Dana: On the Positive Effects of Charity

by Ram

Anna Marie Dufault, Age 51, by Melina Meza

Dana (charity) is one of the ten niyamas (observances) and is discussed in the Bhavavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Yoga Yajnyavalkya Samhita. Dana is a selfless, faithful, and goodwill act of giving to any deserving person—an action that is rendered without any personal expectation. An individual rendering dana/charity gets rid of all egoistic tendencies while offering such a service and puts the well-being of the recipient as a top priority ahead of his/her personal gain or achievement. 

To perform dana/charity, you need to cultivate non-attachment and a loving attitude to do selfless service. Dana requires you to perform any charity without attachment and/or expectation and remain unaffected by the results of such service. At the same time you need to cultivate a loving attitude towards the charitable act without developing any stress from it, no matter what the outcome is. Having an attachment and expectation while doing a charitable act creates a mental conflict leading to an emotional upheaval. This approach—performing a charitable act without any expectation and letting go of all results, whether good or bad, and focusing on the selfless action alone—is dana and underlies the essence of karma yoga (see Karma Yoga Opportunities).

While dana is generally rendered to an individual or family, the highest form of dana/charity aims for the benefit of the public or community, and includes projects such as building a rest house, school, or water reservoir, planting trees, or building a care facility for orphans and aged individuals. In the Hindu culture, dana/charity is discussed in numerous ways and includes among others:

• Annadana: donating food to the needy
• Godana: donating cattle (typically a cow)
• Bhudana: donating land 
• Vidyadana: providing free teaching
• Jnanadana: sharing knowledge and skills
• Aushadhadana: providing free medical service

In all these cases, dana/charity is held as a noble deed and is considered good karma that affects your future circumstances and environment. And it is believed that those charitable deeds by the doer lead to a harmonious life because of the reciprocity principle.

Needless to say, dana/charity brings health benefits as well. Research studies show that giving selflessly is good for the giver as it boosts physical and mental health. Studies find the following health benefits associated with charity:

• Lower blood pressure
• Increased self-esteem
• Less depression
• Lower stress levels
• Longer life
• Greater happiness

It is easy to understand why dana/charity boosts healthy living; while performing the charitable act, your body releases several “feel good” chemicals, including oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, all of which buffer out stressful thoughts, suppress pain signals, and regulate optimal blood flow, improving mind, body, and heart.

In “The Effects of Giving on Givers,” Konrath and Brown list out the health benefits associated with people who perform dana/charity. According to these authors, doers who performed acts of charity had lower blood pressure than people who didn’t perform them. Interaction with others that involved giving and supporting selflessly also helped people recover from cardiac issues. People who gave their time to help others through community and organizational involvement had greater self-esteem, less depression, and lower stress levels than those who didn’t. Furthermore, older people who gave help to friends, relatives and neighbors—or who gave emotional support to their spouses—were 44 percent less likely to die over a five-year period than those who didn’t, even after accounting for many other factors, including age, exercise, general health, and negative habits like smoking. At the cellular level, selfless giving activates regions in the brain associated with pleasure, connection with other people, and trust.

And in a 2006 study Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation, researchers from the National Institutes of Health observed brain patterns from MRI images of subjects who donated to various charities. The researchers concluded that acts of charity stimulated the subgenual areas and the mesolimbic pathway, which are the reward centers in the brain. Activation of these areas triggers the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and vasopressin, all of which create what is known as the “helper’s high,” a distinct physical/mental sensation associated with helping. In this state, you feel stronger and more energetic after helping others; many also report feeling calmer and less depressed with increased feeling of self-worth.

So as the holiday season approaches and you wish to end the year on a good note, why not explore the opportunities for a dana/charitable act in your community? You can follow it up by making it one of your New Year's resolutions to continue the charitable act(s) throughout the next year. Even a small charity goes a long way towards improving other people's lives, as well as your own.

