s now well-documented how a practice of regularly calming our thinking is healthy — evidence abounds showing that meditation is good for emotional and physical wellbeing.

The Journal of Neuroscience reported recently that newly-trained meditators showed a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness after just a few sessions of meditation. Other recent research found that mindfulness-based stress reduction methods can decrease loneliness and, remarkably, may reduce “pro-inflammatory gene expression” in older adults.

These two studies focused on using a tightly structured program of meditation. But there isn’t just one way to practice it.

I asked a few Boston-based yoga instructors what kind of training they’d received. They said it runs the gamut. They’d received training about many different ways to meditate, and incorporate different ideas they find helpful into their own practices and classes.

It’s not just yogis, martial artists and people taking an active interest in Eastern philosophy who meditate. In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that over 20 million Americans meditate to improve their health.

Even the website for the movie Escape Fire — a documentary to be released October 5 about radical changes needed in the U.S. health care system — has a meditation app in its solution area.

This indicates how widespread the approaches taken to meditation can be.

One definition of meditation is to engage in contemplation or reflection. Another is to engage in mental exercise to reach a heightened level of spiritual awareness. Often, people associate meditation with Buddhism or Hinduism, or even consider it to be a purely secular activity.

But contemplative practices are also deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian scripture. For example, in one of David’s songs, he says: “I meditate on all Your works; I muse on the work of Your hands.”

Rather than the practice of emptying one’s thought, this suggests an approach of consciously filling thought with something good, of meditating on a divine influence that acts throughout our day.

Time and time again, I’ve found that this brings a feeling of release from needing to control every aspect of my experience.

That may sound great in theory, but in practice, we may go back to trying to figure out how to stop wondering about that tricky question sitting in our email, or why we’re stuck folding so much laundry every week.

So how can we move past this pesky mental chatter and think about a broader perspective? Here are a few ways I’ve found helpful to fill my thoughts in my moments of meditation:

1. Silently ask a really big question.

Simply allowing ourselves to consider big questions can completely change the trajectory of our thoughts. For example, I’ve asked questions like, “How unlimited is divine spirit, or just how good is divine love?” And then I’ll wait to gain some sense of that.

I’ve found that when I accept the insights that come to me, it transforms my thinking. It gives me a peaceful feeling of stillness and a sense of release from concern about my ability to accomplish what lies ahead.

2. Consider the idea that you’re connected to the divine.

After my flight landed in Jackson, Wyo., I headed out to a rural destination for a friend’s wedding, and in the night sky I could see the Milky Way so brilliantly. As I reveled in the vastness of the universe, I thought about the oneness of everything. It’s not like we are in one place and the stars are in a separate place — I was glimpsing that time and space are constructions of a limited perspective. There is nothing that divides us from each other because we are all linked directly to and through the divine.

This had a unifying aspect to it that enabled me to feel as though I was part of the spiritual spokes that emanate from a divine source along with everything I could see in the vast sky and everyone else around me.

Contemplating this idea of connection with the divine and with one another in this way made it feel simpler for me to navigate and enjoy the busyness of the wedding weekend.

3. “Marinate” in those ideas.

Just as marinades work through chemical reactions with food — to make it more tender and enhance the flavor — letting new insights overtake old ways of thinking can tenderize and enhance our being.

When a new perspective comes in response to contemplating a big question or a sense of connectedness, we can be humble enough to soak it in and let it calm and still our thought. Humility helps provide the mental space to consider a new angle. And having this mental space makes it easier to bring fresh insights into our next activity after we have finished meditating.

I find that considering even just one spiritual point expands my thinking and changes me. I also find that I need to practice this type of thinking regularly in order to feel the benefits consistently.

Before my seat-mate and I parted, I mentioned some of these thoughts on contemplative thinking. She said, “I’m definitely going to try asking a big question the next time I meditate!”

Later, at the ranch in Wyoming, overlooking golden-colored aspens clapping in the wind, it was easy to delight in the stillness of the moment.

But getting back to my daily routine, that “ah-ha” moment hasn’t completely left me. I’ve returned to Boston with a slightly more joyful spring in my step and a touch more peace in my heart.

