finally....my personal essay

Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela
Ministerio de Educación Superior
Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador
Instituto Pedagógico Rafael Alberto Escobar Lara

MEDITATION: A DIFERENT VIEW OF LIVING

Sometimes life is full of problems, responsibilities, stressful situations and people is also worried about money, appearance, clothes, shoes and things related to a physical life; Besides, emotional reactions and anxiety. As a result mind and body can not tolerate everything at the same time; and people tend to be irritated, intolerant and uncomfortable with themselves. Meditation helps people to improve their lifestyle, also emotional cultivation and even imagination.

Meditation is defined “As a self-directed practice for relaxing the body and calming the mind. Most meditative techniques have come to the West from Eastern religious practices, particularly India, China, and Japan, but can be found in all cultures of the world. Until recently, the primary purpose of meditation has been religious, although its health benefits have long been recognized. It is now being further explored as a way of reducing stress on both mind and body” (http://www.medterms.com).
Exist lots of meditation’s techniques but the most known are the Buddhist meditation, transcendental meditation, the Tao meditation and the vipassana meditation. Also breathing is a different kind of meditation, but, the most popular are the Buddhist meditation and the transcendental meditation; both are different in definition but the same in purpose “make people felling good as they are and live in a very simplistic way in order to get to their inner being and also their own awareness, through the develop of their spirituals faculties, their imagination, feelings and emotional cultivation and also a creative imagination.

In fact, the transcendental meditations is based on a very natural and simplify style of relaxation, and its methods consist on being comfortably sitting and eyed close, during 15/20 minutes twice a day, people usually use music, sounds and smells that remind them an specific place as a beach, a forest, a river, or a place that they find relaxing. Even when this kind of meditation doesn’t belong to a religion or a philosophy, have neither a code nor values produce in people who practice it, a significant reduction of the consume of tobacco and another drugs, less anxiety, creative and clears thoughts, lots of energy and a happier state of mind.

In the other hand, the Buddhist meditation is focus on the religion and the spiritual develop of the believers in contradiction with the transcendental meditation, the Buddhist meditation is practiced in a total silence. Getting into a world of self-control and contemplation. In Buddhism feelings doesn’t happens as a normal thing; people cultivates it, are habits, so that means that people feels what they want to feel. Buddhist meditation offers a religious meditation giving people the option to discover and express contently the emotions, and restricted feelings by learning the art of meditating. What Buddha taught was just an art of living in peace with the nature and the inner being.

As a conclusion; meditation can be a religious practice or just an exercise for being unstressed but the final object of both positions is making people find the peace and release the problems improving the lifestyle producing an excellent result as an unstressed life and emotional cultivation.

Nasha Rengifo

My individual essay....(first draft introductury paragraph))

Sometimes life is full of problems, responsibilities, stressful situatios and people is also worried about money, appearance clothes, shoes and thing related to a physical life; Beside, emotional reactions and anxiety. Mind and body can`t tolerate everything at the same time, as a result, people tend to be irritated, intolerant and unconfortable with themselves. Meditation helps people to improve their lifestyle, also emotional culivation and even imagination.

Our final essay.....

Fast Food, Short Life.

Life is more hectic than ever, between school, sports, clubs and friends, who has time to think about what to eat? Time for another choice: fast food. This kind of food is popular and commercially successful in most modern societies, because of its variety of flavors. There are fast food restaurants on every corner, and also the prices are very cheap, which makes it available to everyone. However, “junk food”, another name for this type of food, is often criticized for having side effects which people would regret for the rest of their lives. Fast food can cause medical problems such as a fatty liver, heart attacks and strokes at early age.

Fast food can cause medical problems such as fatty liver. Where the liver’s cells are build up to fat. The liver in the body plays an important role in the metabolism or breakdown of fats. By eating a lot of “junk food”, the fat is accumulated in the liver, producing another health damages as diabetes mellitus and high blood triglycerides (any of a group of lipids that are formed from glycerol and fatty acids and are widespread in animal tissue). Dr David Ludwig, who led the research, Fast-food Diabetes Link Warning (2002) said: "Fast-food habits have strong, positive, an independent associations with weight gain and liver problems in young black and white adults."

Another risk that is taken by ingesting fast food is strokes, also known as cerebrovascular accident (CVA). Where the blood supply is interrupted by rupture or obstruction of a blood vessel of the brain. As a consequence a stroke involves the sudden loss of neuronal function and can cause neurological damage or even death if not promptly diagnosed and treated. Strokes can affect patients in different ways such as physically, mentally, emotionally, or a combination of the tree. Some of the physical problems include paralysis, pneumonia, appetite loss, vision loss.

Also stroke can result from direct damage to emotional centers in the brain or from frustration adapting to new limitations. 30 to 50 % of strokes survivors suffer depression which is characterized by irritability, sleep disturbances and lethargy. According to the book PEDIATRICS Vol. 113 No. 1 (2004), pp. 112-118, people who ate fast food, compared with those who did not, consumed more total energy (187 kcal; 95% confidence interval), more energy per gram of food (0.29 kcal/g; 95%), more total fat (9 g; 95%). These results prove that “junk food” is a fuel for all kinds of diseases.

As a result, fast food is rich in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and cholesterol, which are the main factors that lead to suffer heart disease. Most heart attacks are caused by a blood clot (mass formed by a portion of liquid thickening and sticking together) that blocks one of the coronary arteries. When blood can not reach part of the heart, that area starves for oxygen. “A diet high in cholesterol combined with smoking and lack of exercise can accelerate the heart attack process” this is an extract from the article “Heart Attack” (www.emedicine.com).
In conclusion, fast food is harmful for people’s health because its effects can be lethal, such as, heart attacks, strokes even fatty liver. Therefore, knowing all the consequences that eating fast food caused in the body; people should be more sensible on their choices in order to have a healthier life.

Montenegro, Silvia.
Hurtado, Yndira.
Chacon, Edi.
Rengifo, Nasha.
Gonzalez, Patricia.
Saparrat, Rita.