Traumatic Experience

Monday, 26 November 2018 11:18

Meditation helps veterans with PTSD

Editor's Note:
The surprising thing was not the fact that meditation works well as a therapy for PTSD.  Rather the surprise is what they compared it with: purposely recalling traumatic events!  This is something they started doing to soldiers after Vietnam.  Previously, soldiers came home and did their best to resume a normal life by focusing on positive thoughts.  After Vietnam, US soldiers have been forced into therapy sessions.  

Original Article

Meditation worked as well as traditional therapy for military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder in a small experiment sponsored by the Department of Defense.

One method preferred by the Department of Veterans Affairs is exposure therapy, but it doesn’t work for everyone and many can’t handle what it requires: purposely recalling traumatic events and confronting emotions.

Meditation could be a better choice for some, the researchers said.

  • "I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

    And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

    ~ Steve Jobs

More Inspirational Quotes

precision beats power