Qigong is a part of Traditional Chinese medicine involving the coordination of different breathing patterns with various physical postures and motions of the body. Taught mostly for health purposes, the manipulation of ‘Qi’ energy. This has been used in many different applications from accu-pressure, excercise, and even martial arts.

Qigong practitioners believe that the body has an energy field generated from our living selves. ‘Qi’ which refers to ‘breath’ is the medium that is manipulated through ‘gong’ or work, hence Qigong; meaning ‘breath work’.

Here are some great videos that can help you understand the mysterious power of Qigong and its many applications in alternative medicine, excercise, and overall well-being:

1. American Practitioners of Qigong

2. Qigong Training in China

3. Generating Heat with Qigong

4. Short Documentary of Qigong

5. Senior Citizen capable of moving bricks and breaking objects WITHOUT TOUCHING THEM!

Interested in reading more about the mysterious power of Qi? Check out this video on how Qigong excercises are used in martial arts! Click here.

The following is condensed from the Goldman Mind Box, written by esteemed hypnotist, spiritualist and psychic healing instructor – Burt Goldman:

It’s been said that everyone, every person on the planet, young and old, from every culture, of every religious persuasion has within them the ability to heal. If everyone has it in them to be a healer, why then doesn’t everyone heal?

The only answer: not everyone is aware that they can heal.

Everyone is born with healing ability, and it never leaves them. But few people are aware that they have it. Everyone has an energy field but people people are aware of that either. And those who become aware of the energy fields existence don’t know what to do with it, or why its there. Those who do become aware of their healing ability often put the healing down to coincidence. People seem to be fearful of the fact that they can do it because they see people who have special talents do it on TV or in books or magazines.

But you don’t have to be special in order to be a psychic healer. Find out how:

What you need to be a Psychic Healer?

A necessary ingredient for psychic healing is first to have a desire to help someone. Intent simple means that your purpose is to help. Once you have that intent, an action must be taken. An action that follows along the lines of your intentions which is in the case of healing is to improve someone’s life. That action can be virtually anything.

Through psychic healing, you are using forces within a sphere of influence; the mind itself. Many problems are conceived and gestated in the mind. Virtually every conceivable thing follows that process. But not every problem is born to cause difficulties for the individual. Most are thought about and then allowed to dissipate and disappear.

For example, reading about some individual or group who has done some terrible thing will often bring about horrific thoughts of vengeance in your mind but they are not acted upon, simply thought of to more of less rationalize the fact that the horrible act could not possibly by committed by you and so you mentally take a stand by becoming judge, jury and executioner.

When you visit a person who is ill and sympathize with that person you reinforce the problem. When you are offering pity you are creating and image in your mind that generally builds a picture of the person worse off than they really are.

What does this all mean?

We must first believe that everyone has the inherent capability of healing. All it takes is a sincere desire to help someone. But not to the point of strong emotions – that means the hardest people to heal are the people who are closet to you.

It’s the reason that a surgeon will not operate on their immediate family. They care so much, they may make a mistake.

As the adage goes:

Attorneys who represent themselves have fools for clients.

The same goes for the psychic healer. You cannot, ‘care too much’: it’s best if you didn’t care at all and just did your thing. Then you would have a sure thing, so long as you had the honest intent to heal.

The next step involves using some means of taking an action whose design is that of sending healing energy to the person in need of healing, and sustaining that action for up to 30 seconds.

Healers should never be put off by a miss or two. A miss will only mean it didn’t work that time. Do it again the next time you intend to help someone and soon you will find that you will have more hits than misses.

Always remember; that YOU ARE A HEALER.

4 Easy Steps to Sensory Healing

Use this technique for a friend that has a headache. Ask each question in turn, and repeat them until changes are noted.

1. If your headache had a color, what color would it be?
2. If it had a weight, how much would it weigh?
3. If it had a shape, what shape would it be?
4. Start again with the first question and go through them all over and over until the headache is gone.

SPECIAL UPDATE: Burt Goldman – The American Monk

Come and learn from the wisdom and experiences of an ordinary man that has walked the path of enlightenment

The American Monk

See you there!

