Sorry about the delay, Jay. Just noticed your reply now.

On Sep 27, 8:40 am, Jay Honeck wrote:
Anyway, congrats on getting the medical. But you may be surprised at how well
the meditation could work at getting off the meds.

Indeed. I discovered Benson's book, "The Relaxation Response," about
20 years ago and it works.

Care to expand on that, Jon? How's it work?

Ok, you asked for it


I'm not a doctor, so I can't give you the details but more of just a
subjective take on it based on my own experiences. Benson has decades
of research, so it's not like he's selling some the latest brand of
snake oil that's going to magically transform you. The site has some
good info, if you're looking for charts based on experiments.

Sounds trite, but there's just more stuff to deal with now then there
was growing up in the 60's. For me, it's basically about, big
surprise, relaxing It's tough, what with having to run around to
get things done, attempting to set records for sleep deprivation to
recover lost schedule on n projects at work , dealing with the
mircosecond pace of life, traveling around the world, trying to avoid
the high cholesterol diet that existing in Coach tends to bring Of
course, no one on here has ever BTDT, right?

Again, not scientific, but when the body isn't feeling 'right', it
affects the mind. It can manifest itself but one getting irritable
over little things. being confrontational, defensive, etc. And then
sometimes this whole feedback loop thing starts executing and just
exacerbates everything. Snap decisions without thinking things
through. I'm sure we all know how that goes.

I had an uncle, whose motto for dealing with things, was "F*ck It"
Yeah, it was kinda cute and I could see where he was coming from to
some extent. And if he felt it worked for him, far be it from me to
try and prove him wrong by obsessing on Google, textbooks, etc.

Then again, he went about 10 years ago at only 52. A fair amount of
abuse, diabetes, kidney failure, coma. I found him on the bed one
morning, completely unresponsive with eyes wide open yet starting off
into space. His body temp was ice. Rushed him off to the hospital and
they were able to get him back. but the body just had nothing left and
it was only about a year after that.

Sad, but I'll tell ya, there's no textbook or research that drives
home the point like experiencing it first hand. It really caused a re-
awakening inside that "hey, there are no guarantees in life, but I
ain't going down like this if I don't have to!' And I decided it was
time to get back into repairing the whole.

I had already cut way down on the drinking years ago. Still a social
drinker but no where near the crazy college days of unlimited
quantities. More recently, I've cut out a lot of the daily junk/fast
food diet habits, virtually eliminated adding salt to food (other than
when cooking calls for it), manage to walk a bit each day to catch the
bus/train. And just generally to slow the whole thing down.... "don't
sweat the small stuff; it's all small stuff" yadda yadda....

You can't eliminate, or at least I can't, all of the stressors that
life seems to take this sick pleasure at ensuring will come at you.
You wouldn't be human if you didn't feel anything or tried to pretend
that emotions aren't part of who you are. But I found the technique
provides a way of minimizing the impact over the long haul and it's
maybe, what ~15 minutes out of the day? My opinion is, if you can't
find 15 minutes somewhere, you're waaaay to freakin' busy and it's
time for a reassessment

They claim that 15 minutes of it is equivalent to hours of sleep. I
can't say for sure, but I do find that I feel better afterwards and am
able to approach the working set of problems for the day, with a
better overall attitude that helps me to just get stuff done.

Can't prove that it's going to get me past 52, but I'll let you know
in 6 years

That's about all I got

--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Regards,
Jon