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The Death of a Friend: Karma Yoga, Non-Attachment, and Truthfulness

by Nina

At Home with Buster

I had sad news on Friday, January 9: Tama Blough, the woman with terminal cancer for whom I was fund raising—and who happened to be one of our readers—died that morning. Although the news was sad, I was comforted by the thought that Tama died at home, in the company of her beloved cat, Buster, and tended to by the caregiver we had hired with money that I help to raise. (And thank you so much to everyone who donated. It has been a profoundly moving experience to see so many people rally around a friend in need.)

You might recall that I wrote a post Karma Yoga Opportunities about why I decided to take on the task of raising money for this woman who learned she had terminal, non-treatable bile duct cancer and who was also destitute. It was her wish that she be able to die at home rather than in a hospital, and I decided to try to make that wish come true. Because there was no one to take care of her when she needed 24/7 care and also because she was no longer able to work to pay her living expenses, the thing I needed to do was raise enough money to pay for all of that. But the question was: exactly how much money would be enough?

It was actually stressful to try to estimate the total amount of money that would be needed. While I could look at predictable expenses such as her rent, utilities, food, and so on, as well as the typical hourly rate for a caregiver, I had no reliable estimate for how long she might live and for how long she might need paid caregivers. 

Obviously just thinking about how long someone might or might not live is stressful in and of itself, but trying to make impossible estimates for how much money might actually be needed for various scenarios was even worse. What if we used up all the money we’d raised (over $20,000) and she was still alive and needing care? Or, conversely, what if she died more quickly than expected and we had a lot of money left over? I had some private conversations with her elderly mother and the friends who were helping me raise the money about these possibilities and we made some contingency plans. And I had to face the fact that if we ran out of money, she would have to go to a hospital, where her health insurance would cover the final costs. 

I’m bringing this all up because when you’re helping someone who is dying, obviously you don’t get all wrapped out in hopes for another possible outcome. But you can get wrapped out in your hopes and expectations for how the whole process unfolds. And in this particular case, I obviously had a strong attachment to making Tama’s wish to die at home come true. However, as you can see, I really had no guarantee that things would work out as I hoped. So I often reminded myself that I was doing my best, and because I had no control over the outcome, doing my best was all I could do. So when Ram wrote his post about karma yoga last Monday (see Altruism (Karma Yoga)), it struck me that my situation was a perfect example of what he meant by saying: 

"Selfless service requires an individual to perform any service without attachment or expectation, and remain unaffected by the results of such service." 

Of course, I didn’t do the “without attachment” thing perfectly, either. But, again, even with our efforts at being without "expectation" or "attachment," all any of us can do is our best.

I’d also like to say that Tama bravely faced her death with truthfulness (satya). As I wrote in Meeting Death at the Front Door, I feel that being honest about death and dying is the only way for us to die the way we say we want to. You have to face the truth yourself. You have to tell your family the truth. And you have to insist your doctors—and your loved ones—tell you the truth. And Tama did all those things, sometimes even with humor. So I thought I’d end with this story about her that her friend Joe Allegretti shared on Facebook:

My last conversation with Tama was in early November, I think, when she told me about the diagnosis. At one point, she was talking about how she had been hoping for months that she'd be able to get out of SF, move to another city, figure out a way to reinvent herself. The employment situation and everything else was really hard on her and I totally understood her wish for something new. Finally, she summed it up by saying, "I wanted a reboot."

Then she said, "Well I guess now I'm gonna get the BIIIIIIIG reboot." We both immediately laughed a lot.

And Joe's sharing of his story led to this beautiful one from her friend Drew Zeigler:

One of the last interactions she and I had was when my dog had gone missing and she kept popping in and making lovely hopeful comments to me, so I reached out to her. Her response was, "Well, just because I'm dying, that doesn't mean I can't still have compassion for others." 
 
