The Way of Meditation

Which of the Six Unenlightened Realms Are You Stuck In?

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:02:22 GMT

The Six Realms of Suffering: A Buddhist Map of Unhealthy Psychological States

“Awakening is not about transcending the world; it’s about seeing the world more clearly.”

The Buddhist teaching of the Six Realms of Suffering is often described as six "places" we’re born into, determined by karma which include hell realms and animal realms. Traditional Buddhists may have believed these were literal places people get reincarnated into after we die but prominent Buddhist teachers like Robert Thurman, Pema Chodron and Jack Kornfield have explained these teachings in terms of psychological structures we are trapped in or controlled by and it turns out they are very profound.

Of course what's a 'real place' and what's psychological projection is a tricky question in Buddhist circles, as one teacher explains:

"Looking at the world around us, and into our own minds, we can see that the six realms definitely do exist. They exist in the way we unconsciously allow our [destructive] emotions to project and crystallize entire realms around us, and to define the style, form, flavour and context of our life in those realms." - Sogyal Rinpoche

Viewed through a modern psychological lens, these realms are not literal places, they are metaphors for six psycho/emotional states that every human can experience when caught in cycles of unawareness or suffering. These realms are not outside of us—they are within us, shaping how we think, feel, and act. Most people are predominantly caught in just one but it's possible to cycle through several different realms even in one day.

The good news? These states are all impermanent and by cultivating self-awareness, we can see through the illusion of these realms and rediscover our natural wakefulness or enlightened essence. And by becoming aware of how these realms influence and shape our world we can start to live free of their power and regain conscious control over our lives.

Perceptions Create The Reality We Live In

The Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa often emphasized that our perception doesn’t just reflect reality—it creates it. He taught that we live in self-constructed worlds, projecting hope and fear onto a neutral field of experience, which then becomes our personal drama. In my own teachings, I echo this insight: what we pay attention to becomes the world we inhabit. Our perceptions, shaped by past conditioning and emotional filters, define how we interpret each moment—turning life into heaven or hell depending on the lens we’re looking through. Meditation helps us step back from these projections, dissolving the filters and revealing the luminous reality that was always there beneath our assumptions.

Here are the Six Realms of Suffering and how to be free from them:

1. The Hell Realm – The State of Anger and Hatred

The Hell Realm is a state of burning, unrelenting anger. This realm arises when we are consumed by rage, resentment, or a sense of being victimized. We’ve all been here—whether it’s lashing out at a loved one, seething at a perceived betrayal, or drowning in self-hatred. It feels like hell because we are imprisoned by the fire of our own emotions. Chogyam Trungpa described this as the "hot hell of aggression" where everything becomes a threat, and the world always feels hostile.

The way of meditation offers a way out. By observing anger non-judgmentally, we realize anger is energy—it’s not who we are. Anger, when seen clearly, dissipates like smoke. When you realize you are not your anger and it's just a temporary emotion you can allow the space, patience and courage to let it pass.

Lama Surya Das reminds us, "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die." When we meet our anger with spaciousness and compassion, we discover the calm within and around the storm, and forgiving others brings us the peace we are looking for.

2. The Hungry Ghost Realm – The State of Addiction and Insatiable Desire

In the Hungry Ghost Realm, we are trapped by cravings that can never be satisfied. Picture beings with huge bellies and pinhole mouths—they’re always hungry, yet can never be nourished.

Psychologically, this realm most looks like addiction, consumerism, or emotional grasping—chasing the next relationship, the next purchase, the next drink, hoping it will fill the emptiness. But the void remains. No matter how much you get you always want more.

This tormented state is is ruled by compulsion and an unending thirst for more and never feeling enough.

Recognizing this within ourselves, meditation then invites us to be with the hunger instead of feeding it blindly. The antidote to craving is always cultivating contentment and gratitude. Lama Yeshe teaches that true joy arises from recognizing the completeness of this moment. By tuning into our breath, body, and heart, we shift from "not enough" to "this is enough" and we discover the natural perfection within the moment.

3. The Animal Realm – The State of Ignorance and Complacency

The Animal Realm represents a state of dullness, ignorance, and resistance to growth. In this realm, we avoid challenges, cling to habits, and live on autopilot. There’s comfort here, but also stagnation.

When we numb ourselves with routines, distractions, or shallow entertainment, we disconnect from life’s vibrancy. This realm keeps us trapped in what Trungpa calls "spiritual sloth," where we fear stepping into the unknown.

The animal realm is when we are always controlled by our primitive instincts and can't see other's perspectives. This easily leads to harmful actions with limited insights.

Meditation breaks the cycle. By practicing awareness, we wake up from our usual habitual patterns and begin to see life’s beauty beyond just surviving and start to have compassion for all beings. The simple act of sitting in meditation—alert, open, loving—reminds us we are not just here to survive but conscious beings with the capacity for wonder, beauty and enlightenment.