Sharon is a practitioner of Christian Science and works in media relations for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

This article originally appeared on theHuffington Post.

This research, summarized in a book called The Longevity Project, shows that qualities like ambition, perseverance, and motivation are pretty healthy for you.

But reacting to colleagues? Not so much.

Howard Friedman, Ph.D., who co-authored the study, wrote, “The results were very clear: Those with the most career success were the least likely to die young.”

Perhaps we already know this intuitively — living a purposeful life feels great. And the data indicates that purposeful living is healthier than feeling unsatisfied with your work, or not living up to your potential, even if you are not in your dream job.

Friedman says that your own road map is more important than family biology, and the chances of predicting your health and longevity from your genes are mediocre at best. “The experience of your relatives is not very precise at all. Your own life path matters more.”

We all know that health care costs are increasing exponentially, and radical changes are needed to shift from a disease-focused system of care to a health-focused one.

Couple the questions about rising costs with the fact that our assumptions about what is healthy can be misleading, and we see how important it is to dig deeper into the longevity question. Also, common wisdom says that to live a long life you should exercise, not smoke, and eat well. These are helpful ideas, but is there more to the story?

Scientists are still striving to understand what causes people to live longer, according to Dr. Thomas Rando, Deputy Director at Stanford’s Center on Longevity.

In a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival, he questions the thought that aging is unavoidable. He mentions Jeanne Calment, the world record holder as the “clearly documented oldest person.” In her 122 years, she met Vincent Van Gogh in her French hometown and almost saw in the millennium.

Anecdotally, Rando also showed the audience photos of Tina Turner at 70 compared to Charles Darwin at 64. Needless to say, Tina looked much better than Charles. Baby boomers today generally look and act much younger than people used to in their 60s.

It’s not just boomers, either. “Eighty-year-olds today are living healthier lives than 80-year-olds used to. We don’t know why,” said Rando.

What occurs to me from reading the findings of The Longevity Project is that perhaps one reason for this is that people are growing in their sense of purpose. If qualities like conscientiousness and altruistic ambition are healthy, perhaps consciousness, rather than genes, plays a more significant role in longevity.

If so, then it’s never too early to start thinking more about developing such spiritual qualities. But how do we bring them out in our lives?

At one point I changed careers after some soul-searching. I took a major cut in pay and a humbling shift in roles. My new, part-time, position was with an organization whose mission I fully supported, but I felt that the role didn’t challenge me intellectually. I could be orderly, helpful, and kind; however, that didn’t feel like it was enough. So I started to consider more deeply the kinds of qualities  I wanted to be expressing while working.

I focused more on my spiritual identity as the expression of the divine consciousness that couldn’t be hindered in its purpose — and I saw that I was naturally able to exhibit the full range of qualities this entailed right where I was, no matter what chair I happened to be sitting in.

And as I expanded my thought, my job description expanded to embrace the need for those qualities, too. As it turns out, the part-time role soon led to a full-time one and then on to many bigger opportunities.

So that’s one side of the coin. But what about reacting with hostility or hurt pride to interpersonal issues, which research has shown to be unhealthy?

For me, that’s often the toughest part of work.

At one company, I worked for someone who was often vocal about his negative feelings and frustration with the work. I didn’t know if I could continue on there. Sometimes I would find myself standing in his office doorway receiving a verbal lashing.

I sought guidance on this issue by turning again to a sense of what was spiritually needed. I was led to look for good qualities that this guy already expressed. It wasn’t easy at first to see many, as I felt blinded by my reaction to his overriding negativity.

But I started to see that his heart was in his work, and he really wanted to benefit others through the efforts we made. I saw qualities like diligence and thoughtfulness.

After a few months of thinking this way, I realized I didn’t have the same reaction to him anymore. Not only that, but he also started to visibly change his approach as he became more interested in spiritual aspects of life. Today we remain friends, and there isn’t a trace of the animosity or resentment I had felt.

