Om Ah Simpson
Om Ah Simpson |
- Om Ah Simpson
- Early Morning Meditation Inspiration - 9/6/2012
- Entrusting yourself to the waves
- Being a rebel
- Change of Heart: Increasing Heart Resuscitation Time Is Backed
- 4 Tips for Boosting Your Immune System with Vitamin D
- DeVilbiss Air Power Co Recalls Air Compressors
- West Nile Cases Approach 2,000
- Vaginal Ring May Protect Against HIV
| Posted: 06 Sep 2012 02:00 PM PDT Found on Google+, and the source tracked down with the help of Rod Meade Sperry at Shambhala Sun. Homer Simpson on a donut zafu, holding a mala and pretzel. Yours for only $ 50. Read More @ Source
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| Early Morning Meditation Inspiration - 9/6/2012 Posted: 06 Sep 2012 10:00 AM PDT  "Famine occurs as a result of greed, pestilence as a result of foolishness, and warfare as a result of anger." ~The Buddha       Read More @ Source 
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| Entrusting yourself to the waves Posted: 06 Sep 2012 08:00 AM PDT
Over the next five days, through hours of silent meditation, I cycled many times through periods of clarity and attentiveness, followed by stretches when I was swamped in sleepiness, plagued by physical discomfort, or lost in a wandering mind. Early one evening I became inundated by thoughts about the upcoming months: Should my husband and I hire lawyers or a mediator to handle the process of divorce? When should we move to separate residences? And, most importantly, how should I be there for our son during this painful transition? As each anxious thought surfaced, I wanted to really dig in and work everything out in my mind. Yet something in me knew I needed to stay with the unpleasant feelings in my body. A verse from Ryokan, an eighteenth-century Zen poet, came to mind: "To find the Buddhist law, drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves." The "Buddhist law" refers to the truth of how things really are. We can't understand the nature of reality until we let go of controlling our experience. There's no way to see clearly what's going on if on some level we're attempting to ignore or bypass the stormy weather. During the last few days of the retreat I tried to let go, over and over, but felt repeatedly stymied by my well-worn strategy for feeling better—figuring things out. Now Ryokan's verse was rife with possibility: Perhaps I could entrust myself to the waves. Perhaps the only way to real peace was by opening to life just as it was. Otherwise, behind my efforts to manage things, I'd always sense a lurking threat, something right around the corner that was going to cause trouble. My old habits didn't give up easily, though. As soon as I'd contact some tightness in my chest, I'd flip right back into worrying about my son's new preschool, carpooling, or about how to find a baby-sitter with more flexible hours. Then I'd become hypercritical, harshly judging myself for "wasting" my retreat time. Gradually, I recognized that my heart was clenched tight, afraid to let the intensity of life wash through me. I needed help "entrusting." Each afternoon, the teachers had been leading us in a lovingkindness meditation. I decided to try weaving this into my sitting. The classical form of the meditation consists of sending loving prayers to ourselves and widening circles of other beings. I began to offer kind wishes to myself: "May I be happy and at ease; may I be happy and at ease." At first, repeating the words felt like a superficial mental exercise, but soon something shifted. My heart meant it: I cared about my own life, and becoming conscious of that caring softened some of the tightness around my heart. Now I could more easily give myself to the waves of fear and sorrow, and simply notice the drifting thoughts and physical sensations—squeezing and soreness—that were coming and going. Whenever the worries that had been snagging me appeared, I sensed that they too were waves, tenacious ones that pressed uncomfortably on my chest. By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through me, I began to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, I rested in an ocean of awareness that embraced all the moving waves. I'd arrived in a sanctuary that felt large enough to hold whatever was going on in my life.  Check out Emotional Healing and other titles by Tara Brach. But when I was done for the day, I took some time to pause and touch into the judgment and blame lingering in my body, and my righteous stance softened. I sat still as the blaming thoughts and swells of irritation came and went. Underneath the resentment was an anxious question: "How will I manage?" As I let the subterranean waves of anxiety move through me, I found a quiet inner space that had more breathing room—and more perspective. Of course I couldn't figure out how the future would play out. The only time I had was right now, and this moment was okay. From this space I could sense my ex-husband's stress about finding a new place to live, working out our schedules, and, more deeply, adapting to a different future than he had imagined. This helped me feel more tolerant and kind. It also revealed the power of entrusting myself to the waves. My husband and I continue to be dear friends. With him and in countless instances with others, this gateway to presence has reawakened me to a space of loving that feels like home. Adapted from Tara's upcoming book, True Refuge – Finding Peace and Freedom in your Own Awakened Heart (Bantam, Feb, 2013) Read More @ Source
