Vagus thinking: Meditate your way to better health
- 18 July 2013 by Emma Young in New Scientist
The vagus nerve underpins everything from your health and well-being to friendships and happiness, and you can think it into working better
EVERY day, Nancy Havill tries to think kind thoughts about other people. Sometimes, she does this while sitting on a cushion in front of a candle and a bowl of smooth pebbles. “But I also like the informal practice, when I am walking around my neighbourhood, or from the bus stop, and I send random kind thoughts to the people I encounter,” she says.
It all sounds rather New Age. But Havill is no credulous crystal-wielding hippy. She is a research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has uncovered a surprising link between meditating on kind thoughts and a whole range of indicators of physical health and mental well-being. It might boost your immune system, protect you from cardiovascular disease, reduce vulnerability to stress, improve thinking and emotional control, and even raise levels of empathy, sociability and self-esteem.
Too good to be true? Perhaps, but in recent years, evidence linking physical health and psychological well-being has been steadily accumulating. “We all know these two are intricately connected, and in fact are integrated parts of one system,” says Elissa Epel at the University of California, San Francisco. So ideas that a decade ago might have been dismissed out of hand are now gaining wider acceptance.
View original article here
