“Silent Night, Holy Night”…silence is good. Stop and think about the people that you respect the most- they are centered, thoughtful people. Even the Holy Scriptures tells us to “Be still, and know that I am God.” Humans need quiet.
This column is being written with a Christian point of view, and it is wonderful to back up what the Creator has spoken in Scripture with medical research. Actually, according to Psychology Today, Neuroscientists have found that when people meditate, they shift their brain activity to different areas of the cortex and that brain waves in the stress prone right frontal cortex move to the calmer left frontal cortex. This decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression and anxiety. There is also less activity in the amygdala, the place in the brain that fear comes from. Only ten minutes of quiet meditation showed increase in the alpha waves, the waves that show calmness.
The Harvard Medical School used MRI to monitor brain activity, they found it activates areas of the brain that control the central nervous system. The central nervous system controls areas of our bodies that we can’t control like blood pressure and digestion, the very functions that so often are compromised by stress. It makes sense, then, that if you deal with those normally stressful areas, you reduce things like heart disease, digestive problems, and fertility. Meditation can enhance your immune system.
What does it mean to meditate? This is how The New Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language defines meditate: to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.
King David was a man’s man. He was a warrior of the highest caliber in his day, but he was also a man after God’s own heart. Let’s hear some of the things he has to say about it from the Psalms”
· When I remember thee upon my bed, [and] meditate on thee in the [night] watches. Psalm 63:6.
· I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings. Psalm 77:12
· I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. Psalm 119:15.
· Princes also did sit [and] speak against me: [but] thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. Psalm 119:23.
· My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes. Psalm 119:48.
· Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: [but] I will meditate in thy precepts. Psalm 119:78.
· Mine eyes prevent the [night] watches that I might meditate in thy word. Psalm 119:148.
· I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. Psalm 143:5.
In the New Testament the Apostle Paul tells Timothy in I Timothy 4:15 “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.”
As the holiday season is full upon us, may we remain quiet in our spirits, able to remember Who is the “Reason for the Season”.

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