Hindu Spiritual Leader Heals with Hugs

Published July 20, 2012, Pawtucket Times

Just shy of an hour’s drive from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, thousands of spiritual seekers and devotee’s of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, simply known to her followers as Amma (or mother in Sanskrit), gathered at the huge conference and trade center at the Best Western Royal Plaza in Marlborough, Massachusetts, just to sit before the Indian Saint to experience her healing embrace, hugs, and to meditate.

Throughout the free public morning and evening programs held on July 14^th, followed by a three-day retreat (costing $360 for adults that included room and board; less for children), organizers estimated that there would be over 10,000 hugs given to those attending this year’s New England gathering for her blessing. The New England program was the last stop of her North American Tour, an annual tour that began in 1987.

Sitting Before Amma

Issac Amponsah, proprietor of Ama’s Variety on Main Street, attends Catholic services, mediates twice a day chanting his Transcendental Meditation (TM) mantra and along with following the teachings of Amma.

Last year Amponsah’s car broke down on his way the see Amma. Now, waits for hours in the 47,500 square foot conference and trade center with his brother, Paul, to see Amma and get her blessings. The Pawtucket businessman, casually dressed wearing sandals, knelt before Amna, surrounding by swamis in orange robes, devotee volunteers and spiritual seekers, getting his brief embrace, lasting for less than a minute. Amma slowly rocked the Woodlawn resident as she chanted a mantra in his ear. When finished he left carrying a spiritually-charged Hersey Kiss and a few flower petals.

Over thirty four years ago, Amponsah says curiosity and a thirst for knowledge led him to Transcendental Meditation (TM), when he learned the art of meditation. In 1992, a fellow TM practitioner brought him to meet Amma in New York and where he got his first hug and listened to her Vedic philosophies. Over the years he still travels to see her when she comes through New England.

“Knowledge, inspiration and love are the things I take away from seeing Amma,” states Amponsah. He believes that she is the true expression of Devine love, just like Jesus Christ, too.

“It was like soul connecting to soul,” noted Amponsah, trying to explain his brief spiritual encounter with Amma. “She just radiates love.”

Like Amponsah, other aging Rhode Island baby boomers came across the Massachusetts’s border to get Amma’s blessing, too.

For the last couple of years, Elizabeth Johanson, 50, a Pawtucket resident and a practicing Catholic has also come for Amma’s hugs and blessings. She considers this Hindu Saint to be the incarnation of the divine Mother.

According to Johanson, “Amma’s the real deal,” who financially supports programs to promote nonviolence and social justice, and feeding and housing the poor.

Johanson, wearing a white t-shirt sporting the word, “love” wears an Our Lady of Guadalupe medallion, strongly believes that her yearly encounters with Amma and studying her teachings only strengthens her traditional beliefs in Catholicism.

“I try to take Amma’s love and unconditional compassion out into Pawtucket and Central Falls each day, notes the mental health worker. “As I become more spiritually nourished I am able to become more patient and tolerate in my every day world, she says.

Fifty-seven year old Tommy Emmet, who grew up practicing the doctrine of the Church of England, now is spiritually eclectic. Practicing Hindu and Buddhism, and an avid reader of tomes on the world’s religions he sees the thread of truth in all religious practices.

Wearing blue jeans and a colorful Hawaiian shirt, the aging baby boomer proudly wears an Obama ’08 button, sporting a necklace showing his religious beliefs. Dangling charms were of images of Hindu deities, others of Native American symbols, and one of Amma.

In 2007, his wife, Karen Lee, the owner of the Pawtucket-based Breathing Time Yoga Studio, introduced him to Amma. Emmet, an usher at National Amusement Theater at Providence mall, has continued to come each year for her healing hugs and blessings.

Emmet claims that sitting before this Hindu Spiritual teacher enables him to more easily connect to his divine, higher power and allows him to be more loving with himself and others. “Thinking about Amma just helps me get through the day,” he says.

.The Making of Spiritual Teacher

Amma grew up in poverty in 1953 in a remote coastal village in Kerala, South India, her family trade — fishing. As a young girl she spent many hours in deep mediation on the seashore where she began to compose devotional songs, many of these compositions revealed depth and wisdom.

With an ailing mother, Amma left school to help with household tasks, taking care of her seven siblings. As she went door-to-door gathering food scraps from neighbors for her family’s cows, she saw intense poverty and suffering in her community. She brought people food and clothing from her own home, to the dismay of her family.

With this begun the spontaneously hugging of people to comfort them, who responded by calling her Amma (Mother). She found her path of serving others…

Amma Recognized Around the Globe for her Charity Work

In 1997, Amma toured the world, including the United States. With her home ashram in Kerala, South India, her ashrams, teaching her philosophy that all religions are one, are now scattered around the world. Her devotees say that Amma has never asked anyone to change their religion, only that they go deeper into their values or faith, and live by those essential principles.

