I have just joined this forum so it is all new to me, even things posted in 2006.

I would like to add a bit about mindfulness meditation. I was at the American Holistic Medical Association's Conference in Cleveland this month, and one of the keynote addresses was by HeartMath. HeartMath has done extensive research on the heart-brain, the gut-brain, and the brain we all think of as the brain. It turns out that the heart brain has stronger electrical energy, and breathing into the heart while feeling appreciation calms stress through coherence, or balance in the autonomic nervous system. (I am a lay person, so may not be stating it perfectly correctly.) Athletes call this state being in "the zone". Breathing into the heart while feeling appreciation sounds very much like mindfulness meditation to me! Meditation comes in many forms.