There are many articles in popular news reports, blogs and magazines, as well as in scientific journals, indicating that practicing mindfulness and meditation is good for you. Meditation has been linked to:

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The Biochemistry of Love’s Ecstasy and Agony

This Huffington Post article by  Glenn Braunstein (click above link), says so much, in so few words! I’m just going to focus on one aspect of it that I found particularly interesting. The old song that featured the lyrics, (I’m dating myself, now), “Love Makes the World Go Round”, really got it right. Love is a powerful consuming experience that is a complex interweaving of inner and outer experience. Love is a “drug” (as they say in another song), literally and figuratively. What really got me thinking is this statement:

“Research into “the brain chemistry of love” indicates that when a person sees a potential mate, it takes as little as a fifth of a second for the brain to launch a complex “love-related” chain reaction involving multiple areas of the cortical and more primitive subcortical portions of the brain”

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A fifth of a second to start falling in love?!?!??!!  Wow!  What happens in that fifth of a second to trigger the cascade of love potions in your brain?  What could this possibly mean?  

Hypnosis is an altered state, a deep sense of relaxation, engendered in the context of feelings of safety and security created in the hypnosis experience between patient and therapist. Unconscious states of mind become receptive to dialogue and influence. During this process, those critical and fearful voices that tell us that we can’t change or that we will fail are relaxed, and we are more open to new possibilities and trust in the wisdom of the unconscious. As we know, the mind, brain and body are so interconnected as to be one entity. During hypnosis, the illusory delineation between these functions is erased and there is a seamless interpenetration and influence between them. Thus, hypnotic suggestions spoken to the mind, brain and body, create changes in the nervous system. Anxiety is particularly responsive to hypnosis treatment,

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