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Altruism (Karma Yoga), a Wonderful Way to Start the New Year!

by Ram

The Rescue by Pablo Picasso*

The underlying principle of the Yoga philosophy is the well-being of an individual at the level of body and mind and helping an individual re-connect to his/her true nature through direct and personal experience. One of the methods by which Yoga prepares the body and mind of the individual for the eventual liberation and enlightenment is through Karma Yoga, which is the yoga of selfless-action. Altruism aka Karma Yoga aka seva in Sanskrit translates as a selfless service without expectations for service provided. Any individual can achieve mind-body awareness and ultimately attain enlightenment by practicing seva/Karma yoga without any personal expectation. A Karma Yogi—an individual rendering selfless service—gets rid of all egoistic tendencies while offering such a service and puts the well-being of others as a top priority ahead of his/her personal gain or achievement.

Selfless service requires an individual to perform any service without attachment or expectation, and remain unaffected by the results of such service. At the same time such an individual needs to cultivate a loving attitude towards the selfless task, without developing any stress from it, no matter what the outcome is. Performing a task without any expectation, letting go of all results, whether good or bad, and focusing on the selfless action alone is the essence of Karma Yoga. In the light of non-attachment, the selfless doer attains freedom from emotional disturbances, including but not limited to desires, ambitions, fear, worry, anxiety, judgment, and rage. This leads to true happiness.

In one of my older posts Caregivers: The True Karma Yogis I extolled the selfless service of caregivers. In my opinion, caregivers are true Karma Yogis since they perform their duties selflessly as a service without looking to reap any benefits. Caregivers provide a wide variety of selfless services to a recipient, including assisting with daily tasks like personal care, providing meals, helping the recipient with their daily physical activities, administering medications, meeting with healthcare providers, coordinating treatment regimens, managing the recipient’s medical care and health insurance among other duties. Mother Teresa also comes to my mind as a true Karma Yogi, who declared that, “As to my calling, I belong to the world”. Mother Teresa kept reiterating the inner joy and well-being that she experienced through her selfless service.

A recent research study Motives for volunteering are associated with mortality risk in older adults  on selfless service and its effects on longevity confirm the importance of these acts. People who volunteer, and whose reasons for volunteering are to help others rather than themselves, may live longer than those who volunteer for selfish gains. The reasons why volunteering with an altruistic attitude helps an individual to live longer are manifold including among others:

1. When helping others, the body releases an important hormone called oxytocin which assists in buffering out stressful thought.
2. Merely thinking of a selfless service releases certain “feel-good” chemicals that reduces stress providing stability to the min.
3. The feel-good chemicals in turn also improves cardiovascular health.
4. Self-esteem builds and confidence levels grow when you are passionate about helping others in need, resulting in a stronger mind.

Yoga philosophy describes in detail how altruism is one of the many qualities needed to reverse pain and overcome mental afflictions (vrittis). BKS Iyengar alludes to altruism when he elaborates on karuna (compassion). Karuna is not just displaying pity or shedding tears over a miserable situation. True compassion is when you couple it with a selfless action that relieves the misery or suffering. A true karma yogi is one who without any expectation or reward:

• uses all the available resources to mitigate pain, misery and suffering
• provides courage and strength to the weak
• provides shelter to all

Providing selfless help without attaching any benefits provide Karma Yogis the greatest joy and a sense of fulfillment. It is of no surprise that the authors of a recent research study Volunteerism, health, and civic engagement among older adults compiled empirical evidence on the benefits of selfless service, concluding that adult volunteers may enjoy good health and longevity because being useful to others instills a sense of being needed and valued.

With several research studies to back the philosophy of Karma Yoga, how about committing to selfless acts on a regular basis to achieve a longer health span and using this extended life to foster sincere relationships and bring greater fulfillment to your life? I cannot think of a better resolution for Y2015!