I still have much more to learn regarding harmonious interactions with people, but my daily aspiration is to appreciate what’s good and divinely beautiful about the people around me. This approach helps me put aside feelings of wounded pride, jealousy, or dissatisfaction, and replace them with more love, selflessness, and stillness.

To me, this approach follows, in a small way, what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” To seek what’s good and pure ultimately leads to fullness and true satisfaction, so much more so than getting enmeshed in office politics.

If we find ourselves dissatisfied in a current role, seeking this type of spiritual fulfillment sometimes might lead to finding a new role. But other times, it may involve seeing differently what’s been there all along.

That thought shift can change everything.

Sharon is a practitioner of Christian Science and works in media relations for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

We were easily persuaded.

We pulled over to the roadside stand to find fresh-baked blueberry pie, strawberry rhubarb pie and those whoopie pies, as well as maple cookies and fresh jam. Standing to attention with her ears back and tail wagging, a three-legged black Lab/boxer mix was gleeful at the sight of two cars full of potential tummy-scratchers.

It was my third day off the grid, and I was in a new groove. Some friends and I were on our way home to Boston from a weekend canoe trip, and I had gained a good mental distance from the incessant tug to check email on my iPhone.

I was so much more at peace than when we had left Boston.

Before the trip, I had been anything but calm. I hadn’t gotten everything done that I’d wanted to do, and I knew I wouldn’t have any time to catch up while we were away. A few of the same ideas were playing in my mind like a song on repeat: “You’re too slow. You’ll never get your work done. You’re not good enough to do what you’re being asked to do.”

As I had left for the trip, I’d hoped I would be able to let go of some of this negative thinking, and it was liberating to do so. Clearly, my recurring thoughts weren’t productive in the short-term, nor were they helping me with my long-term goals of character growth. I certainly didn’t want to hold on to them.

Apparently I’m not the only one who deals with repetitive thinking. Research shows that this is typical. “Repetitive, prolonged, and recurrent thought about one’s self, one’s concerns and one’s experiences is a mental process commonly engaged in by all people,” according to a bulletin from the American Psychological Association.

The bulletin differentiates between constructive and unconstructive repetitive thinking, with the latter linked to depression, anxiety, and physical health problems.

It points to several studies that show how repetitive thinking about symptoms and upsetting events has been found to predict future depression and poor recovery from those events.

I experienced that when I was a recent college grad.

My sweetheart had asked me to marry him. Initially, it was great: I had a loving fiancé, excited family and friends, and I started thinking about where and when to hold the wedding.

But within a week, it hit me that this wasn’t a good fit for marriage.

After spending six more months trying to make it work, we broke up. Both of us were devastated.

Mornings were tough; I didn’t want to wake up. My dreams were so much better than my reality. Some days as I was driving to work, I thought it might be a good option to turn the wheel and drive off the road. I knew these ideas were extreme, but I just couldn’t see around them.

My thoughts kept churning. Would I ever be happy again? Would I ever find love? Was I capable of loving?

My friends suggested that I seek professional counseling. They wondered if I couldn’t handle commitment, or if there was something else wrong with me.

I knew intuitively that I needed healing from the inside out.

Psychologist Nancy Colier recently said that there are dangers in looking for happiness outside ourselves. She says: “Happiness, when it comes from an external object (no matter what that object is), is always coming and going.”

Instead, she recommends uncovering a state of well-being that is “not dependent upon any external circumstance.”

This is what I realized I needed help uncovering at that time: a kind of unconditional wholeness.

Based on my previous experience, I felt there was another type of professional who could help me achieve that. On several occasions I had asked a spiritual practitioner to work with me to good effect, so I contacted her again.

She mentioned that I was already whole and inseparable from the divine, and said she would hold to that spiritual view of me.

She also suggested that I consider what I could be grateful for, and asked me to think of ways I could help others.

I wasn’t terribly thrilled with this approach. Why should I feel grateful? And why should I help others when I was the one that needed help?

But I did start to find simple things to be thankful for, and small ways to help others. I could hold a door open for someone. I could appreciate friends and family who were trying to help.