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| Posted: 06 Sep 2012 07:00 AM PDT In today's world, people are taught to be obedient and respect authority for its own sake, not because the authority is wise, but because it is the authority. The bulk of Buddhist devotees and practitioners are by no means free from this; they never seriously question their teachers just as they have not seriously questioned their society and its values and beliefs, for example, the belief in materialism which comes by way of the physical sciences. Learning to be obedient and respect authority for its own sake is unhealthy, psychologically, if we wish to maximize our spiritual intelligence to win enlightenment. This is the general meaning behind the The Kalama Sutta: that we should not trust what we see or read, even if what we read seems authoritative, otherwise we can be deceived. In today's world this is a call to be distrustful of even scientific claims and authority which is just a disguised form of materialism. Instead, we should rely on self-knowing (atma-jñana) which begins at the deepest part of our being which is transcendent. It is that part of our being which is naturally liberated, although we are unable to connect with it fully because we are still under the heavy veil of the conditioned world and its values which we still prize too much. In a way, we have to become rebels, keeping in mind that Siddhartha, before he became a Buddha, was also a rebel.
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| Change of Heart: Increasing Heart Resuscitation Time Is Backed Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:00 PM PDT
When a hospital patient's heart stops beating, exactly how long doctors should spend trying to revive him is not known. Now, a new study suggests that increasing resuscitation times may benefit patients. In the study, patients whose hearts stopped were less likely to die if they were at a hospital that tended to spend a long time resuscitating patients, compared with a hospital that spent shorter times resuscitating patients. In addition, longer resuscitation times did not appear to increase neurological problems among patients who survived. While doctors should always use their best judgment in deciding whether to continue resuscitation attempts, the findings suggest increasing resuscitation times on a hospitalwide basis could improve patient survival, the researchers said. Extending resuscitation times by 10 to 15 minutes "is a very small expense to be added, for potentially a large gain," said study researcher Dr. Zachary Goldberger, of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. The researchers noted the study found only an association — not a direct cause-effect link — and was not designed to determine the optimal duration for resuscitation efforts. Still, the findings suggest that setting a minimum time for resuscitation duration could improve patient outcomes, Goldberger said. When a heart stops beating Out of every 1,000 patients who stay in a hospital, between one and five experience cardiac arrest, a condition in which the heart stops beating. However, doctors have little evidence to guide them on how long they should spend trying to get a heart to beat again, and previous research has suggested that long-lasting resuscitation attempts are often futile, the researchers said. In the new study, Goldberger and colleagues analyzed information from more than 64,000 patients, at 435 U.S. hospitals, who underwent resuscitation for a cardiac arrest between 2000 and 2008. The researchers determined how long each hospital typically spent trying to resuscitate by looking at the amount of time its staff spent resuscitating patients who did not survive. (Patients who survive often are revived after a short resuscitation time.) About 48 percent of the patients in the study survived their cardiac arrest, but many died later during their hospital stay; only 15 percent of those in the study survived to be released from the hospital. Patients at hospitals with the longest resuscitation times (typically 25 minutes) were 12 percent more likely to be revived and eventually discharged from hospital than those at hospitals with the shortest attempts (around 16 minutes), the researchers said. The researchers were not able to take into account some factors — such as how well the chest compressions were done — and its possible longer resuscitation times were simply a marker of better care in general, the researchers said. Each case is different It's very difficult to make broad recommendations on how long resuscitation should continue because each case is different, said Dr. Roger White, an anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic specializing in resuscitation care, who was not involved in the study. Doctors need to quickly decide whether a patient stands a good chance of being revived, based on such factors as the number of health conditions they have, White said. Long resuscitation attempts can be justified, White said, especially if doctors have objective measurements to guide them on how well the resuscitation is going. Such measurements include changes in heart rhythm, and the amount of blood that reaches vital organs, White said. The new study will be published tomorrow (Sept. 5) in the journal the Lancet. Pass it on: For those who have a cardiac arrest in the hospital, increasing resuscitation times may improve patients' survival. Follow Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner, or MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND. We're also on Facebook & Google+.  Read More @ Source 