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Karma Yoga Opportunities

by Nina

Yoga for Healthy Aging Subscriber Tama Blough by Corey Nguyen

3.3 In this world, O Arjuna, a twofold path of Sadhana has been stated by Me in the past. The path of Self-knowledge (Jnana-yoga) for the contemplative,
 And the path of unselfish work (Karma-yoga) for the active. —Bhagavad Gita

Although the Yoga Sutras describes an eight-fold path of yoga that focuses on contemplative practices (see Ashtanga Yoga: Following the Eight-Fold Path), the Bhagavad Gita presents a second path to enlightenment, the path of karma yoga, which means “unselfish work” or “action of the Yogis.” In his post Caregivers: The True Karma Yogis, Ram defines karma yoga as a path of yoga that allows for an individual to carry out his/her duties selflessly as a service without looking to reap any benefits from such service. He also has written that:

"Any individual can achieve mind-body awareness and ultimately attain enlightenment by practicing self-less service (seva), without expectations for service provided. As a result, the practitioner’s heart and mind become pure, the ego is subdued and the light of divinity shines through them."

I actually really surprised a friend recently by saying that Mohandas K. Gandhi was the greatest yogi of the 20th century because of his work for social justice. In my friend’s mind, unless you were following the path described in the Yoga Sutras, including asana and meditation, you weren’t practicing yoga. But Gandhi referred to himself as a “yogi.” And he called the Bhagavad Gita his “mother” because he was guided by the Gita in his practice of karma yoga. (He did his own translation of the Bhagavad Gita, and it’s worth reading his essay in that book on the Gita's message. You can also find Gandhi’s essay in Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Gita.)

I’ve been thinking about karma yoga the last week because I’ve been involved in helping a friend, Tama Blough, who is a subscriber to this blog. Tama has terminal cancer, and because she lives alone and can’t work, she needs financial assistance for living expenses and caregiving. One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is that even though I’m a great believer in social justice, I’m just not the kind of person who’s going to lead protests, go off to Africa to help take care of people with Ebola, or even spend time volunteering at my local food bank. Sure, I give money to causes I believe in. Honestly, I can’t say I like this about myself—that I'm not out there in the trenches—but I’ve come to realize that I’m just better at helping individuals who I know. I don’t live close enough to go over to Tama’s apartment and give her hands-on help very often, so for Tama, I created a fundraising site at Give Forward, and then used my mad social media skills to spread the word. And I’m very happy to say my team and I are well on our way to raising enough money to help keep Tama comfortable in her own home as long as possible.

I recently read that your station in life tells you many important things about your karma yoga duties. If you are a son or a daughter, a brother or sister, or a parent, then you should fulfill these roles well. Obviously, the same goes for being a friend. And Ram has written in his post Caregivers: The True Karma Yogis that "a sister, brother, parent, relative, friend, or neighbor who provides care and assistance to a recipient without receiving any payment for such services" is a true karma yogi.

So, if you're interested, please visit the fundraising site for our subscriber, Tama. Another good way to practice karma yoga this week would be to join the Veterans Yoga Project that Baxter described in his post Supporting Our Veterans: Veterans Yoga Project. Or, you can simply take some time to figure out what skills and talents you have to contribute, and then look for opportunities that best fit your station in life as well as your personality.

And I’d love to hear from you in the comments section or on Facebook about the kinds of karma yoga that you are practicing—or intend to practice.

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Accidentally Karma Yoga

by Nina

Austin Graffiti by Melina Meza

Brad has recently been telling me about how gratifying he finds mentoring his younger colleagues. He said that he’s turning more and more to this activity as a way of finding fulfillment at his work. Then, just last night as we were walking home from dinner out, he told me he’d read an article about a scientific study that confirmed his new approach to his job Meaningful Activities Protect the Brain From Depression by Olga Khazan.