Eventually, it began to sink in that my happiness didn’t depend on what was going on around me. What mattered was what was happening within me, and how I expressed that.

I could cultivate not only a sense of gratitude and love but all sorts of spiritual qualities — like joy, grace, and patience. And I could watch for negative thoughts that would obscure those qualities. This process was like watering and weeding a garden to keep it growing with productive seed and not let it get taken over by things that didn’t add to its beauty.

My thoughts softened. My heart lifted. I was completely back to normal within a few months. The sense of loss and despair were replaced by happiness, contentment, and a healthier perspective. (I was also grateful to learn later that my ex had married within a few years.)

Even though my life hasn’t been pure bliss since then, I’ve never again experienced the dark thoughts I once did. In fact, more and more I’ve experienced a kind of thinking I’ve found described in the book of Jeremiah: “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

This experience showed me that I have a choice between the thoughts I keep and the ones I need to trash, depending on whether they come from a place of light or of darkness. To me, these thoughts of light are those that stem from a divine source, which thoughts of darkness don’t have.

That’s why, back at the pie stand in Maine, I was able to let go of the “you’ll never be able to” thoughts, and the “you’re too (fill in the negative trait!)” thoughts. I had gotten out of my routine activities and into new sights and sounds. Similarly, I had broken out of the same old thought patterns into new ways of seeing myself and others.

I’m learning that I don’t have to wait until I’m sitting in front of a calm rural scene to get into this transformative zone of being open to new views. I can even do it when I’m in the office or between meetings.

In this way, we can break cycles of anxiety and negative thoughts by insisting a little more each day on our ability to focus on what is good and beautiful around us and to get better at choosing what we let into our thinking.

After all, if those thoughts of light come from a divine source, then they aren’t restricted to a particular time or location.

Sharon is a practitioner of Christian Science and works in media relations for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

My boss told me of a complaint she’d received about my attitude, management style and performance which I felt was grossly unjust.

But instead of coming to my defence, in my dumbstruck silence she said: “I think you should take tomorrow off and think about what has happened. Maybe that will help you consider how to amend your ways.”

I went home, curled up on the couch, and tried not to ruminate about what had just happened. But my reaction to what had occurred kept pushing its way into my thoughts, along with questions about myself.

Talk about stressful.

I admit that sometimes I’ll turn to a goofy cat video to de-stress at the end of the day. But I clearly needed something much more than a good laugh to push through my distress and figure out a way forward.

Research shows anxiety and conflicts aren’t helpful for health and well-being, a point I really take to heart. Wanting to live a healthy lifestyle without needing to look to a biomedical remedy, I yearned to find a more peaceful frame of mind from which to address the situation. As I did so I began to recognize the necessity to express more humility.

It was time for some soul searching.

One way I approach this is through stories told by the world’s great spiritual teachers. The stories that help me most in my soul searching come from the lessons Jesus articulated. One parable in particular has helped me many times.

It’s about a guy who demands his inheritance from his dad while still a young adult. He leaves home and spends his cash on crazy parties, then encounters a crisis. When he finally hits rock bottom, he decides to go home and ask for forgiveness. When he arrives his dad runs out to greet him with a big hug and throws him a party.

The kicker for me in the story is the older brother’s attitude. He doesn’t understand why his younger brother can behave so irresponsibly and yet be immediately forgiven. He has been obedient and faithful during the same period. As one Bible translation puts it, he: “…stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends?’”

Realizing how the older brother feels, the dad says to him, “Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours.”

He indicates they should all celebrate together in gratitude.

I find this story comforting. It not only shows me the lesson of forgiveness learned by the younger son, but I also needed to learn the lesson being taught to the older son — that I can feel the good in my life is secure. It doesn’t depend on the actions of others. The father’s words in this parable — “everything that is mine is yours” — speaks to me of a deeper sense of what we have and its loving source that’s always with us, no matter what. To me, it represents a bigger picture of a divine Parent who provides everything we need.

So how could the ideas in this story help me get a more secure feeling and let go of the stressful situation I was in?