4. The Human Realm – The State of Desire and Striving

The Human Realm is often considered the most fortunate because it’s the realm of self-awareness. Yet, it’s also a state of longing and striving. In this realm, we constantly chase pleasure, success, and meaning while fearing loss, aging, and death.

The human realm desires love, happiness, and freedom, but we often look for these treasures outside ourselves. This realm is marked by dissatisfaction, the subtle ache of "something’s missing." Similar to the desire of the hungry ghost realm but here the dissatisfaction is about identity, we want to be more than we already are.

Meditation transforms this striving into presence. When we stop chasing what’s "out there" and turn inward, we discover a deeper fulfillment. The act of meditation is a radical display of being enough as we are; of being complete.

As a Zen Master once said:

"You are already what you want to become. You don't need to be someone else; you are a wonder of life.""

5. The Jealous God Realm – The State of Competition and Envy

The Jealous God Realm is a psychological state of comparison, competition, and insecurity. Here, we constantly measure ourselves against others—wanting their success, beauty, or happiness—while feeling bitter and inadequate.

This state arises from the ego’s need to "be better" or "win." Unfortunately this attitude is often encouraged in modern society.

Constantly comparing yourself to others is exhausting and never-ending, like climbing a ladder that stretches to infinity. Lama Surya Das describes this realm as "a war we wage with ourselves." It becomes a psychological prison we keep ourselves locked in but fortunately we are still holding the key.

Gratitude is the antidote to envy. By starting our day or our meditation sessions with gratitude we lessen the influence of this realm and by appreciating what we do have—our breath, our friends, our freedom—we shift from scarcity to abundance.

Rejoicing in other's success is also a wonderful way to disconnect from the harmful influence of jealousy. Consciously wishing others well and celebrating their victories actually restores the basic goodness of our soul.

Meditation helps us see that comparing minds are suffering minds. In truth, there is no competition because everyone is a unique expression of essentially the same divine presence. By seeing this we are freed from competition and fully available to express our own unique good qualities.

6. The God Realm – The State of Temporary Bliss and Denial

The God Realm seems pleasant—a state of bliss, luxury, and spiritual highs. Yet, it’s deceptive. In this realm, we cling to pleasure and deny suffering. It’s the state of chasing peak experiences while ignoring life’s impermanence.

Think of someone who avoids discomfort at all costs, or spiritual seekers addicted to "feeling good" while bypassing their shadow. These realms are narcissistic and self focused, their pleasure and perspectives are all that are important to someone trapped in a god realm.

The lesson here is humility. Trungpa taught that true spirituality doesn’t avoid suffering—it embraces it. Meditation grounds us in reality, where bliss and pain coexist. By resting in awareness, we transcend both pleasure and pain, touching the timeless clarity of our true nature.

Moving Beyond the Realms

The Six Realms of Samsara are not separate "places." They are states of mind that we cycle through—sometimes daily, sometimes within moments. The realms arise when we lose contact with our innate wakefulness, falling into habitual patterns of anger, craving, ignorance, striving, envy, or denial.

But here’s the profound truth: none of these states define us. The Way of Meditation invites us to wake up. By observing these psychological states with mindfulness and compassion, we loosen their grip. Trungpa called this "cutting through spiritual materialism"—seeing through our own illusions.

At the core of all the realms is spacious awareness, untouched by their storms. Lama Surya Das reminds us that enlightenment is not elsewhere—it’s simply realizing our "Buddha nature," our innate wisdom and compassion.

“When we wake up, the realms become what they always were—passing clouds in the vast sky of awareness.”

Returning to the Natural State

The six realms teach us about the human condition. They remind us of the traps we fall into when we’re not fully awake. Yet, they also show us the way out. Through meditation, we discover that these realms are just stories, not ultimate truths.

As you sit on your cushion, observe your mind. Notice when anger arises. Notice craving, dullness, envy, or denial. Simply observe without judgment. You’ll begin to see the impermanence of these states and the timeless awareness beneath them.

This is the ultimate liberation—not escaping the world, but seeing it clearly. When we recognize the six realms within us, we also awaken the wisdom to live beyond them.

As the Zen saying goes, “When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation and author of the Sky Wisdom Oracle Cards . Chad has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. AND you can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

The Importance of Relaxing the Nervous System: A Foundational Step in Meditation

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 01:22:42 GMT

In today’s fast-paced world, the mind often races, driven by the demands of work, family, and personal ambitions. Meditation is commonly seen as a practice to calm the mind, foster inner peace, and connect with deeper aspects of existence. Yet, one crucial element often overlooked is the state of the body, particularly the nervous system. Relaxing the nervous system isn’t just a preparatory step; it is foundational for unlocking the deeper states of awareness and tranquility that meditation promises. Drawing insights from my journey and teachings, we will explore why this is so vital and how it transforms the meditative experience.

Start With The Breath

One of the simplest yet most effective tools for relaxing the nervous system is breathwork. Techniques such as deep diaphragmatic breathing or the more structured practice of counting breaths help anchor the mind while soothing the body. In my sessions, we often start with these exercises to ease participants into a state of relaxed awareness. There's a big difference between breathwork techniques, it's important to use breathing patterns that relax you and not stress you out.