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| 4 Tips for Boosting Your Immune System with Vitamin D Posted: 05 Sep 2012 05:00 PM PDT
 Now that Labor Day has come and gone, I think it's a good time to approach one of my favorite subjects: Vitamin D and sun exposure. Our beach days are sadly fading behind us for the year, so if you haven't yet had your fill of fun in the sun, stop what you're doing and head towards the waves, stat! For those of you still here, let's talk about post-summer sun exposure. If you live in a warm, sunny climate, you probably get a great deal of sun throughout the year. But most of us live in areas with moderately cold to bone-chilling winters, and it's not so appealing to sunbathe in a snowstorm. What does all this have to do with vitamin D? Well, the skin makes vitamin D when it's exposed to the sun's rays. That's why people call it the sunshine vitamin. Vitamin D has been the subject of much research. In a recent study, researchers tested the idea of using vitamin D to boost the immune system. They measured the vitamin D levels in the blood of 247 children living in an extremely cold climate. At the study's start, the average vitamin D level was 7 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). Levels under 20 ng/ml are considered a deficiency, so these children were severely deficient. The researchers divided the children into two groups, and gave them milk. Half received regular milk, and the other half received milk fortified with 300 international units (IU) of vitamin D. After three months, the vitamin D levels of the children who drank the fortified milk reached 19 ng/ml, on average, while the other children's levels remained unchanged, according to the study published in the journal Pediatrics in August. Perhaps most interesting was that the children who upped their vitamin D intake had half as many colds as those who remained severely deficient. This is just one study that shows that vitamin D is a powerful immune system booster. Here are some tips to help ensure you're getting enough of the sunshine vitamin, even when the weather gets cold.
Healthy Bites appears on MyHealthNewsDaily on Wednesdays. Deborah Herlax Enos is a certified nutritionist and a health coach and weight loss expert in the Seattle area with more than 20 years of experience. Read more tips on her blog, Health in a Hurry! Read More @ Source 
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| DeVilbiss Air Power Co Recalls Air Compressors Posted: 05 Sep 2012 04:00 PM PDT
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with DeVilbiss Air Power Co. of Jackson, Tenn., announced a voluntary recall of about 460,000 Air compressors. Hazard: The air compressor motor can overheat, posing a fire hazard. Incidents/Injuries: DeVilbiss has received 10 reports of motors overheating. No injuries have been reported.   Description: The recalled compressors were sold under the Craftsman, EX-CELL, Porter-Cable and Pro-Air II brand names. Recalled models have air slots at the end of the motor that form a horizontal and vertical grid. The model number on each unit is located on the unit name plate on the tank. The recalled model numbers, tank size, color and manufactured date are listed here.  Consumers with a compressor manufactured before the dates shown, but had a motor replaced after July 25, 2003, should also check the end cap. The end cap is visible from underneath the motor cover.  Sold at: EX-CELL, Porter-Cable and Pro-Air II-brand compressors were sold by industrial and construction distributors from July 2003 through December 2008 for between $ 259 and $ 299. Craftsman-brand compressors were sold at Sears stores nationwide from July 2003 through December 2008 for between $ 279 and $ 329. Manufactured in: United States Remedy: Consumers should immediately unplug and stop using the recalled compressors and call DeVilbiss Air Power Co. or Sears for a free repair kit. Consumer Contact: For additional information, consumers with EX-CELL, Porter-Cable and , Pro-Air II compressors should contact DeVilbiss toll-free at (866) 885-1877 between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or visit the firm's website at www.porter-cable.com or www.devap.com. Consumers with Craftsman-brand compressors should call Sears toll-free at (888) 710-9282 between 7 a.m and 7 p.m. CT Monday through Friday or between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. CT Saturday, or visit the firm's website at www.sears.com. Read More @ Source 
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| West Nile Cases Approach 2,000 Posted: 05 Sep 2012 03:00 PM PDT
There have now been 1,993 reported cases of West Nile virus infections in the United States this year, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today (Sept. 5). Eighty-seven people have died from the disease. The number of cases, reported through the first week in September, keeps the U.S. on track for its highest number of West Nile cases since the mosquito-borne virus was first seen in the country in 1999, said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases. Historically, West Nile cases tend to peak in August, so the U.S. may be past this year's peak of the disease. But cases are expected to continue to be reported through October, particularly in the northern states, which generally lag behind the South in terms of when the disease peaks due to their climates, Peterson said. Texas remains the state hardest hit, with 1,013 cases and 40 