Meditation (Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Chopra)

    We've heard of it, thought about doing it, but then easily forgot it.  Meditation has been around for ages, healing, revealing, and satisfying all that come across it.  Why do we allow this simple, yet vital practice slip away from our everyday life?  Why not begin to embrace this age-old remedy for reducing stress, healing the body, and adding tranquility to our lives?  Chopra, in Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, says, "From my experience with studies on people using meditation, it has been established that long-term meditators can have a biological age between 5 and 12 years younger than their chronological age."  Wow!  Meditation is so powerful.
     In recent findings, research has found that this subjective experience of silence, fullness, and eternity creates a definite shift toward a more efficient functioning of the body, states Chopra.  "Hundreds of individual findings show lowered respiration, reduced oxygen consumption, and decreased metabolic rate."  The most significant conculsion is that the hormonal imbalance associated with stress (which speeds up the aging process) is reversed explains Chopra. 
     To experience your own shift in time with meditation look at a clock with a second hand on it, close your eyes and focus on your breath.  Allow your thoughts to move in and out of your mind and continue to focus on your breath.  After several minutes have passed, open your eyes and look at the second hand of the clock.  Chopra suggests that you may see the second hand stand still for 1-3 seconds  or you may see it pause before resuming it's circular motion around the clock.  Either way it is a way to perceive time in a different manner.  One in which, possibly, time doesn't stops, for even a moment.