The breath serves as a bridge, connecting the physiological state of the body with the focus of the mind. By consciously slowing down the breath, we send signals to the brain that everything is okay, allowing it to shift out of survival mode. This simple practice has profound implications, helping participants feel at home in their own bodies—a crucial first step in any meditation practice.

Creating a Safe Space

I try to emphasize the importance of creating a sanctuary for meditation—a space that feels safe and comforting. This mirrors the body’s need for a safe internal environment. When the nervous system is calm, it signals to the mind that it is safe to let go of hypervigilance. This internal sense of safety is the bedrock for exploring our thoughts and emotions without fear or resistance.

Meditation can then serve as a refuge, a place where we face our inner landscapes with gentleness and curiosity. In this space, we are not trying to escape reality but rather to embrace it fully, starting from a calm and centered place. A meditation master once said "meditation is feeling at home in your own skin", it's this feeling of being at home and safe in our own bodies that we want to cultivate by relaxing the nervous system. We need to make our own bodies a safe place to inhabit and then we can discover what is in the present moment when we're not running away from it.

The Nervous System as a Gateway to Stillness

At the heart of our stress responses lies the autonomic nervous system, which comprises the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) systems. When stress overwhelms us, the body remains in a heightened state of alertness, making it nearly impossible to settle into a meditative state. When people say their mind starts to race in meditation, what they really mean is their nervous system is racing and cannot relax.

This chronic activation of the sympathetic system makes simple mindfulness exercise very difficult and blocks our ability to access deeper layers of awareness. Relaxing the nervous system helps activate the parasympathetic system, which activates the 'relaxation response' and this essential for grounding oneself in the present moment in a relaxed way. This physiological shift is not just about feeling good; it creates a fertile ground for mindfulness, loving-kindness, and ultimately the pure stillness of non-dual awareness.

The Power of Humming and Vagal Toning

Modern trauma theory, particularly the work on the vagus nerve, has shown that certain practices can directly influence the nervous system. Techniques like humming or chanting “Om” resonate deeply, not just metaphorically but physiologically. These sounds stimulate the vagus nerve, promoting a state of relaxation and connection.

Interestingly, this aligns with ancient practices where sound and vibration were used to induce meditative states. When we integrate such techniques, we not only honor these traditions but also leverage cutting-edge science to enhance our practice. Chanting the powerful sound of OM has long been a way to enter into deep meditative states and remove obstacles.

A Progressive Journey Towards Non-Dual Awareness

Relaxing the nervous system is more than just a preliminary exercise; it sets the stage for a progressive journey through meditation. It begins with calming the body and mind before moving into mindfulness, loving-kindness, and self-inquiry. Each stage builds upon the last, culminating in the realization of non-dual awareness, where the boundaries between self and other dissolve.

Without a relaxed body, this journey can feel fragmented or even inaccessible. A tense body often harbors hidden resistances, blocking the flow of energy and awareness. By addressing this tension early, we create a seamless progression that allows participants to experience the full depth of meditation and embodied experience.

By connecting with a calm and safe body and fully inhabiting it we resolve the issue of spiritual by-passing. We can connect deeply with our bodies while simultaneously realizing the boundless presence of non-dual awareness. It's this union that allows the full flourishing of our spiritual potential.

Practical Exercises for Daily Life

Relaxing the nervous system isn’t confined to the meditation cushion; it is a skill that can be cultivated throughout daily life. Simple practices such as taking mindful breaths during stressful moments, gently stretching, or even practicing gratitude can help maintain a balanced nervous system. I personally love to hum in any car ride, and I usually turn up to my destination feeling blissful and blessed.

In our fast-paced culture, these small but consistent acts of self-care are revolutionary. They remind us that meditation is not an escape from life but a way to fully embrace it with joy and presence.

Closing Thoughts

The journey of meditation is deeply personal and transformative. Yet, without a relaxed nervous system, many of its profound benefits remain out of reach. By starting with the body, we honor the interconnectedness of our physical and mental states, laying a strong foundation for deeper exploration.

In my experience, those who prioritize this foundational step often report not only more profound meditative experiences but also improvements in their daily well-being. They sleep better, handle stress with greater ease, and feel more connected to themselves and others.

Relaxation is not just the absence of tension; it is the presence of peace. And from this peace, the true journey of meditation begins.

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

Meditation Teacher Chad Foreman

Let The Sky Be Your Guide: Meditations On Sky Wisdom

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 03:31:34 GMT

The sky is a symbol that represents the ultimate nature of reality, which is vast, limitless and “all-pervading”. Contemplating the sky is a powerful tool for meditation because it helps you connect with this limitless nature of reality and to realize your own true nature, which is also vast, limitless and all-pervading.

By meditating with the sky as your inspiration, you allow your mind to rest in its natural state, which is spacious, open and clear, just like the sky above, allowing everything to be as it is, without judgement or resistance.

