Meditation Can Help You Look and Feel Younger

Do you sometimes wish for a magic wand to whisk away your worries and your wrinkles, too? Or does it sound impossible?

Meditation could be just the magic wand that you’ve been looking for. Research suggests that women who meditate daily for more than five years cut back their biological aging process and increase their sense of happiness, according to Deborah Sandella, Ph.D., R.N., author of the meditation book and CD, “Releasing the Inner Magician: Ways to Find a Peaceful and Happy Life.”

Meditation has become a worldwide hit. In fact, 1.5 million people practice this simple technique for greater health and happiness. The National Institutes of Health has invested millions of dollars to study meditation and similar methods because of all the remarkable benefits. For example, a recent study found that headache sufferers had a 32 percent reduction in the frequency and severity of migraines after meditation. Even more incredible, long-time meditators were found to have bodies physiologically five to 10 years younger than their biological age. And patients with psoriasis healed four times faster when they listened to a guided imagery tape during ultraviolet treatment sessions. New research has prove
Sandella’s book and CD, Releasing the Inner Magician, can significantly reduce the symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a stress-related illness that affects millions of men and women.

Fifteen minutes a day is all you need to create a virtual vacation from stress, Sandella says. Simply put on the guided-meditatio
CD, sit back and enjoy a mini holiday as you relax intonyour intuitive nature.

“You’ll be surprised how easily your true nature makes itself known once you slow your pace to create time for contemplation,” Sandella writes. “When we know and trust who we are, we can stop longing to be someone else.”

Stress and worry make life seem difficult and overwhelming, and can have a detrimental impact on health and aging. Relaxation and play, on the other hand, return us to that innate state of intuitive knowing where we allow the details of life to effortlessly fall into place. Almost anything that soothes tension can work for meditation. Music, a quiet walk, a candlelight dinner, holding the hand of a loved one — anything that calms the “noise” of worry and stress and unleashes the real you. nn