An author I like to get ideas from — the late 19th century American pioneer on health and spirituality, Mary Baker Eddy — wrote: “the health and character of man become more or less perfect as his mind-models become more or less spiritual.”

I knew that in order to feel peace, I had to take a good look at what model of security I was holding in mind. Was it based on external factors determined by those around me? Or did it rest on a more spiritual viewpoint and what that led me to think about myself and others?

The model I wanted to hold on to, as I thought about the character and qualities of myself as well as my colleagues, was one of compassion, love, and forgiveness — not fear, anxiety or bitterness. If good truly comes from an always-loving divine source it seemed to me that good, calm qualities were natural to me and everyone.

Working from this model, I considered how I could do better. Had I been defensive, willful or selfish?

I realized I could be more compassionate. I think subconsciously I’d felt expressing too much compassion would be seen as a weakness coming from a woman in a professional environment. But that wasn’t right. Everyone who expresses compassion with their colleagues is actually showing great strength, not fear, and is probably less stressed and better able to help others be more stress-free too.

From that point on, I began to feel much more at peace and able to feel greater compassion for those around me. Like the older brother in the parable I came to see I had everything I needed — nothing could be unjustly taken from me.

In an effort to remain less stressed I made changes in my daily routine and took more time to read and reflect on spiritual ideas first thing in the morning, even before checking emails. This set the tone for an increasingly secure, joy-filled and calm outlook, and I began to notice more compassion in others too.

It turned out well. I kept my job!

What I believe could have become an avalanche of stress leading to potentially bad health consequences had turned around into finding a deep, inner stillness that empowered me to solve the problem.

And the only remedy I had to reach for was the stories and ideas that have taught me that as children of that divine Parent stress isn’t an inevitable part of our lives.

Sharon is a practitioner of Christian Science and works in media relations for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

This article originally appeared on theHuffington Post.

Glow images

An acquaintance who writes for for PsychologyToday.com generously posted an article I wrote on on her blog here. Thanks Madora!

Equilibrium. Sound unrealistic given the avalanche that is your to-do list?

You’re not alone.

Check out the faces of drivers around you or people walking down the street, and it’s not hard to see others sporting a look that says they need to be somewhere else.

Being out of balance is how Merriam Webster partly defines stress. It says, “a state of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existing equilibrium.”

Stress, as well as other mental health factors, has a front-and-center need to be addressed.  According to some studies, most doctor visits in the U.S. may be triggered by a stress-related issue. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that antidepressants were the most frequently used drugs by Americans, ages 18 to 44, from 2005 to 2008.

But there’s another side to this coin.

A recent 60 Minutes report highlighted the effectiveness of placebos in treating depression. When asked whether people using antidepressants improve, Dr. Irving Kirsch, Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School said, “Oh yes,  people get better when they take the drug.”

“But,” he said, “it’s not the chemical ingredients of the drug that are making them better. It’s largely the placebo effect.”

So if the active ingredients in the drugs aren’t necessarily causing the effect — nor are the inert ingredients in the placebos – could there be a different approach that has an impact without pills?

For instance, what if the thing that needs to be addressed is ultimately the sense of being out of equilibrium? One way of doing this could involve nurturing a sense of inner peace, calm, or stability.

This idea rings true in my own life.

A year after I graduated from college I experienced a deeply stressful situation, and felt extremely depressed.

My college sweetheart asked me to marry him.  It was a hugely joyous time — for a week. We told our families, our friends, and our colleagues. Then, out of the blue, it hit me that this relationship was not the right fit for a marriage, for him or me.

I really wanted it to be a happily-ever-after story, but unfortunately all that wanting didn’t make it so. Six months later we broke up.

The deep despair that I felt was too much.

Sometimes when I was driving I would think, “What would it be like just to turn the steering wheel and drive off the road?” If I just ended my time on earth, maybe that would be better. I could move on to whatever came next in the following plane of existence. “Why live with this much mental angst?” I thought.

My loving friends and family tried to be as supportive as they could. “Why was it not right?” they asked, trying to help me sort out what had happened and why. They bought me flowers and had meals with me, but I still felt like my lights were off.

