A New Route to Forgiveness

Meditation has been shown to provide a wealth of benefits to your physical and emotional health. New research shows another benefit: not only can it relieve stress, but it can promote forgiveness as well, which brings a separate list of benefits!

Researchers from U.C. Berkeley put students through two 8-week, 90-minute courses in mindfulness-based stress reduction and Easwaran's Eight-Point Program (a meditation-based program), and found that both programs significantly reduced students' stress and increased their tendencies toward forgiveness. And these benefits were still going strong 8 weeks later!

Even if you can't take a full course, adding some meditation sessions to your schedule can help you feel less stressed and apparently can also help you let go of anger that you may be holding on to!

• Benefits of Meditation
• Meditation Techniques
• The Benefits of Forgiveness
• How To Forgive: More Strategies
• Discuss Forgiveness In the Forum

_{Source:
Oman D, Shapiro SL, Thoresen CE, Plante TG, Flinders T. Meditation lowers stress and supports forgiveness among college students: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American College Health, March-April 2008.}