A key aspect of this meditation is using the sky to realize that just as clouds and weather do not harm the sky, your thoughts and emotion cannot harm the nature of your mind. It’s this indestructible sky nature that we are trying to connect with. Or more accurately, re-connect with, because our sky nature already exists as the basis of our every experience.

The practice of sky-gazing is grounded in the understanding that the nature of our mind is fundamentally pure and free from any inherent flaws or limitations – it is already perfect and complete like the sky. And just as the sky above is not obstructed by any object that appears within it, so our true nature is not limited by concepts or thoughts that appear within it.

When we rest our mind in an authentic natural state through meditation, we can access a profound level of awareness that is beyond the ordinary mind and the limitations of dualistic thinking (black/white, good/bad, negative/positive and so on).

Sky wisdom gives us a portal into the everywhere-all-at-once experience. From this, unity with all humans flows naturally and we realize that we have a common core, allowing love and empathy for all to flourish.

The sky is a universal symbol in all cultures and traditions, and it is therefore a powerful archetypal image that can resonate deeply within all human beings around the world. It is a pure and unchanging presence that is always there, no matter what is happening on the surface of the Earth.

This can serve as a powerful reminder to us that that our true nature is also pure and unchanging, and is always present, even when obscured by thoughts, emotions and other distractions.

The vastness and openness of the sky can help us to let go of our habitual patterns of thinking and feeling and open up to a more expansive and inclusive way of being. I encourage you to identify more deeply with the sky, so that you begin to realize your identity is not limited to your physical body or your personality but is, in fact, a part of the vast and limitless nature of reality itself.

It’s the immediacy and availability of our ultimate true nature that sets sky meditation practices apart from other, more gradual approaches to meditation. Through meditating on the sky, we can intuitively recognize the natural state of our mind and rest in this experience. This direct approach is said to be the fastest path to enlightenment because it goes straight to the enlightened truth of every experience.

Five Benefits of Sky Meditation

Meditating and contemplating the sky is a powerful practice for cultivating insight into the nature of reality and realizing your own true nature. This practice will help you to:

1. Cultivate spaciousness

By meditating on the vast and open expanse of the Sky, you can learn to cultivate a sense of spaciousness and openness in your mind. This can help to loosen the grip of habitual patterns of thinking and feeling and create more room for insight and clarity to arise.

2. Overcome attachment

As the sky is a symbol of boundlessness and freedom, meditating on the sky can help you to let go of your attachments and aversions. By contemplating the sky, you can learn to cultivate a non-grasping, non-clinging attitude toward your experiences and emotions.

3. Connect with the ultimate nature of reality

The sky is also a symbol for the ultimate nature of reality, which is vast, unchanging and all-pervading. By meditating on the sky, you can connect with this ultimate reality and deepen your understanding of the true nature of yourself and the world.

4. Enhance awareness

By focusing on the sky and its qualities, such as vastness, clarity and openness, you can learn to enhance your awareness and clarity of mind. This can help you to develop greater mindfulness and insight into the nature of reality.

5. Encourage non-dual awareness

The goal of practice is to cultivate a non-dual awareness that transcends ordinary concepts of self and other. By meditating on the sky, you can learn how to let go of dualistic (black/white) thinking and connect with the inherent unity of all things.

The Four Meditation Themes of Sky Wisdom

Freedom

“True freedom is achieved when we are able to see through the illusion of our own projections.” Longchenpa

The sky is vast and boundless, without limitation or constraint. Similarly, freedom lies within us and is always accessible, but we often create limitations and constraints through our beliefs and attachments. The sky does not cling to the clouds that pass through it, nor does it resist them. In the same way, we can learn to let go of our attachments and allow experiences to pass through us without resistance or grasping. True freedom comes from accepting and embracing the impermanence of all things.

2. Clarity

“Clarity is the natural state of the mind, obscured only by our conceptualizations and habitual patterns of thinking.” Longchenpa

The sky is clear and transparent, reflecting all that is in it. In the same way, we can cultivate clarity by allowing our thoughts and emotions to arise and pass without getting caught up in them. The sky does not judge or analyse what it reflects; it simply is. Similarly, we can learn to observe our experiences without judgement or analysis, allowing ourselves to see things as they are. This clarity helps us to make decisions from a place of insight and wisdom.

3. Spaciousness

“The spaciousness of our being is not something that can be created or destroyed; it is always present, waiting to be realized.” Longchenpa

The sky is spacious, with room for everything that exists. When we cultivate spaciousness within ourselves, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and experiences. We often limit ourselves by our beliefs and assumptions, but when we let go of these, we create more space for growth and transformation. The sky does not discriminate or hold back its vastness; it is always available for us to connect with. In the same way, when we cultivate spaciousness, we connect with a sense of openness and possibility that allows us to live more fully.

