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Tag Archives | Meditation

Study Suggests That Meditation Changes The Body’s Gene Expression

By on December 11, 2013 in News 10

buddhaVia ScienceDaily, how changing your mind changes your body:

A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation.

The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.

“Interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs,” says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain.

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Hypnosis and Meditation

By on July 4, 2013 in News 0

philipfarber

Philip H. Farber, writer of several books and NLP teacher, provides a explanation on hypnosis and meditation via HAWK RIDGE PRODUCTIONS

Originally published in The Journal of Hypnotism.

I’m often asked if there’s a difference between self-hypnosis and meditation. It’s a simple question on the surface, but there are so many different forms and techniques in both categories that it’s tough to make more than a general comparison. Nonetheless, while the boundary between self- hypnosis and meditation might not be clearly delineated, I think it is possible to make a distinction.

Both hypnosis and meditation can produce states of deep relaxation, both can claim a wide range of similar health benefits, but the routes to what might be a similar destination are a bit different. In meditation, the conscious awareness of the practitioner is called into play. That is, the meditator intentionally focuses his or her mind on something in particular: a symbol, a candle flame, a mantra, the rhythm of the breath, or an overall awareness of the environment.

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Summer Vacation In Mind Control Camp

By on June 28, 2013 in News 4

mind controlVia Salon, Suzanne Clores reminisces:

In a Greek Orthodox Church annex in suburban New Jersey, I’m about to start my first morning of a four-week mind control summer camp. It is 1980. I am 9 years old. The classroom resembles an industrial park conference room.

The Silva Mind Control Method was founded in the 1950s, but taught in the 1960s around the same time as the Human Potential Movement. The HPM was an American subculture that yielded “The Inner Peace Movement,” thinkers like Alan Watts and Jean Houston, and the Esalen Institute.

The self-educated American parapsychologist Jose Silva trained his own children in deep relaxation, visualization and ESP techniques in effort to help them in school, and noticed remarkable improvement. Thirteen years later, the Silva Mind Control Method was founded.

The instructor, a woman named Mimi, scurried from desk to desk to introduce herself to the reluctant kids. I followed her strange directions without hesitation.

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Meditation: Effects on Emotion Shown to Persist

By on June 26, 2013 in News 18

via Psych Central Meditation 2

Meditation affects a person’s brain function long after the act of meditation is over, according to new research.

“This is the first time meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state,” said Gaelle Desbordes, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Boston University Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology.

“Overall, these results are consistent with the overarching hypothesis that meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing.”

The researchers began the study with the hypothesis that meditation can help control emotional responses.

During meditation, a part of the brain called the amygdala (known for the processing of emotional stimuli) showed decreased activity. However, when the participants were shown images of other people that were either good, bad, or neutral for a practice known as “compassion meditation,” the amygdala was exceptionally responsive.

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Ken Wilber: Death, Rebirth and Meditation

By on June 24, 2013 in News 7

Grey-Dying500A classic Ken Wilber essay, covering what the great traditions have said about the process of death and reincarnation.

This information page gives an overview of Kenneth Smith, links to many resources, and posts scans of his classic run of TCJ columns. The scans contain his most essential writing, but there is a Tumblr blog and a Gaim library that provide quotes from longer pieces. Here are some choice fragments.

via Integral Life:

Some type of reincarnation doctrine is found in virtually every mystical religious tradition the world over. Even Christianity accepted it until around the fourth century CE, when, for largely political reasons, it was made anathema. Many Christian mystics today now accept the idea. As the Christian theologian John Hick pointed out in his important work Death and Eternal Life, the consensus of the world religions, including Christianity, is that some sort of reincarnation occurs.

Of course, the fact that many people believe something does not rank it true.

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Is Mindfulness Compatible with High Tech?

By on June 13, 2013 in News 6

nancy

This week on Mindful Cyborgs Chris Dancy and I discussed the relationship between mindfulness and quantified self with biosensor engineer Nancy Dougherty. Nancy talks about how she came to the practice of mindfulness through some of her “happy pills experiment,” her light-based mood tracking system and why a portable fMRI might be a little over kill for self-tracking.

You can download the episode from Soundcloud, iTunes or directly.

You can also read more notes and the full transcript on Technoccult.

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Meditate in the Lines

By on May 24, 2013 in News 3

Meditate in the lines from Daniele zanini on Vimeo.

via Daniele zanini on Vimeo

In all the lines you’ll see, there’s a perception of direction. If you found a line on a piece of paper, if you rotate it, the direction changes. Then think about yourself: what kind of direction are you in today, in this present moment, in your whereabout? Is That direction a choice you made or are you living in a line of another one? We are a point in that line, choosing our fate, everyday, in every direction we have chosen or even if we haven’t chosen.

– Made in After Effects with Trapcode MIR, Particular and Horizon.

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Ten Obstacles to Sane Spirituality

By on May 19, 2013 in News 6

EctoplasmicSnotJulian Walker wrote this excellent overview of New Age flakiness, and gives some corrective measures.

via Elephant Journal:

I am passionate about the relationships between three things:

> inquiry-based practices (yoga, meditation, bodywork and ecstatic dance happen to be my favorites)

> critical thinking (also called “viveka” in yogic parlance, or discriminating wisdom)

> and shadow work (after Jung – the psychological idea that we have a “shadow” that is where we hide the emotions, experiences, thoughts and aspects of self that we would rather not face. Shadow work then is the process of courageously turning inward to bring honest awareness and compassionate attention to this place.)

Having been a yoga teacher for the last 18 years, and having spent my adult life swimming in the waters of popular spirituality, my sense is that more often than not these three elements are missing both in theory and practice. My sense is that this comes down to one revelatory observation.

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2013 – Year of the Witch (Eight Bells Edition)

By on April 22, 2013 in News 1

eight bells pictureEvery now and again you have moments in your life where profound realizations sort of creep up on you out of nowhere. I think it was because of a music nerd Facebook (friend me) discussion I became engaged with about guitar players years back that it hit me. Out of nowhere, I quite suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that right off the top of my head I could drop like 30 of my biggest guitar heroes and only one would be a heroine. That can’t be right, can it? I had to go through it about a 100 more fucking times because I couldn’t believe it. I had, Melynda Jackson from Subarachnoid Space, and errr…errr…umm…errr…no one. I mean, obviously Nancy Wilson, but as much as I like some Heart, I’ve never really ranked her as an influence on what I do specifically.

What a paternal head fuck our culture is.… Read the rest

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You’re Not a Monkey When You’re Stoned!

By on March 20, 2013 in News 34
The title to this piece is something that randomly popped into my head when I was Occult ganj-i-tating a few months back. I wrote it down on my Facebook page (friend me for strangeness) and ultimately just dismissed it as a funny song title idea until the next few weeks found me catching up on Mad Men. Of course! With weed laws loosening and legal weed a reality in my home state of Washington, we’re going to need some slick marketing copy to make this stuff the center of our economy (as it rightfully should be), and who better to do that than a chronically stoned super freak like me? “You’re Not a Monkey When You’re Stoned.” What a great tag line (pot marketing people, call me), but Christ, you really don’t need a hypnotic tag line to sell this stuff. As I’ve found out first hand as a small time dealer, shit basically sells itself. Here’s why. Life is bullshit, pot can help! Man, that’s another great one. Someone should really hire my ass here because I could just keep going with these. But seriously, chances are, if you’re not among the supremely wealthy minority of privileged fucks running things, you probably have to work a day job that makes you want to blow your brains out a lot of the time. See, life is bullshit. I have no idea what the architects of this reality were thinking with all that, but the good news is that pot can take you far far away from everything, really fucking quick...
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