The Red Cross nurse knew meditation lowers blood pressure

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• “Your meditation can't be that good”

  In brief: At the Serpentine doctor's surgery a monk sees an advert for another meditation group and suggests the doctor's people come to theirs…

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  I think one of the monks was visiting the uh the local doctor in Serpentine. And when they were visiting that local doctor in Serpentine, they saw an advert there for a meditation group in Serpentine. Not our group, but another group. And he said, "Well, why don't you come to our meditation group?" And he said, "Well, your meditation group can't be that good because you monks are always coming into this surgery for help from the doctor.

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• The cold that vanished mid-talk

  In brief: On his first visit to Canberra, his hosts take Ajahn Brahm everywhere all day in the cold, getting lost, with no rest. By evening he has a…

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  first time I went to Canberra to give a series of talks and to my house they took me all over the place all day and they got lost and it was one of these days no rest and just from early in the morning it was really cold so by the end of the day I had this terrible cold and I was supposed to give a talk public talk in a big Temple advertised all these people came and as soon as I started trying to give a talk every other sentence I'd sneeze and cough and stuff was coming out of my nose ears everywhere it was disgusting so after about 15 minutes there's no way I could give a talk like that so I said let's all meditate so I had half an hour meditation altogether and afterwards I gave this beautiful talk Not a Cough not a sneeze really impressive people saw that wow is that possible he had a cold you know any stuff coming out of your nose you weren't sort of imagining this it's real you meditate you know because I had to sometimes we're lazy don't really do it unless you really want to unless you have to mostly so you'd sit there and just after a while the cold vanish and I gave us lovely fluent talk without any interruptions wow that's interesting this meditation actually works

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• She thought she'd had a stroke — it was dehydration

  In brief: A member of the three-month rains retreat in Joondalup grows very sick and is taken to hospital thinking she has had a stroke. The cause…

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  There's one of our as he's probably listening, one of our members of our three-month rains retreat over in in Joondalup, Perth, she know, she thought she had had a stroke. Cuz you know, she started really getting very sick. We took her to the hospital. The obvious, dehydration. She wanted to just meditate for long periods of time and if you just have water, you have to go to the loo. And so she thought, I better not drink that much. And sometimes people forget the easy things. The obvious solutions are sometimes the best. And after that, she was fine. Just need dehydration.

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• “Whatever those monks are on, I want some”

  In brief: A past president of the Buddhist Society, Rachel Green, first came only to learn meditation for panic attacks and anxiety. Seeing the…

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  There's - one of our past presidents, she is not here this evening, so she was here about two or three weeks ago, that's Rachel Green. She won't mind me telling her name, because she wrote a little book about, her spiritual story. And the part which I like, well, I got to be honest, it was about me. And it's actually really about how she became a Buddhist. She was suffering from panic disorders and anxiety attacks. Like many of you know, if you actually come and do some meditation, it really helps overcome anxiety disorders and panic attacks. Meditation is a beautiful method of overcoming that. And many people know that, many people actually are sent by their GPs to places like this to learn meditation, so they can overcome their anxiety disorders and panic attacks - and it works very well. But anyway, she came along, just to learn some meditation to overcome her anxiety disorders, and then she saw these monks, and this is the Armadale group, always seem to be peaceful and happy. She wrote in her book, that when she first saw these guys, she thought they're just acting. Just a face you put on in public, and behind the scenes, you know you're just like anybody else - you know, grumpy, arrogant, selfish. So actually, she decided to try and visit our monasteries, and "check us out", to see whether this was real, or whether we're just faking it. And of course, now I really try hard to make everybody open, so you can come and see as many times, see us y'know, when we're off-guard, not in public, and hopefully, I think you'll probably see that as you see us now, is actually as we are at all times. When she saw that, she realized, "I don't know what those monks are on, but whatever they're on, I want some of it."

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