DailyGood

For the last 27 years, DailyGood newsletters have offered a daily email that inspires you to respond to life with creativity and kindness. To join a community of 148,452 subscribers, subscribe here.

Jan 5, 2012

"The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?" --Jack Kornfield

Be Healthy, Be Compassionate

The Dalai Lama has been telling us for years that it would make us happy, but he never said it would make us healthy, too. Maybe the Dalai Lama knew all along or maybe he's just finding out like the rest of us, but science is starting to catch up with a couple millennia of spiritual thought. In recent years, the investigation of compassion has moved beyond theology and philosophy to embrace a wide range of scientific fields, including neurology, endocrinology and immunology. New research shows that the practice of compassion has beneficial effects not only on mental health but on physical health, too.