Mellow Out Man

I think the hippies my have been wrong about drugs expanding the mind, but they were right about some other things.

Take for instance meditation and mellowing out.

In fact, some new research says that meditation may even be a more powerful painkiller than any drug.

Researchers at Wake Forest published a study measuring the physical effects of meditation on pain — and it turns out it might be more effective than morphine.

“This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

“We found a big effect – about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent.”

Groovy man.  Now quit harshing my buzz.

Thanks to Forbes.com.