Mornings were especially rough. Because the dream-world felt so much better than waking-life, I was really unhappy when my alarm woke me up.

But underneath all the stuff I was dealing with, in the back of my thought I felt there was a divine path that could help. In tough situations I had been in before, I had asked a practitioner of Christian Science to help me, to good effect.

So I contacted this person to pray for me and, in addition, she encouraged me to consider two points: what I was grateful for each day, and how I could help others. Frankly I was a little dismayed by this.

I thought, “How can I help others? I’m the one who needs help!”

She said maybe the help I could offer would be simple, like holding a door open for someone behind me.  To even recognize that I could help seemed like a stretch. But I tried.

I also strove to be grateful for a few things each day. It wasn’t easy, but the practitioner helped me to see how to take some next steps.

I started to realize that it didn’t really matter what I was doing. What mattered was how I was thinking about what I was doing, and whether that included a sense of love.

Eventually I had a much firmer, clearer grasp on gratitude and through my small experiences of helping others, I understood better that I had a purpose, just as every person does. Contentment, satisfaction, and joy began to replace the sense of loss and despair I had felt.

I was lifting myself out of the abyss and got better at tuning in to what divine Love was telling me was true about myself and others.

While the circumstances in my life didn’t immediately change my outlook had been altered. The prophet Isaiah mentions something similar: “Lift up your eyes all around, and see…” To me, spirituality enables us to see beyond what is in front of our eyes to what fills in the picture of what is really happening at a deeper level.

While I can’t say my life has been pure bliss in the many years since, I can say that I’ve never again experienced the despondency I felt then. I’ve realized that no matter what I’m going through, I am able to keep a higher perspective and that brings equilibrium to my mental health.

I was also happy to learn that my boyfriend married within a few years.

Oprah Winfrey once said, “I trust that life is bigger than what I can see. I trust there is a divine order beyond my control.”  [Source: Oct. 2000 O Magazine]

I agree.  The Divine is always loving us and providing goodness in our lives, which is what I learned from this experience. Nothing has the ability to shake that order and disturb our equilibrium.

Glow images

Forty years ago a revolution began in sports. Title 9, “designed to ensure gender equality in education”, changed the demographics on athletic fields.

But it has also changed the field of medicine.

After 1972, more women started to enroll in PhD programs, thanks in large part to Title 9 legislation that made sex-discrimination illegal at educational institutions receiving federal funds.

In 1972, women earned 9% of medical degrees in the U.S.  In 2011, they earned 50% of them.

“There are a lot more women who have entered the profession who are now physicians… those who are in their thirties and forties,” said Dr. Michael Balboni, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, speaking at a panel on the convergence of spirituality and medicine.

“Women are changing the way medicine is practiced. There’s a lot more openness and receptivity to other aspects than the [medical] science. I think we will continue to see that trend over the next twenty years and it’s going to continue to change medicine dramatically as the people who are the leaders begin to retire.”

In many cases this openness has meant considering people holistically, including valuing the spiritual aspects of a patient that can’t be seen or measured physically. That is, aspects which can’t be assessed by a material sense of the individual.

For a long time, western medicine hasn’t been structured to take into account a more spiritual sense. But thinking about a patient holistically is gaining ground.

Of course, the nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale – who had a keen interest in spirituality – practiced this approach back in the 19th century. She is considered to be “one of the first holistic nurses,” according to an “official nursing specialty” of the American Nursing Association devoted to a practice of “holistic caring and healing”.

A more recent pioneering female clinician, Lissa Rankin, M.D., asks in a TED talk, “What if I told you that caring for your body is the least important part of your health?”

Dr. Rankin refers to her “inner pilot light” as an intuitive sense of how to address things that are out of balance. She found that listening to this inner light radically affected both her life and her medical practice.

The biomedical model assumes that the answer to better health is outside of you — something like a drug or other medicine that you need to consume. But Rankin found this wasn’t healing her patients.

She experimented with various approaches and discovered that addressing what’s within us is more important, including caring for the mind, the heart, and the soul. Doing that helped make her patients healthy.

