Price: $15.00
Instructor: Gilles Marin
Format: Compact Disc

This recording, Activating Inner Fire, is part of the series "Healing From Within Meditations" produced by Gilles Marin, director of the Chi Nei Tsang Institute in Berkeley, California, to enhance the life force in health care practitioners and their clients. These meditations have been inspired by the practices of Taoism and Tantric (Tibetan) Buddhism. They are powerful formulas from esoteric practices and are completely and safely adapted to the Western mind and way of life. The meditations and Chi-Kung (internal exercises for life force enhancement) progressively guide practitioners from every day life enhancement to higher spiritual realms of wisdom, mental clarity, emotional maturity and life guidance.

Scientific research on laughing
Scientists, normally a solemn group, are beginning to take humor seriously and are discovering that it is no laughing matter. Neuro-psychologists at the Harvard Medical School, studied longevity and found one clear theme that emerged from comparing the lifestyles of those who live to 100: a good sense of humor. They speculate that a strong sense of humor contributes to aging well because smiling and laughing provide the same benefits as physical exercise -- referring to laughing as "internal jogging". Laughter raises blood pressure just long enough to increase oxygen and blood supply to tissues. It alters the breathing cycle so that more oxygen is inhaled and toxic carbon dioxide exhaled. Muscles throughout the body tense and relax during laughter in exactly the same way as with stress reduction techniques such as yoga.

Waterloo University, in Ontario, recently established that exposure to humor improves immune system functioning, producing significant rises in the body's natural defenses, such as antibodies in the bloodstream. Low antibody levels predict greater likelihood of future disease. Yet what was particularly intriguing about this study was that, given something to laugh at, those with a good sense of humor experienced the highest rises in antibody levels.