4. Essence

“The essence of our being is pure awareness, unbound and unchanging.” Longchenpa

The sky has no fixed form, colour or substance; it is empty yet present in all things. Our essence is like the sky, formless yet present in everything we do. We often get caught up in the form of things, the labels and identities we attach to ourselves and others. But like the sky, our essence is always there, beyond labels and forms. When we connect with our essence, we tap into a deeper wisdom and compassion that goes beyond our limited understanding of ourselves.

Sky wisdom meditation emphasizes the natural authentic state of being, the eternal pure primordial awareness at the heart of all beings. This sky wisdom meditation style adopts an easy-going, non-striving and non-doing approach to practice similar to Zen. As this awareness is already perfectly whole and complete, there’s nothing to be done.

The fundamental principle of sky wisdom is the recognition of the innate awareness that pervades all phenomena. This awareness is not something that needs to be achieved through meditation or any other means – it is already our authentic nature. It is already present within us, but we are not aware of it because we are distracted by our thoughts and emotions.

Therefore, the practice of sky wisdom meditation is not about doing something to attain this awareness but rather about recognizing and resting within it. It entails clearing away the clouds of confusion and distraction to reveal the totally free and unbound nature that is eternally present within.

There is no need for complicated meditation techniques or formal practices. Instead, the focus is on relaxing and letting go of any effort to achieve or attain. Simply rest in the natural state of being. You don't need to strive or try to manipulate anything. Just let go of any effort or intention and allow yourself to be in the present moment, free from any distractions.

By meditating with the sky, you can directly experience your true nature and awaken to an enlightened perspective of yourself and the world. Sky wisdom is to first recognize your sky nature, then through practice gain confidence to stabilize and rest within it and finally to integrate this ultimate dimension of reality into every moment.

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation and author of the Sky Wisdom Oracle Cards . Chad has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. AND you can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

The Quest for Balance: Equanimity in Meditation

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 01:26:45 GMT

The Power of Equanimity

Buddhism, with its rich tapestry of methods of meditations, offers invaluable insights into the pursuit of balance, tranquility and equanimity in our lives. I've explored many Buddhist traditions and all their various ways of meditating: and equanimity and equalizing are common themes through-out all the traditions and it's for a good reason. Equanimity is such a central theme to Buddhist meditation practice because it exemplifies the philosophy of the middle way taught by the historical Buddha which is the path to enlightenment.

Equanimity is also a practical expression of non-duality. Through meditation you begin to understand that everything is inter-connected and nothing exists in isolation or separation to anything else. Therefore it's wise to seeks states of mind that are flexible, balanced and can see the bigger picture of unity amongst diversity.

Brief Examples of Equanimity:

Mahayana Buddhism has several examples but the core one is the practice of seeing all people as equal and equally worthy recipients of our love and compassion. Equanimity is the basis upon which love and compassion can flourish.

Zen Buddhism equalizes the mundane with the profound so you get the deep and meaningful practices of doing ordinary things like drinking tea or gardening in a sacred way. This idea extends to meditating as if you are Buddha. In other words there's no fundamental difference between a Buddha and a sentient being, they are equal.

Tantric Buddhism equalizes all appearances by seeing them as the sound, love and light radiance of Buddha. A Tantric practitioner greets all people as divine emanations.

And Theravadin Buddhism teaches the tranquility of equalizing all thoughts as empty apparitions. Becoming free from the cycle of attachment and aversion, aggression and resistance. Nirvana is the great equanimity.

From all these powerful methods arise deep states of love, compassion, peace and wisdom that enrich our lives in many ways. These four major traditions of Buddhism - Theravada, Mahayana, Tantra, and Zen - each emphasize the importance of equalizing in their unique ways. Let's take a closer look into how these traditions reflect the significance of harmonizing various aspects of our existence through equalizing and equanimity.

1. Mahayana Buddhism: The Universal Embrace of Compassion

In Mahayana Buddhism, one of the central teachings is the practice of seeing all people as equal, all worthy recipients of love and all have the potential for enlightenment. This core principle, known as the Way of a Bodhisattva, emphasizes the cultivation of boundless compassion for everyone equally and the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Mahayana Buddhists see every person equally has the potential for enlightenment, and the path to Buddhahood is not limited to a select few but is open to all. This inclusivity is rooted in the understanding that all beings have Buddha nature. To progress on the spiritual path means to extend compassion and loving-kindness to everyone, regardless of their background or circumstances as they are 'Buddhas to be' as meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh says.

The practice of equalizing all beings helps Mahayana practitioners overcome the barriers of egoic attachment and aversion and opens their mind to embrace all beings. In fact the Mahayana master Shantideva says all suffering in the world comes from selfish preoccupation and all happiness in the world comes from loving others equally.

This practice of equanimity; seeing all beings as equal, forms the foundation of Mahayana Buddhism's altruistic path towards enlightenment and states clearly that if you still hold any bias or hatred toward any beings enlightenment is impossible.