For the original study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers followed a group of 39 teenagers over the course of one year to see whether the way their brains reacted to either eudaimonic (selfless) or hedonic (selfish) rewards correlated with how depressed they felt over time. First, the subjects underwent an fMRI while making a decision about whether to keep money for themselves (a hedonic reward) or to donate it to their families (a eudaimonic reward). They also played a game to determine if they were willing to take risks for the possibility of a greater financial reward (hedonic). Through the use of questionnaires, the researchers determined that depressive symptoms declined among those who made the selfless decision but rose in those who made the selfish decision. As Olga Khazan put it:

“It turned out the teens who had the greatest brain response to the generous, family-donation financial decision had the greatest declines in depressive symptoms over time. And those who got a boost from the risk-taking game were more likely to have an increase in depression. The types of rewards the teens responded to, it seems, changed their behavior in ways that altered their overall well-being.”

I said, “Brad, I have two words for you: karma yoga.” Karma yoga, I explained, is the yoga of selfless service, most famously embodied in the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who, inspired by the message of the Bhagavad Gita, worked for the freedom of the Indian people. In fact, Ram has already written about the topic of karma yoga in his post Selfless Service for Harmonious Longevity, in which he defined karma yoga as:  

“This individual puts the well-being of others as a top priority ahead of his/her personal gain or achievement.”

(Obviously, someone’s husband doesn’t actually read all the YFHA posts.) While Ram tied the practice of karma yoga to longevity in his post, he mentioned some benefits of the practice that would also contribute to the feeling of contentment that Brad has been experiencing:

• Stress reduction. When helping others, the body releases an important hormone called oxytocin, which assists in buffering stressful thoughts.
• Morale. Merely thinking of a selfless service releases certain “feel-good” chemicals, namely dopamine and serotonin (lack of which have both been linked with depression and other mood disorders).

And recently in his post Mental Exercise and the Perfect Brain, Ram mentioned that he himself practices karma yoga because it leads to true happiness and improved cognitive skills, bringing “greater fulfillment to my life.”

So, there you have it, Brad! You’re practicing karma yoga without even knowing it—and feeling the benefits. Namaste, dear husband.

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Caregivers: The True Karma Yogis

by Ram

Last Leaves by Melina Meza

You could be a sister, brother, parent, relative, friend, or neighbor who provides care and assistance to a recipient without receiving any payment for such services. You are a true karma yogi. Karma Yoga, as we know, is a path of yoga that allows for an individual to carry out his/her duties selflessly as a service without looking to reap any benefits from such service. Such individuals have the opportunity to directly experience the inner joy and wellbeing that selfless service brings. These individuals are also known as caregivers since they provide a wide variety of selfless services to a recipient, including assisting with daily tasks like personal care, providing meals, helping the recipient with their daily physical activities, administering medications, meeting with healthcare providers, daily supervision and activity, coordinating treatment regimens, management of the recipient’s medical care and health insurance, etc.

The following subset of statistics mentioned below and drawn from the National Alliance for Caregiving speaks volumes of the caregivers’ true act of karma yoga:

1. More than 65 million people (representing about 1/5 of the U.S. population) are caregivers providing care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend during any given year and spending an average of 20 hours per week providing care for the recipient. Approximately 66% of caregivers are women. More than 37% have children or grandchildren under 18 years living with them.
2. The value of the free services caregivers provide for older adults is estimated to be $375 billion a year.
3. Twenty hours per week is the average number of hours family caregivers spend caring for their loved ones while 13% of family caregivers are providing 40 hours of care a week or more.
4. Thirty-six percent of family caregivers care for a parent and 7 out of 10 caregivers are caring for loved ones over 50 years old.

On the disturbing side are the statistics drawn from the same National Alliance regarding the impact of care-giving on a caregiver’s health that is a serious cause for concern:

1. Women caregivers are 2.5 times more likely than non-caregivers to live in poverty and five times more likely to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
2. Forty-seven percent of working caregivers indicate that an increase in care-giving expenses has caused them to use up all or most of their savings.
3. Nearly 25% of caregivers caring for 5 years or more report their health is fair or poor. 20% of employed female caregivers over 50 years old report symptoms of depression compared to 8% of their non-caregiving peers. 40-70% of family caregivers have clinically significant symptoms of depression. 1 in 10 caregivers report that care-giving has caused their physical health to deteriorate.
4. Sixty-three percent of caregivers report having poorer eating habits than non-caregivers.
5. Family caregivers experiencing extreme stress have been shown to age prematurely. The level of stress can take as much as 10 years off a family caregiver's life.

