The is a lot of research on how stress, breathing, and visualization can effect individuals. I have complied research that shows how stress can effect the healing process and have listed some of it here.. It covers how breathing can relax and heal the body and talks about the power of visualization/meditation. For athletes this could mean the difference between an average season and a great season. The day to day recovery from practices or competition is vital to performance.. Sports seasons are very long and the key to staying healthy is recovery. If you are stress out your chance of recovery is limited and this leads to wearing down as the season goes on.

 

There is substantial research that shows how breathing and visualization can not only reduce stress but also heal the body. In the case of injury up to 40-50% faster. It also suggest that when we gain power of the mind we can control many functions of the body included ability to slow down to heart and recover faster.

 

I have several athletes that I have worked with that use my advanced techniques to heal more quickly and perform better. It has made the difference in their ability to perform.

 

I hope this research helps open your eyes to the possibilities of the mind. In some cases the research talks about meditation. This is simply a fancy way to say visualization. For the purposes of my work these two words are one and the same; to imagine in your mind specific images for a period of time.

 

Mental Health: Think it Out
6 proven ways to use your mind to heal your body

 

The man who walked into Dr. Herbert Benson's Boston office was a mess. He was a stress case at work, he suffered awful headaches, and his stratospheric blood pressure did not respond to high doses of prescription medicines.

But rather than throw more drugs at him, Dr. Benson, an M.D. who works at a Harvard-affiliated health center called the Mind/Body Medical Institute, prescribed a 10- to 20 minute daily dose of what he calls the "relaxation response": a calming exercise of muscle relaxation and controlled breathing.

"He found that, slowly and inexorably, the headaches became less profound," Dr. Benson says. "Eventually, they totally disappeared. His hypertension, which required relatively high doses of two medications, dropped so significantly that he needed only a fraction of the dose of one medication. This man gained a new perspective."

 

Stress is the number-one mental culprit in the delay of wound healing. Ohio State researchers studied 11 dental students, taking a chunk of flesh from the roofs of their mouths during summer vacation.

Then, 3 days before the first exam of the next school term, they took a chunk from the opposite side of each student's mouth. On average, the wounds took 40 percent longer to heal during stressful exam time than during the carefree days of summer.

"You can become a victim of the environment or the mind," says William Malarkey, M.D., director of Ohio State's clinical research center and a member of the Center for Stress and Wound Healing, "or you can proactively change the environment of your mind."

(source: www.menshealth.com keyword: think it out)

 

Using the Mind to Heal the Body: Imagery for Injury Rehabilitation
Dryw Dworsky, Ph.D. & Vikki Krane, Ph.D.

Bowling Green State University :

Being injured is no fun! Often it means that athletes and exercisers are in pain and they are not able
to participate in the sport they love. Often when we think of being injured, it means that we need to
wait for the body to heal. However, what if you learned that you might be able to speed up the
healing process? Research suggests that maintaining a positive attitude and using mental skills are related to a shorter
rehabilitation.

(source: www.appliedsportpsych.org/resource-center/injury-&-rehabilitation/articles/imagery)

 

Meditation Found to Increase Brain Size
January 23, 2005

People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don't. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.

(source: www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/meditation-found-increase-brain-size)

 

The Effect of Consciousness on the Body

 

The extent by which consciousness can take control over the body is remarkable. Biofeedback research,
for example, has shown that individuals can learn to control brainwave activity, affect cardiovascular and
respiratory functioning, reduce skin temperature, and voluntarily modify many other autonomic processes
of the body.

John Basmajian, M.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Canada, who
is a pioneer in biofeedback research, demonstrated that people could learn to consciously control
individual neurons and muscle cells. Single cell control through consciousness offers the possibility that
one can affect any part of one's body, knowing how this works.
(source: www.stmarys.org/body.cfm?id=133)

 

Enhance Healing Through Guided Imagery
ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2008)

 

Aristotle and Hippocrates believed in the power of images in the brain to enliven the heart and body. Today, research shows they were right. Guided imagery is helping patients use the full range of the body’s healing capacity, according to the January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter.
(source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080104123246.htm)