Hmmmmm, Meditation is Better than MMMMMMorhphine

"Researchers at Wake Forest University have found that meditating for 80 minutes is enough to reduce pain intensity by almost twice as much as morphine or other pain-relieving drugs." I came across this startling fact while reading The Week online, though it doesn't really surprise me. When my son received treatment at the National Cancer Institute, the intervention that helped him most was a meditation he was taught by his palliative care physician. I often recommend Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabot Zinn as well as his guided meditations along with Thich Nhat Hanh's Be Still and Know: Reflections from Living Buddha, Living Christ. Try it some time. It really works.

Here's an excellent video of a talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn on meditation:

Honking my own Horn

My poem, "It is This," won a contest that was run locally by Just Poets. 500 postcards have been printed for distribution in celebration of National Poetry Month.