Mindfulness Craze Catches up with Scripture

The never ceases to amaze me.  In my daily travels around the internet, I came across this post about the cardiovascular benefits of .  Any long time follower of knows that I’ve touted the spiritual benefits of rosary .  Increasing one’s should be a nice little extra to motivate you to whip out your rosary beads and get started on those .

Here is a summary of the findings from  (here’s a for your science and medical geeks out there):

Luciano Bernardi, associate professor of internal medicine at , recorded breathing rates in 23 healthy adults during normal talking, recitation of the rosary, yoga mantras, and six minutes of controlled breathing. Breathing was markedly more regular during the rosary and the mantra and was slowed to about six breaths a minute. The results mean yoga enhances ‘aspects’ of heart and lung function and might be viewed as a health practice as well as a religious practice, he said. The benefits of breathing exercises in yoga have long been reported, and mantras may have evolved as a simple device to slow respiration, improve concentration, and induce calm, Professor Bernardi says in this week’s .

I’ve long said that is spiritual exercise.  But rosary prayer is also .  And like any exercise, it’s important to show good form to maximize benefits.  This is what I said in my rosary prayer guide, , about the connection between prayer and exercise:

It is important that you pray the rosary earnestly. If this is your first time praying the rosary regularly then please set aside some time so you can really concentrate. Going back to the exercise analogy, you cannot expect to get into great shape physically by working out half heartedly. You cannot do one poorly-formed pushup once a week and eat junk food and expect to be in super shape. Similarly, you need to develop good form for praying the rosary, especially in the beginning. Starting anything new and different can be a challenge initially. Think of praying the rosary as spiritual boot camp where you need to put in a lot of effort up front to give your spiritual life a jolt. But once you find your rhythm, the benefits of prayer really start to multiply. Once you are comfortable praying the rosary then it becomes much easier to integrate it throughout the day if you like.

So the benefits of rosary prayer is not just the seemingly random ramblings of this blog, but are backed up by the Church and the .  If you are thinking of buying some new this year or starting a new , perhaps you should add a and to your shopping list.  Your mind, body, and soul will thank you.

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