Thus, while care-giving may be rewarding mentally, spiritually and emotionally, for a majority of caregivers it is undoubtedly stressful. Caregivers were found to have a 15% lower level of immune response and a 23% higher level of stress hormones compared to non-caregivers, suggesting that the stress encountered by primary caregivers greatly impacts their health and ability to recover from any illness. The stress associated with caring for persons with chronic degenerative diseases has been shown to drastically reduce caregivers' immune system thus increasing their chances of developing a chronic illness themselves.

There are several strategies that caregivers can use to reduce the effects of this added stress. One such strategy that is receiving a lot of attention is yoga and meditation. While yoga has been shown to help people with a multitude of health problems, several recent studies indicate that yoga could help the caregivers as well. Research studies involving caregivers (see here and here) have shown that yoga and meditation can help lower depression, reduce fear, worry and anxiety, improve cognitive functioning, decrease overall stress and slow down cellular aging associated with stress among caregivers. A majority of caregivers find the yoga and meditation strategy useful and report improvements in physical and emotional status.

As a researcher working to understand the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, I am saddened to hear that a majority of the Alzheimer's caregivers experience high levels of stress. Caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease is an extremely difficult task and can become overwhelming, especially when the disease is at its late stage where the patient has completely lost memory and other cognitive functions. Performing basic activities of daily living becomes difficult to manage for the Alzheimer's patient and the caregiver. Each day brings new challenges for the caregivers as they try to manage care with the patient’s new patterns of behavior. This puts the caregivers at a greater risk for developing depression and other chronic illness unless they seek remedial measures.

A recent study on caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease confirms the therapeutic benefits of yoga and meditation. For the study, researchers recruited a total of 46 caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease to participate in a stress-reduction program for a 2-month period and randomly placed them in one of two groups. 25 volunteer caregivers were assigned to receive a yoga and meditation program and the other group of 21 served as a control group and did not receive any specific treatment.

The program lasted two months, with the yoga and meditation sessions lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes (25 minutes yoga, 25 minutes pranayama and 25 minutes mindfulness meditation), three times per week. The participants had to attend one live training session per week, whereas the other two weekly sessions were performed at home with the aid of a DVD. The levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and morning salivary cortisol of the participants were measured before and after the intervention. At the end of the two-month program, the group that received the yoga, meditation and pranayama training had significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and greater improvement in mental health and cognitive functioning, compared to the control group. The intervention group also exhibited a statistically significant reduction in the stress and anxiety scores, thus indicating that yoga and meditation type of intervention is very useful in reducing stress in caregivers directly involved with patient care tasks.

It is believed that the beneficial effects of yoga and mediation are due to a reduction in sympathetic activity with a concomitant increase in parasympathetic activity. These changes result in increases in GABA, serotonin and melatonin concentrations and a reduction in the levels of adrenalin and noradrenalin, all of which result in improvements of mood, reduction in body temperature, reduction in stress and anxiety, and greater improvement in mental health. The study also draws attention to the close relation between mental and physical health by documenting the mechanistic links at the cellular level. While there are many psychosocial interventions that enhance mental health for caregivers, the yoga and meditation intervention seems attractive as a simple therapeutic practice that could be distributed and applied for use in clinical practice not only for patients but for caregivers as well.

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Selfless Service for Harmonious Longevity

by Ram

Krishna and Arjuna (from San Francisco Asian Art Museum)

Karma Yoga can be loosely translated as a selfless service that is rendered without any personal expectation. A karma yogi  (an individual rendering selfless service) gets rid of all egoistic tendencies while offering such a service. This individual puts the well-being of others as a top priority ahead of his/her personal gain or achievement. In Chapter 3 verse 19 of the Bhagavad Gita, Karma Yoga is defined as:

Tasmad asaktah satatam karyan karma Samacara
Asalto hy acaran karma param apnoti purusah

This verse is translated as “Therefore without any attachment, without interruption, perfectly perform prescribed actions since by performing prescribed actions a person achieves the highest good.”

