DharmaPals is an outreach program dedicated to providing healing and support for seniors through meditation.
Our Mission
To assure that seniors, regardless of income, are able to benefit from the beneficial effects of meditation techniques; to raise awareness and educate the community about the preventative and healing benefits of meditation and practice, so they can improve and maintain their health; to further training, program development and research in the field. Read more…
Our Goals
- Empower seniors with tools which promote brain physiology improvement and overall wellness
- Create programs for the community, i.e., promoting mindfulness at work, which creates awareness of the benefits of meditation
- Provide seniors and their caregivers with mindfulness techniques to improve the patient-caregiver relationship
- Further training, program and research initiatives in the field of mind-body medicine
Why Meditation?
Research has shown that meditation is similar to other lifestyle change activities in that it is only effective if you do it! Exercise, diet change, or meditation — any lifestyle change requires consistent practice to gain results. In early studies of meditation, the cardiologist Herbert Benson, at Harvard, demonstrated that practicing meditation 20 minutes twice-a-day was sufficient to bring about significant reductions in blood pressure in many people. The exact number of minutes of daily practice to bring benefits for large populations is not well understood, and, in truth, it probably varies based on a number of considerations. Generally, however, we can say that regular, daily meditation practice of at least 30 minutes or more is very likely to bring benefits to the person who does it. Read more…
An Aging Population
-2004: 36.3 million – The number of seniors who were age 65 and older in the United States. Seniors 65+ comprised 12 percent of the total population in 2004.
-2050: 86.7 million – Projected number of people who will be 65 or older. Seniors age 65 and older will make up 21 percent of the total population.
-49 percent increase: The projected percentage that the 65+ senior population between 2000 and 2050.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau