I came across this today. You may find it interesting.
Proto Magazine
Fall 2010
"In the early 1970s, in the very laboratory at Harvard Medical School where physiologist Walter Cannon discovered the fight-or-flight response, a young cardiologist named Herbert Benson tested 36 devoted practitioners of meditation, monitoring changes in their oxygen consumption, heart rate, blood pressure and rate of breathing that exactly opposed those of the fight-or-flight response. His 1975 book describing the phenomenon, The Relaxation Response, rocketed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and Benson became famous as one of the first Western physicians to stress the importance of the mind in modern medicine.
Benson is the founder and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, where a recent study has shown that meditation, tai chi, yoga, exercise, prayer and a variety of similar practices can alter a person’s gene activity, changing the expression of genes related to stress and inflammation..."
http://protomag.com/assets/herbert-b...-healing-power