One year later, one of her initiatives, “Embracing the World Program” (ETW), has funded humanitarian efforts throughout in India. This program has provided more than $50 million in totally free medical care, built an 800-bed hospital, a medical school and health clinics. Meanwhile, it has provided more than 40,000 homes for the homeless throughout India and given financial aid for 100,000 people unable to care for themselves. ETW projects also fund vocational-training, literacy-training, open and operate orphanages, hospices, nursing homes, scholarship programs, and even the planting trees.

Amma has received international praise. She has delivered addresses at the United Nations several times and has spoken twice at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. She has also received the Gandhi-King Award for Non-violence in Geneva and the James Park Morton Interfaith Award in New York. Two years ago, the Hindu spiritual leader was presented an honorary doctorate in humane letters at the University at Buffalo North Campus.

Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writer who covers aging, health and medical issues. This article was published in the July 20, 2012 issue of the Pawtucket Times. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

Loneliness Can Be Hazardous to Your Health, Even Lead to Untimely Death

Published July 13, 2012, Pawtucket Times

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It’s the loneliest number since the number one”

Three Dog Night’s well-know lyrics on its first gold record may well mirror research findings of a study published last month in the Archives of Internal Medicine by University of California- San Francisco geriatricians. That is, older persons can be lonely without really being alone because of lack of emotional connect, the feelings of emptiness or desolation being linked to serious health problems and even death.

The UCSF geriatricians lead by Carla Perissinotto, MD, MHS, analyzed data in the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative study by the National Institute on Aging conducted on 1,604 older adults between 2002 and 2008. Researchers limited their analysis to participants 60 and older and the mean age being 71 years.

Perissinotto notes in her study that it was one of the first studies to examine the relationship between loneliness and functional decline and death.

“In our typical medical model, we don’t think of subjective feelings as affecting health,” said Dr. Perissinotto, an assistant professor in the UCSF Division of Geriatrics. “It’s intriguing to find that loneliness is independently associated with an increased rate of death and functional decline.”

Lonely in Relationships

UCSF researchers say that one of the more surprising findings of the team’s analysis is that loneliness does not necessarily correlate with living alone. The study found 43 percent of surveyed older adults felt lonely, yet only 18 percent lived alone.

“We are interested in identifying the different factors that cause adults to become functionally impaired and ultimately at risk for nursing home admission,” Dr. Perissinotto. “The aging of our population and the greater odds of institutionalization make it important for us to think about all the factors that are putting elders in danger, including social and environmental risks,” she noted.

Researchers at UCSF focused on death and a decrease in the ability to perform daily activities such as upper extremity tasks, climbing stairs, and walking. People who identified themselves as lonely had a statistically significant 59 percent greater risk of decline. For death, 45 percent were at greater risk of death.

“This is one of those outcomes you don’t want to see because it was terrible to find out it was actually true,” Dr. Perissinotto said. “We went into the analysis thinking that there was a risk we could find nothing, but there actually was a strong correlation.”

The UCSF Research team believes the impact of loneliness on an elderly patient is different from the effects of depression. While depression is linked with a lack enjoyment, energy and motivation, loneliness can be felt in people who are fully functional but feel empty or desolate.

The “baby boomer” generation – those born between 1946 and 1964 – represents the largest population growth inU.S.history. Some of them now are part of the 39.6 million population of people older than 65. That number is expected to more than double to 88.5 million by 2050. As that population continues to expand, Dr. Perissinotto said she hopes to be able to start to integrate social and medical services for elderly patients more comprehensively, and be more mindful of what kinds of social interventions they require.

Physicians “asking about chronic diseases is not enough,” she said. “There’s much more going on in people’s homes and their communities that is affecting their health. If we don’t ask about it, we are missing a very important and independent risk factor, she says. “We don’t think we can change genetics, but we can intervene when someone is lonely and help prevent some functional decline.”

That’s what 85-year-old jazz singer Barbara Dane is trying to avoid as she continues to entertain in theEastBaywell into her 80s. “When your spouse dies, there’s a missing space in your heart,” says the widow. “You still want to know that someone cares about you. Connection to other people becomes even more important at this point in your life.”

Dane, who has performed for over 70 years, credits her active social life to her positive outlook on life. She adds, “A lot of people around me are aging, and some are not doing so well,” she said. “Some who never developed social skills are having the hardest time and those are the ones we need to watch out for.”

Everything is Interconnected

Phillip Clark, ScD, Professor and Director, Program in Gerontology and Rhode Island Geriatric Education Center, says that these findings are consistent with what gerontologists have been saying for years; namely, that the experience of aging can only be understood by taking into account its physical, social, and psychological dimensions, because they are all interconnected with each other. “When we get older, we find that different parts of our lives and our health are increasingly related to each other,” he says.

