http://consciouslifenews.com/mindfulness-effective-drugs-both-anxiety-depression/1182600/
Gene Activity Can Change According To Perception
According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood’s chemistry, then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts.
1. Find what works for YOU . Do you need to move? Is it walking meditation that works? Is it a particular guided meditation? What time of day ? Where? What worked for me: I actually did the same guided #meditation every day for about 5 years. It’s normal to have thoughts—whether it's "I'm not doing it right" or thinking about your to do list. Let the thoughts come, then gently let them go. And stay the course: When you have a #consistent #daily meditation #practice those sporadic moments of #blissful present #awareness will begin to happen more and more in your everyday life.
2. Just #breathe: Seriously! That. Is. All. Begin to notice when you are breathing in a shallow manner and start to practice extending the breath. Notice how much more relaxed you can become just by focussing on the breath.
3. No judgement:What worked for me: Rather than judging myself for getting caught up in obsessive thoughts, I would stay mindful and stay the course. It got easier and easier to drop into that still, quiet place. Also, I became aware of my negative self-talk and turned it to the positive! Be your own inner motivational speaker.
4. I don’t have #time!!! If I have time to watch crazy cat videos on YouTube with my daughter then I have time to meditate.
What worked for me: I set an alarm for the time I have carved out to meditate, or I physically write it in my day planner. For me, it is 4:30 am but for my clients sometimes its 5 minutes at lunch or for new Mom’s it is 20 minutes when the baby is sleeping. There is no right or wrong way to meditate—just do it!
5. I kept falling asleep. I started meditating 12 years ago when I was a sleep-deprived, new mom. I meditated once a day, for 20 minutes at my sleepiest time. Often, when I tried to meditate, I would fall asleep! What worked for me: I had green tea before meditating and started using a guided meditation that would count me up. I found that I wasn’t actually sleeping but really, trancey and relaxed and I felt rested. 20 minutes of deep meditation can be equivalent to 3 hours of REM sleep.
Morning is the best time for meditation as it promotes a positive state of being for your day. A good way to enter a meditative state is by practicing mantras and I like to use binaural beats as well. Mantras can work as ‘higher energetic vibrations’ and help you achieve a whole new level of flow in meditation. Here, we have compiled a list of 10 morning meditation mantras for you. Please have a look.
http://www.stylecraze.com/articles/morning-meditation-mantras/
" There is a creative part of you that lives in the moment. That's the part of you that is creating and having a great time... Connect with that place...where our creativity runs us. "
Meditation helps us connect to that place where you are what you love and not what loves you. " Let go of the results and see how they show up. Our job is to be ourselves. " Connect The mind to connect to self.
http://greatist.com/grow/meditation-tips-from-experts
If you want to take advantage of the science-backed benefits of meditation—better sleep, stronger relationships, less stress, and a healthier heart, to name a few—check out what meditation and mindfulness experts struggled with at first. Then use their practical advice to overcome obstacles of your own.
1. I couldn't stop thinking.
When I first started meditating, I had the misunderstanding that I wasn’t supposed to have any thoughts. I constantly thought I was doing it “wrong” because I could not stop thinking! And the more I judged myself, the less likely I was to meditate.
What worked for me: When I learned that meditation includes observing our thoughts but not attaching to them, I stop judging myself as a bad meditator. To help me disengage from my constant to-do list going through my head, I kept a journal next to my meditation pillow. When I had a thought I wanted to remember or let go of, I would simply open my eyes and write it down. Then I’d close my eyes and come back to my breath. Giving myself permission to design a practice that worked for my very active mind was very helpful. — Christine Hassler, life coach and author of Expectation Hangover
2. I didn't want to just sit there.
When I first started meditating, I had the same three doubts many people do: I can’t sit still, I can’t turn my mind off, and I don’t have the time.
What worked for me: All you really have to do is focus on your breath, whether it’s for one hour, one minute, or even 16 seconds. You could even accumulatively meditate all day long: standing in line at Starbucks, sitting in traffic, waiting for a meeting to start. And you don’t have to sit still—you can move around and meditate at the same time. — Suze Yalof Schwartz, founder of Unplug Meditation
3. I kept falling asleep.
I started meditating when I was a sleep-deprived, stressed-out sophomore in college. I meditated twice a day, in the morning and afternoon for 20 minutes each. But most afternoons when I tried to meditate, I would fall asleep!