2. Zen Buddhism: Finding the Sacred in the Mundane

Zen Buddhism has a unique way of equalizing the mundane with the profound. This school of Buddhism is known for its emphasis on direct experience and the integration of mindfulness into everyday life. In Zen, practitioners are encouraged to find enlightenment not only in meditation but also in ordinary activities like drinking tea, gardening, or simply walking.

Zen teachings often emphasize that Buddha nature, the inherent enlightened state, is present in everything and everyone. This belief leads to the practice of seeing the sacred in the ordinary. For Zen practitioners, there is no separation between the spiritual and the secular; they are two aspects of the same reality.

When drinking tea becomes a meditative act, and the act of gardening becomes an expression of mindfulness, Zen practitioners experience the profound in the seemingly mundane. By equalizing the ordinary and the extraordinary, Zen Buddhism encourages a deep sense of presence, where every moment and every activity can become a gateway to enlightenment.

In essence, Zen reminds us that enlightenment is not confined to monastic seclusion but is accessible in our everyday lives, challenging the conventional boundaries we often place between the sacred and the profane. When Buddha is discovered in every moment all seeking and desire come to an end, and peace and wisdom are already here.

3. Tantric Buddhism: The Divine Equanimity

In Tantric Buddhism, one of the profound practices involves equalizing all appearances by seeing them as manifestations of the sound, love, and light radiance of the Buddha. Tantric practitioners view the entire universe as the expression of the divine, and all phenomena are seen as sacred.

The core concept here is that every person, every object, and every experience is a reflection of the divine. In Tantra, this recognition is taken to a profound level, where every aspect of life, including sensory experiences, emotions, and relationships, is regarded as a path to enlightenment.

A Tantric practitioner greets all people as divine emanations, recognizing the intrinsic Buddha nature within each being. This perspective leads to a profound sense of interconnectedness and bliss, as one sees the divine essence in all living beings, regardless of their external appearances or actions. Joy and bliss can be found in a blade of grass or a walk in the park.

Tantric Buddhism's equalization of all appearances extends beyond intellectual understanding; it becomes a lived experience where every moment is an opportunity to connect with the sacred. By seeing the divine in all things, Tantric practitioners aspire to transcend dualistic thinking and attain spiritual realization in the midst of everyday life.

4. Theravadin Buddhism: The Tranquility of Equanimity

In Theravadin Buddhism, the practice of equalizing all thoughts as empty apparitions is central to the cultivation of tranquility and insight. This practice involves recognizing the impermanent and empty nature of all phenomena, including thoughts and mental states. Theravadin teachings emphasize the understanding that all conditioned experiences are subject to change, devoid of inherent existence and cannot bring lasting happiness. By equalizing all thoughts as empty apparitions, practitioners aim to break free from the cycle of attachment and aversion, which leads to suffering and find the tranquility of equanimity, a wise and calm mind not attached the fluctuations of the world. .

The cultivation of equanimity is a significant aspect of Theravadin practice. Equanimity refers to the balanced and impartial response to all experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant. By seeing thoughts as empty and impermanent and not chasing after their referred objects, individuals can develop a deep sense of inner peace and non-reactivity.

For Theravadin Buddhists, nirvana is often described as the great equanimity. It is the state of perfect peace and liberation from the turbulence of samsara. The practice of equalizing thoughts and perceptions as empty apparitions is a path towards realizing this ultimate equanimity and be free from reactivity and compulsion.

Written by Chad Foreman

Meditation Teacher Chad Foreman

How to Balance Effort & Effortlessness in Meditation

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 03:41:47 GMT

Effortless Meditation

Recently I clicked on an advertisement on Facebook that was promoting effortless mindfulness. I’ve seen plenty of these ads recently, so I wanted to check out what other meditation teachers were calling ‘effortless’. I was disappointed to learn that they didn't really mean effortless in the same way I understand it, and were using the term effortless as more of a buzz word than literally. A mindfulness system re-branded as effortless perhaps.

The word effortless in meditation usually has a specific meaning and is often related to non-dual traditions that teach the perfection of awareness is already present and therefore any effort to achieve something you already are is misguided and misleading. Effortless meditation is called non-meditation in Tantric Tibetan Buddhist lineages and is often related to the just sitting of Zazen meditation found in Soto Zen Buddhism.

Effortless meditation requires no adjustments, no manipulation, no expectations and no goals. As the instructions go – there is nothing to remove and nothing to add, there’s literally nothing to do and therefore it’s called effortless. It’s also called the natural state of meditation because you don’t create it you simply recognise the open presence of awareness already available and present.

These days it seems people are using the term effortless to mean easy or even fun but it can muddy the waters of meditation and is not really effortless at all. What I described above as effortless is known as the highest perspective in meditation wisdom traditions, but you can start to experience effortless meditation in simple mindfulness practices too, in fact it’s important you do.

The Right Amount of Effort in Meditation

Firstly effort in meditation is not a dirty word. Diligence, patience, and persistence have long been a stable backbone of meditation training and have their place. Also, to start meditation it’s vitally important to know what to do and what not to do. It takes skill that becomes increasingly more subtle to become self-aware of the processes of the mind.