She says, “If you knew that… letting us see that beautiful light within you was the solution to your health problems, would you be willing to do it?”

And she added, “I dare you!”

It’s a dare we should all take, but how should we begin?

We can start by asking ourselves — what’s the source of this light?

Jesus, who was so clearly in tune with his source of spiritual light, said the kingdom of God is within you. To me, this means that we each reflect the radiance of divine love, like a mirror reflects sunlight. Light is an unstoppable force that displaces any sense of darkness in its path. Darkness doesn’t have to be removed. It naturally disappears in the face of light.

Similarly, I’ve experienced what even a small acknowledgement of a divine source of love can do to something like fear, anxiety, or frustration. I’ve seen how yielding to that inner light can still rapids of anxious thoughts by giving me a fresh sense of who I am. It provides a spiritual perspective to help me grow out of old ways of thinking, into a new frame of mind.

Assuming innovative thinking like that of Dr. Rankin is an early sign of what’s to come in the field of medicine, think what women will bring to that – for the benefit of women and men – over the next forty years.

If finding “that beautiful light within you” can bring health and healing, perhaps it’s pointing to a divine consciousness of harmony which is the very essence of who we truly are.

photo by chricycle

I’m lightheartedly gliding along a beach-side path on a gold rental bike with silver arched handlebars. Suddenly I hear someone screaming “Aaaaahhhrrrr!” It sounds like an angry pirate is heading toward me.

I quickly realize I’ve crossed over into the wrong lane by mistake as I made space for a friend riding next to me. A guy dressed for some serious biking was 20 feet in front of me, his face twisted with rage. I immediately got back into my lane and he passed by.

“Do you think he’s riding for his health?” asked my friend, tongue in cheek.

“If he is, it may not be working, unfortunately,” I said.

Of course I had made a mistake being in the wrong lane. But this guy’s response didn’t seem very helpful for him, especially if he really was riding to benefit his health.

Researchers report that anxiety and anger aren’t fruitful for well-being and, on the contrary, happiness is good for us. A 2011 review of 160 studies published in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-being found “clear and compelling evidence” that happy people tend to live longer and experience better health than unhappy peers.

Similarly, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Carol Graham, notes that a number of studies find that happier people are healthier. “For example,” she says, “a recent study in the OECD countries finds that hypertension prevalence and average country-level happiness rankings are negatively correlated…”

So how can we, as a society, benefit more from knowing about this link between good cheer and health? Some countries are focused on this at a policy level. Bhutan, for example, is a well-known innovator with its Gross National Happiness index. Australia, Canada, China, France and the United Kingdom are also reportedly working on measuring happiness.

In the US, the Gallup Organization started a Well-Being Index in 2008, in conjunction with Healthways, Inc.  Their approach is based on the World Health Organization’s definition of health, which is “…not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental, and social well-being.”

These ideas address the ways in which society can benefit, but how can we as individuals profit from knowledge of this link?

I know I feel better when I’m in the middle of a big belly laugh than when I feel anxious. And I feel at peace if I’m focusing on the divine, or on any ideas that lift me from thinking about myself and my problems.

These experiences put things in perspective and help me see a grander view. My worries slip away. For instance, sometimes when I’m walking home from the subway I remember to look up at the sky and marvel at how the moon shines brightly and stars form Orion above me.

I’m learning that when I let fear or bitterness govern it tends to enslave me, whereas a consciousness of love and calmness provides freedom, regardless of what’s going on around me. It’s impossible to be loving and bitter at the same time.

Some Scriptural references on these ideas have helped me in this effort to love, by naturally leading me to a happier state of mind. In a letter the Apostle Paul sent to the early Christians of Philippi, which is in modern-day Greece, he said: “Live together in harmony, live together in love, as though you had only one mind and one spirit between you. Never act from motives of rivalry or personal vanity, but in humility think more of each other than you do of yourselves. None of you should think only of his own affairs, but should learn to see things from other people’s point of view.”

In humility I recognize I should put myself in that biker’s shoes and have compassion for him. I wish for his sake he’d been willing to do the same for me.