deaths, said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. However, recent data included "promising indicators" that some regions in northern Texas are past the peak of the disease's grip, Lakey said. Testing of mosquito pools suggests the percentage of insects carrying the virus is now declining. Of the cases reported nationwide, 1,069 are people who developed the severe, neuroinvasive form of the disease, which affects the nervous system. Other cases involve what doctors call West Nile fever, a condition that can cause fever, headache, body aches, nausea, vomiting. Most cases of West Nile infection go unreported, the CDC has said. About 80 percent of infected people experience no symptoms. The reason for this year's record pace is not exactly known — an outbreak's severity depends on many factors, Petersen said."Mosquito-borne outbreaks are difficult to predict," he said. However, the recent heat waves may have played a role, Petersen said. "We know that West Nile virus outbreaks tend to occur when the temperature is above normal, and of course this year's heat wave was record-setting," he said. With warmer temperatures, the levels of virus in mosquitos tend to rise, making them more infectious, and heat also can affect the course of mosquitos' life cycles, he said. However, he noted, many regions of the country have seen record heat without seeing an unusual number of West Nile cases. Pass it on: The U.S. remains on a record pace for West Nile disease this year, with cases expected to rise in the northern states. FollowMyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Read More @ Source 
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| Vaginal Ring May Protect Against HIV Posted: 05 Sep 2012 02:00 PM PDT
A plastic ring containing a drug and inserted into the vagina could prevent HIV transmission during sex, a new study in animals suggests. In the study, monkeys that received drug-releasing vaginal rings were less likely than other female monkeys to be infected when a version of the AIDS virus was injected by catheter into their vaginas. The findings suggest that drug-containing vaginal rings have the potential to prevent HIV infection, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, such as herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections, the researchers said. While oral anti-retroviral drugs and microbicide gels also have been shown to protect against HIV infection, oral drugs need to be used on a daily basis, and gels need to be applied every time a person has sex. The researchers would like to develop a ring that women could leave in place and "forget about" for at least three months, said study researcher Tom Zydowsky. "The idea is to give people choices," said Zydowsky, senior scientist at the Population Council, a nonprofit organization in New York City that researches HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. (Condoms are also very effective at preventing HIV transmission when used properly, but "getting a man to use a condom isn't always in a woman's control," Zydowsky added.) The study is just a first step in the development of an anti-HIV vaginal ring, and because it was conducted with animals, it is not clear how well the findings will translate to people. The researchers plan to test alternative formulations of the vaginal ring that could protect against a strain of herpes virus as well as HIV, Zydowsky said. The vaginal rings in the study contained an anti-HIV drug called MIV-150. Rhesus macaques were given either a vaginal ring containing MIV-150 or a vaginal ring with a placebo. The rings were inserted either two weeks or 24 hours before the monkeys were exposed to a virus called SHIV, which contains genes from both HIV and SIV, the monkey form of HIV. Among monkeys that received the MIV-150 vaginal ring, two out of 17 (11.7 percent) became infected with the virus, whereas 11 of the 16 monkeys (68.7 percent) became infected. Overall, the vaginal ring was 83 percent effective at preventing SHIV infection compared to the placebo, the researchers said. The rings protected against HIV regardless of whether they were inserted two weeks or 24 hours before infection, the researchers said. But it was critical that the ring was in place when the monkey was exposed to the virus. Among monkeys that had the ring removed just before exposure, the infection rate was 57 percent (four out of seven monkeys). The researchers plan to start a human trial with the ring within two years, Zydowsky said. The study was published today (Sept. 5) in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Pass it on: A vaginal ring containing an anti-HIV drug was able to reduce the rate of HIV infection in monkeys. Follow Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner, orMyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Read More @ Source 
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I was drawn to my first Buddhist mindfulness retreat during a time when my son, Narayan, was four, and I was on the verge of divorce. During a slow, icy drive through a winter snowstorm on the way to the retreat center, I had plenty of time to reflect on what most mattered to me. I didn't want a breakup that would bury the love I still shared with my husband; I didn't want us to turn into uncaring, even hostile, strangers. And I didn't want a breakup that would deprive Narayan of feeling secure and loved. My deep prayer was that through all that was happening, I'd find a way to stay connected with my heart.
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