You can read my instructions for essential meditation practice HERE where I balance the effort of mindfulness with the non-effort of just being in meditation.

The key element and effort required in mindfulness meditation is to know when you are focusing on your object of meditation, usually your breath, and when you're distracted. When you notice you’re distracted, you use effort to guide the mind back to the task at hand.

In classical Buddhism there is a meta cognition at work diligently watching and making sure you’re performing your task of not getting distracted. This internal ‘watchdog’ also ensures that you’re not too sleepy and you’re not too excited even when you’re not distracted and your paying attention to your object of meditation.

All this requires effort and diligence and becomes the familiar playground of the meditator. Watching your attention and making big and subtle adjustments. If you’re too sleepy you need to adjust yourself to awaken more and if you’re too excited, you need to adjust yourself to calm down.

So essentially it takes effort to keep watch and make adjustments to your attention. However, if you don’t discover the effortless part of this process you can remain in this effortful practice of meditation for years without ever realizing a calm mind. It can make you hyper vigilant and meditation can even turn into a stressful practice.

Getting the Balance Right

The actual effortlessness in mindfulness meditation is learning when to do nothing. When you’re distracted that’s not the time to do nothing, that’s when you need effort to bring the mind home to the present object. But once you’re attention is settled on the breath you can start to do less and less until you’re doing nothing at all. The reason this works is because clear non-distracted presence is actually a natural part of the nature of mind. The effort of mindfulness is to clear away distraction to uncover the potential of your natural calm presence.

Once you’ve caught distraction and guided your attention back home to the present moment and you’ve caught and adjusted to the subtle dullness and over excitement that muddy your clarity, you can now relax and do nothing. This is the effortless part of mindfulness; to abide on your object of meditation simply and calmly without making any adjustments or modifications at all.

This is the real effortlessness of mindfulness meditation. Tibetan masters would instruct that at this point there’s nothing to do, nothing to add and nothing to remove. I usually call it ‘just being’ in my instructions.

To continually make adjustments and to think about whether your meditation is working or not just becomes another obstacle in an endless game of cat and mouse. This is called over applying effort which implies there needs to be a balance or at least the correct amount of effort before you let go.

It can be difficult to let go of the effort to adjust and modify your meditation but a good way to monitor progress is noticing your ability to watch the breath without controlling it. This is the key to doing nothing and letting go of effort to become the naturally calm observer. When you watch the breath the tendency is to control it. But when you can observe your breath ‘breathing itself’ you are well on the way to finding effortlessness.

To simply rest on the breath, doing nothing but paying attention, a certain calm presence of mind emerges. It’s becoming familiar with this calm presence that constitutes genuine meditation practice. The more familiar you become with this natural calm presence within formal meditation then you can begin to integrate this effortless wisdom into every aspect of your life. The art of doing nothing is the integrated ‘non-action’ into your everyday behaviour. You can read more about it HERE.

In conclusion I’d like to leave you with a very powerful and simple meditation instruction from Tantric Buddhism which includes effort and non-effort, it says “there’s absolutely nothing to meditate on but don’t get distracted.” Here we have the effortless way to meditate which is not to focus on anything or strive for anything in particular but making effort to not get distracted from your natural effortless awareness.

Written by Chad Foreman

Transforming The Five Bodies Through Breath-Work

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Sat, 15 May 2021 01:55:41 GMT

I’ve created an online breath-work course HERE so I thought I would write a blog explaining a little bit more about the philosophy and process I use in my classes to help people go deeper into their practice and understand my framework better.

I’ve been heavily influenced by the Yogic and Buddhist Tantric traditions and according to these spiritual schools a person is made up of multidimensional bodies. There are several different variations within the traditions but the model I use is based on the five bodies represented as the physical, emotional, mental, energy and spiritual bodies.

These ‘bodies’ make up what it is to be human and whilst in reality they are an inseparable whole it’s really helpful in practice to divide them up and practice them separately. Each body is like a field of intelligence which you can either be in alignment with or out of alignment with.

The two main functions of my breath work classes are to clear away the stresses and blockages within each of these fields and to tune into the inherent wisdom within those bodies. Traditional teachings speak a lot about this as a purification process, but I prefer the term transformation.

Physical Transformation

By using breathing techniques that activate the parasympathetic nervous system a person can intentionally transform their nervous system into a calm and relaxed state which helps make the body a safe and enjoyable place to be in which enables you to embody the present moment conditions fully.

This is vital for people who struggle with meditation who will often ignore this first and essential step, calming the body. Because of the strong mind/body connection it can make meditation almost impossible if your body’s nervous system is in flight/fight/freeze mode. If your body is agitated, nervous and full of chemical reactions that are priming you to either fight, run or freeze in terror it is no wonder that you cannot keep calm or focus the mind in meditation.

Some great techniques that can be used at the physical level include a wide range of deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing exercises, box breathing or cadence breathing techniques which have all have be proven to activate the relaxation response within your nervous system transforming your body from being agitated and hyper vigilant into a joyful, calm safe place.

