Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Its good for your heart (part one)

Ramadan, the holy muslim month of fasting, has come, and I decided, after been adviced by a friend, to reexamine my bond to my religion, Islam. It means I got to fast for 14 hours a day, and pray 5 times a day, and am doing that now, and feeling a great release...its good for your heart my friend said, and it is sure really is..

When I begin reading psychology books when I was still a teenager, I was a big fond a Freud, that wonderful man who tells you the story of the mind in a rich cultivated way.... But Freud described religion as "universal obsessional neurosis", and I was a teenager, and don't want to have been diagnosed with that thing, so, you can imagine how I started to look to religion...

Now am 30, and a resident doctor in psychiatry, got all the respect to Freud, but also to a psychiatrist called David Larsen who found in many revision of studies and studies he did himself that religious people have higher rates of marital satisfaction, greater sense of life satisfaction, lower risk of suicide and substance abuse than the nonreligious...

Great thanks to all my friends who argued me and stimulated me to rediscover that piecefullness you feel when you are doing your prayers and fasting.... it is really good for our hearts...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I was a teenager, I had a really scary experience with the religion I was raised in and tried very hard to stay away from it for many years....I still do not attend that church and do not plan to, but happily have re-discovered a sense of prayer and spirituality and have a great love and respect for all the world's religions. Thank you, Dr. Sami, for these posts, for reminding me......
tracy

saminkie said...

Tracy i got the same story of yours and am trying to reexamine my belonging...till now i find it good for my heart...take care dear..