What worked for me: I slept longer and had some coffee or tea before meditating. — Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World
4. I didn't have enough time.
My biggest excuse was “I don’t have time.” Then I thought about it rationally: If I have time to watch “Goat Babies in Pajamas“ on YouTube, I can certainly choose to take five minutes to meditate. Some days it’s more, some days it's none, but I now see meditation as an opportunity to tap in, not another thing to fit in.
What worked for me: I set an alarm for the time I have carved out to meditate, or I physically write it in my day planner, usually midday. (I’ve learned early morning doesn’t work for me—I know it’s supposed to set up the day powerfully, but all I can think about is coffee!) There is no right or wrong way to meditate—just do it!
— Bethany Lyons, co-founder of Lyons Den Power Yoga
5. I didn't want to "do nothing".
When I began meditation, the very idea of sitting still and “doing nothing” was a huge obstacle. What I soon learned was that I was training my mind when I meditated, not “doing nothing”. I began to learn that meditation gave me the chance to gain perspective, listen to my inner wisdom, and make more conscious choices about how I wanted to show up for my life.
What worked for me: Begin with “mini-trainings” of 10 minutes of meditation each day, and include simple practices like focusing on the experience of drinking a cup of coffee or walking down a hallway. — Janice L. Marturano, executive director, Institute for Mindful Leadership
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6. I thought meditation had to be formal.
The one thing I found most difficult at first was making time for formal sitting meditation. I first got into it at the end of my last year at university, and after graduation I started working for a large company. I loved the work, but my days were long and I no longer had as much time to dedicate to formal sitting like I had as a student.
What worked for me: The key was turning how I understood meditation upside down. Instead of complaining that I didn't have time for meditation, I got interested in how I could develop awareness, calm, and kindness whether I was in meetings, on the train, at the gym, or working online. And I started hacking together little techniques for each of those different places. I still did formal practice, but I made it secondary to the more on-the-go style. — Rohan Gunatillake, director of Mindfulness Everywhere and founder of Buddify
7. I wanted to move around.
I started meditating when I was six years old, so the big obstacle for me was just sitting still! And it wasn't just six-year-old me: That itch to move continued for quite some time. The non-meditating mind runs around at 100 miles per hour, and the body often wants to follow it. Only in recent years have I been able to relax the mind to the point where my desire to move about has lessened.
What worked for me: People don't want to hear it, but meditation takes a lot (a lot!) of time before it starts to become "easier". Trying meditation three times and saying it doesn't work for you is like going for a run three times and being frustrated you didn’t lose weight. In the same vein, if you meditate every day for a number of weeks, it becomes easier to do and you start to see results—you’ll be more present, calmer, more focused, and, dare I say it, kinder. So the best way to settle into meditation is to be patient and give it a chance to take root. — Lodro Rinzler, Sonima meditation expert and author of How to Love Yourself (and Sometimes Other People)
8. I couldn't quiet my mind.
Racing thoughts was the biggest hurdle to consistent meditation for me. I could sit down, but then I was left with this interior world of thoughts. And my thoughts were particularly mean-spirited. When I closed my eyes and tried to quiet them, they became even louder, even more mean-spirited.
What worked for me: I overcame this obstacle by giving my intellect something to do—in my case, repetition of a mantra. The ego always needs to be “doing”, and repeating a mantra guides my mind to a deeper, less active experience. — Jeff Kober, meditation expert with Buick's 24 Hours of Happiness Test Drive
9. It hurt my legs and back.
When I first started trying to meditate, my calves and feet would fall asleep with the most painful pins and needles ever, and my back would hurt like crazy.
What worked for me: My breakthrough came when I went on a retreat and the teacher showed me how to prop myself up with cushions and blocks so I could sit with proper elevation and support. Because we were meditating all the time on that 14-day retreat and I was finally sitting in correct alignment thanks to the props, my spine got stronger. I've never had problems since! — Brett Larkin, yoga and meditation teacher
10. I kept thinking, "How much longer?"
When I first started meditating, I was definitely not a “natural”. My mantra in those days was “How much longer?” My mind was like a monkey, jumping around all over the place, from my to-do list to the pain in my hip to my endless list of self-criticisms.
