editor’s note: part of our stories of alaska series, this piece explores the state through wildlife, plants, and bioindicators, looking at today’s challenges and accomplishments, and signs of what’s to come. click on the photoessay below to see the full story.

mind-body practices such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, and qigong, have been proven through many major health studies to not only effectively reduce stress symptoms in participants, but to lower their anxiety and depression incidents as well.

if the industrial world begins educating students in public schools in mind-body tools in age appropriate ways beginning with kindergarten, and continuing through high school, we could eliminate a significant portion of the 70 to 85% of illness caused by stress.

this could mean future annual savings exceeding one trillion dollars each year, year after year, after year.

the cost of eliminating world starvation is a tiny fraction of that figure. also, much developing world suffering is caused by no access to clean water according to visionary inventor dean kamen who has invented an effective water filter to enable villagers in remote areas to clean polluted water using his solar powered mechanism. also, in many cases, fresh water exists in the earth below people dying from lack of water, if only they had the resources to drill water wells.

by those in the industrial world being educated in mind-body tools to manage stress through the implementation of low cost public education classes incorporated into primary and secondary schools throughout the industrial world, thereby avoiding a substantial percentage of health issues requiring increasingly expensive health resources, humanity could free up resources that would drwarf the funds needed to substantially reduce starvation and suffering in the developing world.