Waking from a coma after 19 years has to be one of the most bizarre experiences anybody could imagine happening to them. It probably doesn’t surprise you that waking from a coma is very different from how it’s portrayed in the movies.

Left: Jan Grzebski wakes from coma after 19 years

Many accounts say that victims waking from a coma feel like they have been completely reborn:

“Regaining consciousness was a slow, arduous process that took a few weeks.  Since I had absolutely no recollection of any life before that immediate moment, life to me was just beginning for the first time.  It was as if I was being born at the age of 22.  But I was unaware of my age then and still have difficulty remembering it today.

 Just as a newborn child would have to do, I had to relearn to tie my shoes, walk, talk, read, write, eat with silverware, etc.  Life was exciting for me, just having been born.  I was suddenly awakened to all the sights that accompanied the sounds I had heard while I was unable to open my eyes.” – coma victim

BUT . . . Imagine waking from a coma after 19 years to find out you’re country has changed and is unrecognizable to what you remember.

A Polish guy, Jan Grzebski was hit by a train in 1988 and sent into a deep coma . . . Imagine waking from a coma to find that:

1989 – The Iron Curtain Came Down, the fall of the Berlin Wall

1991 – The Soviet Union Collapsed

2004 – Poland joins the EU

When he was sent into a coma:

1988 – Tea and Vinegar were the only available things in the shop, and meat was still being rationed

Nowadays:

He cannot believe the amount of choice in the shops and seeing every man and his dog carrying round a cellphone is completely alien to him.

He also says he has no reasons to complain about anything, he’s just happy to have awoken.

“A true inspiration to everyone”

Watch this Incredible News

Waking From A Coma – Goodbye Lenin Style

This incredible news story appears to echo one of the greatest German films ever made in my opinion; the similarities to ‘Goodbye Lenin’ are remarkable.

The Plot

Set in the East Berlin of 1989 . Alexander Kerner’s mother, Christiane Kerner, an ardent supporter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, suffers a heart attack when she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration and falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After eight months she awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally, and doctors say that any shock may cause another, possibly fatal, attack. Alex realizes that her discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as normal in the German Democratic Republic.

 To this end, he and his family revert the flat to its previous drab decor, dress in their old clothes, and feed the bed-ridden Christiane new, Western produce from old labeled jars. For a time the deception works, but gradually becomes increasingly complicated and elaborate.

Despite everything, Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. Alexander and a friend with film-making ambitions edit old tapes of news broadcasts and create their own fake special reports to explain them away.

The Most Surreal Scene You Could Imagine

Both Christiane Kerner and the Jan Grzebski must have had a similar surreal experience when viewing their unrecognizable homes.

Picture the Scene

Christiane wanders outside the flat while Alex is asleep, and sees all her neighbors’ old furniture piled up in the street for garbage collection, a car dealer selling BMWs instead of Trabants and advertisements for such Western corporations as IKEA. Then, a huge military helicopter flies past carrying the upper half of an enormous statue of Lenin, which at an angle appears to be offering Christiane his hand.

The movie has been described as “A political comedy that reaches you right down in your soul, reminding us without any Benigni-ish moral frivolity that life sure is complicated, but it is also beautiful.”

Source

This is a unique, tender, uplifting story that will jerk a tear in one moment, and then have you in stitches the next, so wake up from your coma and see it for yourselves!

Both the New Scientist and BBC News have recently reported on a remarkable discovery – that a US firm has developed a miracle water which can accelerate healing.

This could be beneficial for the 246 million reported Diabetes sufferers worldwide who have problems with wounds not healing.

The water is “super oxidized” and so far the studies have shown it to work so fingers crossed healing will just get quicker and quicker.

Firm makes ‘healing super-water’

Bad circulation can prevent foot ulcers from healing

US scientists have developed chemically modified water which they say speeds up wound healing.

Oculus, the Californian firm which developed the water – made by filtering it through a salt membrane – says it kills viruses, bacteria and fungi.

It is also effective against MRSA and UK trials are being carried out on patients with diabetic foot ulcers, New Scientist magazine reported.

Experts said wound healing was a major problem for people with diabetes.

The key ingredient of the water, called Microcyn, are oxychlorine ions – electrically charged molecules.