What worked for me: First, I made an agreement with myself to meditate every day for 21 days, no matter what. If I hadn’t made this commitment, I’m pretty sure I would've given up out of sheer frustration. Like any new habit, it takes time for our neural pathways to rewire, so we are slowly building our attention muscle—the same way you build muscle by weight lifting. We also need to be a bit patient with ourselves as we learn a new skill. Once I was able to give up expecting my mind to be quiet and stop judging my experiences, it all seemed to flow a lot easier. — Lynne Goldberg, founder of OMG! I Can Meditate
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11. I wasn't consistent.
The biggest challenge I remember as a student of meditation was inconsistency. I seemed to oscillate between rigorous practice and irregularity. The problem? I was trying to fit in meditation.
What worked for me: Whatever we build into our lives—make a consistent and unquestioned fixture in our schedule—occurs. Whatever is fitted in only gets done part of the time. So if you want to deepen the consistency of your meditation practice, build it into your life. Then it won’t easily get pushed out by life circumstances, variable moods, or waning energy. — Jeffrey Rubin, Ph.D., psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and author of Meditative Psychotherapy
12. I didn't want to bring up emotions.
From childhood, I learned to repress (rather than express) feelings such as fear, anger, and disappointment. Over many years, we develop maladaptive coping strategies to keep these emotions buried, such as workaholism, consumerism, or drugs and alcohol. The difficulty I found in meditation is that when I stopped to focus inward, the repressed emotions would surface, and I'd feel anxious and unable to focus or sit still—what psychologists refer to as "neurotic anxiety".
What worked for me: No one wants to feel those emotions they've been running from since childhood. It's an ongoing process, one I've been working on for more than 20 years of daily practice. What's key for me: a supportive community of friends and working one-on-one with great meditation teachers over the years. I highly recommend both. — Josh Korda, teacher at Dharmapunx NYC
13. I kept thinking about my to-do list.
My biggest hurdle at the beginning of my practice was stilling my mind. The moment I'd sit down to meditate, my to-do lists and other thoughts would start to run through my head.
What worked for me: Over time I learned to allow the thoughts to come and go, rather than push them away. I'd witness the thought and then return to my mantra or my breath. I learned to accept the thoughts as part of the practice. — Gabby Bernstein, New York Times-bestselling author of Miracles Now
14. I quit after two weeks.
My first meditation experience was a weekly class in college. The instructor would walk around and thwack us on the back with a bamboo stick each time we raised our hands to signal a thought drifting into our mind. Well, I had lots of thoughts. (Ouch!) Needless to say, I only lasted two weeks in that class.
What worked for me: Later, I learned that it's normal to have thoughts—whether it's "I'm not doing it right" or thinking about your love life. Let the thoughts come, then gently let them go. And stay the course: When you have a consistent daily meditation practice rather than have only sporadic tastes of that blissful present awareness, you begin to experience that bliss more and more in your everyday life. — Davidji, Grokker meditation expert
15. I kept judging myself.
The greatest challenge in meditation, and my life, was what I call the “trance of unworthiness”. On some level I was always evaluating how well my meditation was going and concluding it needed to be better. This paralleled my life where I had an ideal of who I should be and chronically felt I was falling short, imperfect: I should be more generous, less self-centered, less judgmental. The effect of feeling insufficient was a lot of striving and rarely relaxing and enjoying the gratification of the present moment just as it was.
What worked for me: I became mindful of how a sense of personal deficiency and failure was a pervasive source of suffering. Rather than judging myself for getting caught up in obsessive thoughts, I would stay mindful and find the fear or hurt or longing that was driving those thoughts. — Tara Brach, meditation teacher and clinical psychologist
Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. In a study that will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s gray matter.
“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,”
Reasearch shows that just by smiling we can change our state positively to feel better. Now the Smile Experiment is born and showing us how sharing a smile can make a difference.
http://blog.mindvalleyacademy.com/vishen-lakhiani/40-years-of-zen
Read how effective the brainwave entrainment was for this longtime meditator. It is a tool to bypass the conscious mind in many cases.