Regardless, what a feeling of contentment that compassion brings me. I know the more consistently we can do this, the better we will feel.

Photo by Stéphane O

Living in a Quantum World. The June cover of Scientific American really caught my eye. It seems that for a while now, physicists have been saying yes, quantum mechanics exists, but it only applies to a category of small things, very small things. However, the author of this article, along with a growing chorus of other physicists, says it looks like quantum mechanics applies to bigger things too.

So what?

The author, Vlatko Vedral, writes, “In a quantum world, a particle does not just have to take one path at one time; it can take all of them simultaneously.” All of them, at the same time. Imagine if you or I could take various paths simultaneously. That would really break our concepts of space and time. My understanding is that sometimes physicists refer to this as non-locality, or perhaps, infinity.

Now I’m clearly no physics expert. The last time I laid eyes on a physics textbook was my senior year in high school, with a first-time teacher. God bless that poor man, who had to deal with a bunch of rowdy seniors. But regardless of my lack of physics knowledge, it sounds to me like these findings would have big effects on science if they’re true.

For instance, if our firmly held concepts of space and time aren’t exactly what we think they are, how would that affect the field of medicine? If western medicine assumes that we’re comprised of lots of very small particles that act and react a certain way in space and time, what happens if those assumptions are challenged? What if atoms and molecules are indeed non-local?

The author says that quantum behavior “forces us to rethink how we look at the universe and accept a new and unfamiliar picture of our world.” Indeed, it’s good to keep digging for truth. I, for one, look forward to seeing what quantum physicists discover next.

In a blog network that highlights diverse perspectives on science and medicine, Steve Silberman wrote an interesting piece called Meet the Ethical Placebo: A Story that Heals.  He discusses a study showing that some patients who take sugar pills, even when they are told they are taking sugar pills, get better.

Some of these scientists have decided that this effect should be studied, instead of just being thought of as a “statistical distraction,” as many pharmaceutical companies may have considered them.

So, back to the original question: why do placebos work? Silberman says, “The precise nature of the placebo effect is shaped largely by patients’ expectations.”

To me, it sounds like the mental nature of health is now being observed in these clinical trials. This is intriguing, and I’m interested to see that these scientists are drilling deeper into what’s behind cause and effect with placebos. Another finding is that the level of support and confidence a health care provider has with the patient and his or her situation has an effect on healing.

Why would a supportive environment matter if there wasn’t a mental nature to health? It wouldn’t. And why would patients’ expectations matter either? I’m looking forward to seeing what these scientists find next.

Sugar by  Uwe Hermann via Flickr

Even doctors are amazed at Giffords’ progress.

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MSNBC has a clip of Dr. Michael Lemole, Giffords’ chief neurosurgeon in Tuscon, saying, “Miracles happen every day. And in medicine we like to very much attribute them to either what we do or others do around us, but a lot of medicine is outside of our control and we’re wise to acknowledge miracles.”

Wow, that’s really interesting.

Focusing more on that idea, a Fox News poll found that 8 in 10 Americans believe that prayer helped Rep. Giffords’ survive the shooting. I hope it did. I know I was praying. But the Congresswoman could probably best answer that question herself.

I hope that Giffords plays a substantial role as a leader for many years. I wonder what she’ll do next. Return to Congress? Give talks about civility? Run for President? Who knows, the sky could be the limit.

I’m so grateful that all of the medical professionals involved in her recovery have been able to provide quality care for the Congresswoman. And I find it interesting that her progress is seen as “not normal”. That something else, indeed, is going on here. That maybe cause and effect go beyond what we can see and observe with our physical senses. Maybe divine Spirit plays a role.

Personally, I don’t believe that what we commonly call miracles are an aberration from normalcy. Because if something happens once, how could there be a real scientific law indicating otherwise?

A wise woman once wrote, “Impossibilities never occur.”  If it’s possible for Congresswoman Giffords to make this sort of recovery, doesn’t that open up the possibilities to many people who seek healing beyond “normal” recoveries and progress?