The water can only kill cells it can completely surround, such as free-living microbes, so human cells are spared because they are tightly bound together in a matrix.

We would welcome any safe effective treatment which could help people with diabetes make a swift recovery

Tracey Kelly, Diabetes UK

It is made by taking purified water and using an electric current and a semi-permeable sodium chloride membrane to separate out the oxychlorine ions.

One study showed that patients with advanced foot ulcers who were treated with the water, alongside an antibiotic, had an average healing time of 43 days compared with 55 days in those who received standard treatment.

Read the full story > >

Read the New Scientists Report >>

Why not find out how you can heal using your mind

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘mind over matter’ before; it’s such a valuable thing to practice and really shows us that anything is possible. Many lessons teach us the power of positive thinking; and the law of attraction has never been more in the public spotlight. Controlling your thoughts is a phenomenon that we have to take advantage of.

Now some of the best researchers from around the world are revealing that it’s actually possible to think away pain. This is a massive development for anyone who is suffering from chronic pain, where the usual methods such as traditional medicines and drugs fail.

 I found this great article that uncovers these findings and shows what great impact this could have on so many people’s lives.

Think Away The Pain

by Rachel Metz

Pain can be mysterious, untreatable and debilitating, and its causes can be unknown. But if you could see the pain — or, at least, your brain’s reaction to it — you might be able to master it.

A study from researchers at Stanford University and MRI technology company Omneuron suggests that’s possible, and the results could lead to better therapies for those suffering from crippling chronic pain.

The researchers asked people in pain to try to control a pain-regulating region of the brain by watching activity in that area from inside a real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, machine. Initial results showed subjects could reduce their pain, some quite dramatically.

It’s the first evidence that humans can take control of a specific region of the brain, and thereby decrease pain, said Stanford professor Sean Mackey, who co-wrote the paper, which was published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“(Similar to) going to a gym and working muscle using weights, here we’re using the real-time fMRI technology to exercise a certain brain region,” he said.

Study co-leader and Omneuron CEO Christopher deCharms said for many people with chronic pain, available treatments like medication or surgery simply don’t work. But this exercise, which researchers have termed “neuroimaging therapy,” could one day help some of the millions of Americans who suffer from untreatable chronic pain.

In the study, eight healthy subjects who’d been subjected to a painful stimulus and eight chronic pain patients underwent a series of fMRIs. The images tracked activity in the brain’s rostral anterior cingulate cortex — an area deCharms said is related to pain. Subjects watched this area on a monitor in real time during the procedure. Prompted by researchers’ suggestions of trying to lessen their own pain by ignoring it or imagining it as benign, they set out in a mental game of hot-and-cold to lessen their discomfort.

Twenty-eight healthy subjects and four pain patients were also put into control groups that tried to control pain by viewing other patients’ brain data or using other mental strategies, but no fMRIs. These tactics didn’t show a significant reduction in pain, deCharms said.

The pain patients reported that the fMRI helped them decrease their overall pain 64 percent. Healthy subjects said they saw a 23 percent increase in their ability to control the strength of their pain, and a 38 percent increase in their ability to master its unpleasantness.

“I think most people found it very exciting to be able to watch the activity in their own brain, moment by moment, as it took place,” deCharms said.

• - Read more here >>

If everybody went out today and hugged a complete stranger imagine what effect this would have on human nature throughout the world. 

FREE HUGS!

Sometimes, a hug is all we need. Free hugs is a real life controversial story of Juan Mann, a man whose sole mission was to reach out and hug a stranger to brighten up their lives. In this age of social disconnectivity and lack of human contact, the effects of the Free Hugs campaign became phenomenal.

As this symbol of human hope spread accross the city, police and officials ordered the Free Hugs campaign BANNED. What we then witness is the true spirit of humanity come together in what can only be described as awe inspiring.

Watch this incredible show of human spirit and then I urge you to go out and hug a stranger, 13 million people the world over already have:

What Do You Feel Right Now?

Spirituality is a major issue that we are trying to develop in this community and from time to time we get sent high caliber articles that have to be shared.

I recently received a great email that introduced the healing technique of Neural Depolarization that Kathy Oddenino has been practicing for way over 20 yrs.