In my private practice I use Gamma, Delta and Theta Frequencies which are embedded in the sound track to facilitate a deeply relaxed state. This can help us reach the subconscious mind faster– where change takes place.
These frequencies push back the conscious mind. While you are awake your conscious mind controls everything. But when you are in a state of trance, your subconscious mind takes the center stage. This is why it is such an effective and pleasant way to change behaviors and perceptions. Your subconscious gets rewritten. The Hypnosis-Meditations are a meditation with the therapeutic approach. The frequencies take you there effortlessly and when you take away your recording you then have a tool to use on your own to train your brain and cultivate the attributes and behaviors you want to amplify you change your physiology and change your life. It is always my goal to give my clients have practical tools to put their practice into action.
Walking in Nature Changes Your Brain!....it quiets the subgenual prefrontal cortex associated with worry and rumination. (Plus, it's full of awe.)
http://phys.org/news/2011-04-demystifying-meditation-brain-imaging.html
Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving effects in the brain, according to new research published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.
"This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation," said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
"We found a big effect – about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent."
Click on the link below to view the slideshow of the amazing effects of meditation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/7-fascinating-facts-about_n_899482.html
Over the last decade, interest in the science of meditation has skyrocketed. We now know more than ever before about just how meditation affects our minds and bodies. Increased research has led to a plethora of fascinating discoveries: Take, for instance, the fact that meditation can prevent heart disease. Or that it reduces stress. Or that it can significantly lessen ADHD symptoms, and in many cases, beats medication.
Still, much is left to be discovered. We know more but we definitely don't know everything. While we wait for science to catch up with ancient wisdom, check out this slideshow on the complex effects of the simple act of focused breathing.
Not just for hippies, mindfulness goes mainstream.
But what is mindfulness, how do you live it, and what does it mean for you? These are questions George Mumford set about to answer in his beautiful new book, The Mindful Athlete.
It's a story in part of Mumford's own redemption, of his personal struggle with a powerful addiction and severe negative self-talk issues, or what he refers to as "stinkin' thinkin". He shares how he turned it all around, has been clean for 31 years, and has taught what he's learned.
His book is also a guide to living mindfully 24/7, not just when sitting on the cushion. It's not so much a day-to-day, how-to manual, but general guidelines we can put it into practice, and reminders to help us live more from the heart and with integrity and to go beyond the illusion of separateness--where we're all interconnected.
Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, was one of the first scientists to take the anecdotal claims about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness and test them in brain scans. What she found surprised her — that meditating can literally change your brain
Click on her Ted talk here:
How Meditation Can Reshape Our Brains: Sara Lazar at TEDxCambridge 2011
I love my www.energymuse.com jewelry to lock in my intentions.
Here's my 30 minute Chakra meditation which is a great complement to their Energy Muse Jewelry Chakra Stones.
How many thoughts do you think the average person has a day? If, I said 30,000 would you be surprised? The greater question is how are you using those 30,000 thoughts each day. Mind and brain research has discovered that 84-92% of the thoughts you think today where the same thoughts you thought yesterday. When you train your brain and cultivate appreciative joy, gratitude and loving kindness you change your physiology. Read more here:
Tools To Cultivate Positive Emotions:
The health of our cells are controlled by two things – the direct environment and our perception of it. Eight hours of meditation can shut down two of the primary genes in the system which cause inflammation in the body, you can empower yourself to be healthy rather than a victim of your environment. Dr Bruce Lipton.
Simple as that.
http://rawfoodenergybenefits.com/8196/raw-food-mindset/meditation-changes-the-health-of-your-cells/
Stress is affecting your brain much more than you think. Sure, you've experienced the distraction, forgetfulness, negativity or anxiety that comes from stressful situations, but did you know it's also shrinking your brain?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/17/mindfulness-sleep_n_6697416.html
PEOPLE WHO MEDITATE FALL ASLEEP MORE EASILY AND SLEEP BETTER:
The researchers found that the mindfulness group showed significant improvements in their ability to fall and stay asleep relative to the sleep hygiene group.
Both the reduction of sleep disturbances and the daytime carryover observed in the research group that underwent mindfulness training suggests that mindfulness interventions may be a powerful means of improving quality of life among older adults.