Dr. Clark states, “Although this recent study does distinguish between the research literature on social support and its specific results on loneliness, certainly the two areas share a common insight: that the psychosocial context of aging can either enhance or undermine our health as we get older.” For instance, having one close friend—a confidante—as we get older can help buffer us from some of the negative effects of the losses often associated with aging. Just one person with whom we can share our joys and sorrows can make all the difference, he adds.

The implications of this study are clear to Dr. Clark. Professionals [including physicians] who work with older adults must be attuned to the psychosocial contexts of older adults and ask questions about how they are feeling, not just physically but also mentally.

Dr. Clark believes it is not normal that we become depressed or lonely as we get older, and things can be done to address these problems so that older adults have a rewarding and healthy later life.

Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com. This Commentary appeared in July 13, 2012 issue of the Pawtuckt Times.

Deciphering the Effectiveness of Alzheimer’s Research Findings

Published July 6, 2012, Pawtucket Times

Over a decade my mother was afflicted with the devastating medical disorder, Alzheimer’s Disease. Over the years with this affliction her physician would keep our family updated on the effectiveness of pharmaceutical research on medications that could put the breaks on this devastating disorder, one that would ultimately erase her short and long-term memory, making her husband of sixty years, and adult children virtual strangers to her.

My family like hundreds of thousands of baby boomers and seniors sought out information from local newspapers, senior publications, national magazines, like Time or Newsweek, to unravel the medical mysteries of Alzheimer’s Disease. Occasionally, I, like many shoppers at the local grocery store would sneak a peek, reading the National Enquirer while waiting in line looking for a little bit more information on new effective treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Unraveling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s Disease

Oftentimes it becomes very confusing for caregivers to determine which profiled treatments are promising ones and which ones are not, due to the diversity of opinions in the research community. Some articles might detail the effectiveness of taking Vitamin E; while others stress the effectiveness of Gingko, noting how it just might improve your memory. Others might describe studies that indicate that estrogen replacement therapy is not really an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease for some women. Or some might even issue a warning to the reader to “not eat off of aluminum plates” because some research findings seem to indicate that an accumulation of heavy metals, such as aluminum, in the brain might cause the devastating disorder of Alzheimer’s.

Years ago I provided the following helpful tips to readers of my column that might just unravel the mysteries of reported research findings in Alzheimer’s research that are reported by the nation’s media. These tips are just as true eleven years later.

Always beware of glitzy headlines. Time limitations keep people from reading every word in articles that appear in their daily, weekly or monthly newspapers. As a result, may readers just choose to quickly scan the headlines for their information. Don’t judge an article by its cute headline. The content of an article is much more balanced than the headline that is composed of catchy words, crafted to draw the reader in.

Look for authoritative commentary. You can consider an article to be more credible when it provides multiple quotes on the indications of an Alzheimer’s treatment. Consider the report to have done a good job if there is an authoritative expert commentary of the significance of the study. Two likely sources might come from staffers employed by either the National Alzheimer’s Association or the National Institute of health, a major federal government agency that fund’s Alzheimer’s research studies. One might consider the National Alzheimer’s Association point of view to be less biased and a more reliable opinion than those researchers who have ties to a pharmaceutical company that issued the press release.

Determine if there are disputes in research findings. Keep in mind that even if a research study is reported there might be those persons who believe that the study is not well designed or has major research flaws. On the other hand, the study might just be accepted by the scientific community as a solid study. However, there might still be serious disagreements about how to interpret the results or how to classify it. Some researchers might consider it a major study while others would not. A well-researched article will include the quotes of those who oppose the study.

Seeking out Reliable Expert Sources

Are you still confused by how to cull articles for tips to learn about safe and effective treatments for Alzheimer’s? Where do we go from here? Caregivers should view any article written about new Alzheimer’s treatments as informational in nature. The article can open the door to the nation’s research community and it now becomes your responsibility to do your homework by seeking out more details about what the research findings indicate.

If the article describes the results of an actual published research study, obtain the scientific journal with the published study at your local library or search for it on the Internet. When found carefully read it. If the findings are reported from a presentation at a conference attempt to track down the researchers for more information. Finally cruise the Internet and check out the official Websites of the Alzheimer’s Association or the National Institute on Aging, to determine if you can locate more information about a reported new treatment.

Finally, don’t hesitate to call Donna McGowan, Executive Director of the Alzheimer’s Association – Rhode Island Chapter at 401 421-0008 or email, Donna.McGowan@alz.org, to solicit the organization’s comments on research findings reported by the media. Remember Federal agencies, along with national and state Alzheimer’s organizations monitor research studies and their implications for treatment.

Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. His Commentaries are published in two Rhode Island daily’s The Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call.