Neural Depolarization n.

“A unique spiritual energy technique used to balance the nervous system, stop pain, balance our energy flow, and prevent disease.”

Here’s Kathy explaining her technique:

What is Neural Depolarization, (NDPâ„¢)?

By Kathy Oddenino, R.N.

NDPâ„¢ Explained

NDP (Neural Depolarization) is a form of internal energy therapy that I use (and trademarked) to treat all diseases, from all forms of cancer, eye diseases such as glaucoma, dyslexia, all forms of pain, including fibromyalgia and carpal tunnel syndrome, to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and many more.

To truly understand how NDP works, we must understand the design of our physical body as four major nervous systems that function from and through the energy of our internal chemical design. What we think, eat, drink, and breathe supports our internal chemical design when we eat, drink, and breathe from the purity of Nature.

We can stay healthy and we should live for hundreds of years when we recognize the relationship of our human design to the design of Earth and the Universe. When we eat “junk food” and depend upon drugs, surgery, and medicine to keep us healthy, we cannot restore the energy within our physical body to stay healthy and happy because we will not have the necessary chemicals within our human body to maintain our health and happiness.

Kathy’s Background

I worked with the medical world as a nurse for 40 years. I knew I wanted to be a nurse when I was 2 years old, and I love the compassion and healing care nurses can provide. In 1984 I began teaching people how to heal themselves because I saw medicine focusing more and more on drugs and technology and away from the patient and the proven Hippocratic focus of healing.

Modern Medicine going against the Hippocratic Oath

Our scientific knowledge can help us much more efficiently when we understand our human design. Without a firm commitment to the Hippocratic oath of “do no harm,” technology, research, and medication do more harm than good, to our bank accounts as well as our bodies. Evidence of this is everywhere when we are willing to see it and are open to change.

Why did Hippocrates understand health better than modern-day physicians do? The design and function of the nervous system, and the importance of eating pure food and drinking water, are still key focuses that are usually last on the list of medical attention and advice if they come up at all.

Neural Depolarization works with all forms of disease by working with the four major nervous systems that allow our human body to function appropriately and to heal itself.

Understanding Nature

 Before we can understand the internal workings of NDP as an energy therapy, we must understand that we live and stay healthy from the air, water, and foods of Nature. We get “sick” when we attempt to live on air, water, and foods that are not from a “clean Nature.”

Once man interferes with what Nature produces, we find ourselves creating chronic and terminal diseases, and not realizing what we are doing to make ourselves sick to death. For example, most municipal water plants add fluoride to our water.

Many bottled waters come from municipal water plants. Fluoride is a poison, so why would we choose to drink fluoride in our water for a whole lifetime? Foods that are grown with poisons in the soil and poisons that are sprayed onto the plants destroy our nervous system and our internal cellular environment.

Energy within the Physical Body

 As human beings, we are energy and we are matter. Einstein opened a door for us to think about ourselves differently when he presented the equation E=MC². The chemical matter that we create in our body is responsible for supporting the energy within our physical body. Neural Depolarization can balance out the energy of the cells, organs, and nerves that make up our human body.

But if we continuously destroy ourselves by giving our body food, water, air, and other chemicals that cannot support the chemical design of our cells, then we simultaneously destroy the chemical energy of our body, which allows us to become sick with multiple diseases and die. When we stop poisoning our food, water, and air, we will begin to live for hundreds of years in each lifetime.

When we are willing to eat only organic foods, drink pure water, and breathe pure air, we can heal ourselves more quickly with Neural Depolarization, which helps to release the foreign chemicals from our cells and to balance the energy within the cell which allows our body to heal itself. This is the best Health Care Plan we can find, and this plan offers us the Insurance that we are giving our body what we need to stay healthy, happy, and active.

Many diseases are not true disease, but they are caused by energy blockages. “Diseases” such as glaucoma, dyslexia, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and cancer are examples of diseases that are created from nerve and cellular chemical blockages. It is time for us to look at our diseases differently and to learn how to protect ourselves from food, water, and air that does not support us in health.