In “The Essence of Spiritual Life,” Swami Rama explains that to do selfless service one needs to cultivate two qualities: non-attachment and a loving attitude to do selfless service. Selfless service requires that an individual perform any service without any attachment or expectation and remain unaffected by the results of such service. At the same time, such an individual needs to cultivate a loving attitude toward such a selfless task, without developing any stress from it, no matter the outcome. However, if you do not love doing some task and yet you do it, it creates a conflict in mind leading to an emotional upheaval. So learn to create love toward your selfless duties. Furthermore, notice if you are happier and satisfied at the end of the day because this is what true karma yogis have experienced; seek them out and you will commonly hear them saying that the more they serve selflessly, the more true happiness they receive. Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa come to mind if I am asked to name some karma yogis.

The essence of the Bhagavad Gita, which is repeated throughout the text, emphasizes the benefits of selfless service. Here is how Krishna puts it, regarding selfless service in Chapter 2:

“Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward, Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work. Do thy work in the peace of Yoga and free from selfish desires, be not moved in success or failure”—translated by Juan Mascaro.

And this approach—performing a task without any expectation, letting go of all results, whether good or bad, and focusing on the selfless action alone—is the essence of karma yoga. In the light of non-attachment, the selfless doer attains freedom from emotional disturbances, including but not limited to desires, ambitions, fear, worry, anxiety, judgment, rage, etc. This leads to true happiness.

A recent research study on volunteerism and its effects on longevity, "Motives for Volunteering Are Associated With Mortality Risk in Older Adults,” by Konrath, et al,  confirms the importance of selfless service as advocated by the Bhagavad Gita. According to this study, people who volunteer may live longer than those who don’t, as long as their reasons for volunteering are to help others rather than themselves. Researchers analyzed data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that followed a random sample of 10,317 Wisconsin high school students from their graduation in 1957 until the present. In 2004, respondents reported whether they had volunteered within the past ten years and how regularly. Respondents also mentioned their reasons for volunteering by answering ten questions. In that list were some questions regarding motives that were more oriented toward others and some that were more self oriented. The researchers then determined how many of the respondents were still alive in 2008. Following were the observations drawn from this interesting study:

1. Nearly 2.3 % of the volunteers had died, compared to 4.3% of non-volunteers. The frequency of volunteer time mattered as well; less than 2% of the regular volunteers had died as opposed to 2.5% of occasional volunteers.
2. The participants who volunteered only for compassionate reasons achieved the most health benefits. However, the ones who volunteered purely for personal gain or self growth were as likely to die as those who didn't volunteer at all.
3. Respondents who listed social connection or altruistic values as their predominant motive were more likely to be alive compared with non-volunteers.

According to one of the authors of the study, “It is reasonable for people to volunteer in part because of benefits to the self, however, our research implies that, ironically, should these benefits to the self become the main motive for volunteering they may not see those benefits.”

It is easy to understand why volunteering with an altruistic attitude helps an individual to live longer:

• Stress reduction. When helping others, the body releases an important hormone called oxytocin, which assists in buffering stressful thoughts.
• Morale. Merely thinking of a selfless service releases certain “feel-good”chemicals namely dopamine and serotonin (lack of which have both been linked with depression and other mood disorders.
• Self confidence. Self-esteem builds and confidence levels grow when you are passionate about something and helping others in need
• Health and pain reduction. Helping others has proven to help with chronic pain and cardiovascular health.

With a scientific study to back Krishna’s teachings about Karma Yoga, how about performing some selfless acts on a regular basis to achieve a longer life and using this extended life to foster sincere relationships and bring greater fulfillment to your life?

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