The more intense a disease is, such as cancer and MS, the longer it takes the disease to respond to Neural Depolarization, but the body will respond if the individual is conscientious about their food, air, and water replacements. As my clients say, “The proof is in the pudding!”

Kathy Oddenino, R.N. teaches Spiritual Philosophy, Neural Depolarizationâ„¢, and is the author of 8 books.

check out the official Kathy Oddenino website>>

Have you experienced this technique? Which other healers should the world know about? Share your comments here

Why not share an article on healing or spirituality. . .

Reiki is a gentle Japanese technique of laying on of hands to bring energy into the body for deep relaxation and a sense of well-being. Reiki is performed through a technique similar to the laying on of hands.

Developed in the early 1900’s by Mikao Usui in Japan. It is an art that is passed from Master to student. The word Reiki comes from two Japanese words – Rei and Ki, meaning Universal Life Force Energy. The term “Reiki” is used to describe both the energy and the Usui system of using it. The original system by Usui was called Usui Reiki Ryoho. There are many variant’s of Reiki being practiced these days.

Mikao Usui claimed to have discovered Reiki after long meditation, fasting, and prayer. Usui wrote that by mystical revelation he had gained the knowledge and spiritual power to apply and attune others to what he called Reiki. Mikao Usui said that he had the ability to enable people to enhance their access to the energy through certain initiations.

Although Reiki started in Japan - it died out as an art in Japan in the mid-20th century. Fortunetly, practioners had brough it to Hawaii by that time.

From a small community in Hawaii, the art spread worldwide. Reiki is now one of the fastest growing and most popular healing arts practices worldwide.

My Experience

I took a Reiki course in New York in 2000. I can’t remember by teachers name but the course was wonderful. In 15 hours, spread over 2 days, you learn the art of channeling “life force” through your hands and onto the body of someone requesting healing.

The person experiencing the healing usually reports a feeling of a tingling sensation or warmtn emanating from the healer’s hand.

According to Reiki-Therapy.net

A Reiki treatment is one-hour long and is useful for specific healing or general relaxation. This is the perfect way to spoil yourself! The treatments are individually tailored to the client’s needs and condition. The practitioner rests hands for a few minutes on specific areas of the body (head, torso, legs and back) allowing energy to pass through into the client The client remains fully clothed at all times and may experience different bodily sensations. Some feel the “electricity” passing through various limbs or tingling or warm sensations, some smell scents, see visions, some feel as if they have reverted to the safety of the womb and some just fall asleep. Whatever you might feel these are merely side effects of the healing process and it is best to enter a treatment with no expectations.

The healer feels the same tingling sensation (at least I did). But I kept asking myself – Is this real or am I just imagining things?

One things for sure – a lot of people swear by Reiki Therapy.

If you’re looking for a form of complementary healing therapy, I strongly recommmend it.

I combine Reiki Therapy with Silva Techniques for maximum results. It’s helped me overcome lots of minor health issues.

Here are some interesting articles on Reiki Therapy:

• 9 Distant Healing Tips
• Using Reiki to Stay Grounded

Mind controls body in extreme experiments

By William J. Cromie, Harvard Gazette Staff

In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators’ shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.

 If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.

Picture Left: A Buddhist monk has his vital signs measured as he prepares to enter an advanced state of meditation in Normandy, France. During meditation, the monk’s body produces enough heat to dry cold, wet sheets put over his shoulders in a frigid room (Photo by Herbert Benson).

Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monk was required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours.

Why would anyone do this? Herbert Benson, who has been studying g Tum-mo for 20 years, answers that “Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There’s another reality we can tap into that’s unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation. The heat they generate during the process is just a by-product of g Tum-mo meditation.”

Benson is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He firmly believes that studying advanced forms of meditation “can uncover capacities that will help us to better treat stress-related illnesses.”

Benson developed the “relaxation response,” which he describes as “a physiological state opposite to stress.” It is characterized by decreases in metabolism, breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. He and others have amassed evidence that it can help those suffering from illnesses caused or exacerbated by stress. Benson and colleagues use it to treat anxiety, mild and moderate depression, high blood pressure, heartbeat irregularities, excessive anger, insomnia, and even infertility. His team also uses this type of simple meditation to calm those who have been traumatized by the deaths of others, or by diagnoses of cancer or other painful, life-threatening illnesses.

“More than 60 percent of visits to physicians in the United States are due to stress-related problems, most of which are poorly treated by drugs, surgery, or other medical procedures,” Benson maintains.

The Mind/Body Medical Institute is now training people to use the relaxation response to help people working at Ground Zero in New York City, where two airplanes toppled the World Trade Center Towers last Sept. 11. Facilities have been set up at nearby St. Paul’s Chapel to aid people still working on clearing wreckage and bodies. Anyone else who feels stressed by those terrible events can also obtain help at the chapel. “We are training the trainers who work there,” Benson says.

The relaxation response involves repeating a word, sound, phrase, or short prayer while disregarding intrusive thoughts. “If such an easy-to-master practice can bring about the remarkable changes we observe,” Benson notes. “I want to investigate what advanced forms of meditation can do to help the mind control physical processes once thought to be uncontrollable.”

Next: Breathtaking Results: Read More >>

Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work…I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Much to humanity’s collective dismay, there is no way to defy death. But you can try.

Many people think they know what’s good for them. Who wouldn’t like to think that being rich, sleeping with supermodels and eating caviar every day would increase their longevity.

After all, Hugh Hefner looks pretty good for a man of 78. But this is more wishful thinking than practical science.

If you really want to live longer, then you can start with your attitude. Your way of thinking can not only impact the quality of your life, but also how long you actually live.

In 2002, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that optimistic people decreased their risk of early death by 50% compared with those who leaned more towards pessimism.

“The exact mechanism of how personality acts as a risk factor for early death or poorer health is unclear,” says Dr. Toshihiko Maruta, the main investigator in the study. Most likely, it has to do with the fact that pessimists have an increased chance for future problems with their physical health, career achievements and emotional stress–particularly depression.

“Yet another possibility could be more directly biological, like changes in the immune system,” Maruta adds.

Besides optimism, are there other personality traits that can help us live longer, healthier lives? According to Dr. Howard Friedman, a psychologist at the University of California at Riverside, conscientiousness is related to mortality in a significant way. The Terman Life-Cycle Study, which ran from 1921 to 1991, examined an array of factors like personality, habits, social relations, education, physical activites and cause of death.

“Those low on adult conscientiousness died sooner,” Friedman concluded. Conscientiousness does not mean looking both ways before crossing the street; it means looking both ways when the light turns green so you don’t accidentally run down some slow-moving pedestrian.

Beyond that, a conscientious person’s long-living qualities probably have to do with the fact that they are predisposed to constructively reacting to emotional and social situations, and are more likely to create work and living environments that promote good health.

Besides looking at the world through rosier-colored glasses, there are also more traditional practices that the aspiring centenarian can take. People should stop smoking, eat a balanced diet and maintain a healthy weight. While these may sound “nannyish,” they are factors that cannot be overlooked. This might not sound like much fun, but it’s a lot more fun than dying.

Research shows that obesity, for example, contributes to a slew of medical conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and various cancers. So powerful are certain lifestyle choices that recommended diets along with maintenance of physical activity and appropriate body mass can, over time, reduce the incidence of cancer by 30% to 40%, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Animal lovers will be happy to know that having a pet can add years to your life, as well. One of the first studies in this arena, which appeared in Public Health Reports in 1980, showed that the survival rates of heart attack victims who had a pet were 28% higher than those of patients who didn’t have an animal companion. “The health effects seem to be very real and by no means mystical,” says Alan Beck, director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University. “Contact with companion animals triggers a relaxation response,” he says.

Rebecca Johnson, a professor of gerontological nursing at the University of Missouri at Columbia, showed that interaction with pets does, in fact, reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The ability of companion pets to reduce our overall stress level probably accounts for most of their life-extending qualities.

“For many people, pets also provide a reason to get moving,” adds Johnson. How many people, after all, would actually get any exercise if it weren’t for their over-enthusiastic dog?

To many people, quality of life is equally as important as life span. It is a good thing, then, that many of the things that can improve your longevity can also improve your quality of life.

Visit this Link to See a Slideshow on Forbes.com on 10 Ways to Live Longer >>