Emotional Transformation

Next, after successfully activating the relaxation response in the nervous system you can also use breath-work to clear away emotional disturbances like anger or jealousy and transform the emotional body into a field of love and compassion.

Being in an open, grateful, and loving space has enormous benefits for your health. The healing power of love is well documented in scientific studies and has its roots in ancient spiritual practices.

Adversely the damaging effects of holding onto anger and resentment has been shown to be associated with weakening the immune system compromising your ability to fight off disease.

One of the most powerful Buddhist meditation practices is known as Tong-len which is a breathing and visualising technique that imagines removing the suffering of others, transforms the ego into love and shares that love with the world. Essentially Tong-len breathing means giving and receiving which is exactly what every breath is. It’s this giving and receiving, the literal mutual exchange of energy that helps strengthen and connect with a healthy emotional body.

The Dalia Lama himself teaches numerous variations on this technique one of those he instructs: “breathing in; loving yourself completely, breathing out; loving others completely.”

These types of loving kindness breathing exercises can quickly transform your emotional body from restriction and pain into the open spaces of love and freedom. It can initially be challenging to love and forgive others completely especially those who have harmed you, but it has a hugely transformative effect on your emotional body helping release trauma and resentments from the past. Breath-work classes are a safe and supportive space to practice with an open mind that can explore the effects of these techniques.

Mental Transformation

The mental body just referred to as the mind in western psychology is transformed from being distracted, agitated, and confused into being focused, calm and clear.

The classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness of breath is a perfect example of this level of practice but as I mentioned also calming the nervous and expanding your field of love helps enable you to focus the mind.

There are numerous techniques to use at this level like counting the breaths, mentally repeating a mantra or paying close attention to the four aspects of the breath (in breath, pause, out-breath, pause). This type of mental focus is included in all the other breathwork practices too when you’re training your mind to stay with the technique and not get distracted.

Learning to just watch your breath without controlling it is also a brilliant way to help practice non-reactionary observational skills which help to develop clarity and the wisdom that responds instead of reacts. Transforming what meditators call the ‘monkey mind’ into an ‘awakened mind’ rooted in stillness.

Energy Transformation

As we move down or through to more subtle layers of our being we come to the energy body. This is the level that energy healers like acupuncturists, reiki and pranic healers work on and is essentially the underlying morphic field that supports the integrity and form of the physical body. Yoga and tantra also use this system extensively for healing and personal transformation.

A healthy subtle energy body is moving and flowing through thousands of ‘channels’ in the body and collecting but still moving through the chakras. An unhealthy subtle energy body has blockages and has become stagnate which can cause dis-ease. When the energy body holds past traumas, it has been referred to as the pain body by Eckhart Tolle.

The technique I use for this level of transformation is a Tibetan Tantric practice called Tummo which means inner fire or inner light. This practice which is promoted as the fastest way to enlightenment by its practitioners uses the breath and visualisations to connect with subtle energy. This practice can help develop blissful connection with subtle energy and purify blockages and past traumas.

Tummo is also associated with developing an inner fire which has reportedly enabled its practitioners to survive with barely any clothes in snowy mountain regions. Expert practitioners in Tibet would show their proficiency at this technique by drying wet sheets in freezing conditions that are placed over their bodies. (learn more about Tummo HERE )

Awareness Transformation

Finally the deepest level of breathwork or any spiritual practice is connecting with your true Self. At this level it’s all about identity. Identifying with your temporary conditions of your body, mind or culture creates an ego which seems very real but in fact is a figment of your imagination. The spiritual body which is the fundamental ground of your being has been known by many names but essentially it boils down to being a boundless type of consciousness or awareness.

This deepest level is different from the mental body which is localised and arises due to interactions between the brain, sense organs and an observed object. The deepest level of awareness is non-local and boundless like space. Often, it’s described as being sky like and transcends conceptual categories because it can never be observed by consciousness because it is consciousness itself.

Since it is ‘sky like’ this deepest level is not transformed in any way it’s known to be eternally present and already whole and complete. What’s transformed is the ignorance of not recognising this consciousness as your true self.

This spiritual body or field is open, clear and without boundaries or borders. The experience of connecting to the spiritual body is often described as a mystical state of One-ness or a unification with all that is. In yogic terms the culmination of breathwork or pranayama is the union with universal consciousness.

One way I practice this in my breathwork classes is to sit in this open field of awareness after every other technique. After every clearing or purifying of each body you can rest in the space that is left and use it as a portal into this ultimate dimension of consciousness.

Sitting in this space without trying to produce or transform anything you can discover embodied wholeness which is already present and already complete. This is a Zen type practice that works brilliantly after calming the nervous system, or expanding love, or clearing energy blocks. In fact, in the gradual systems of Tibetan Buddhism all those previous practices are seen as preliminaries or preparations for this ultimate Self-awareness.

Besides just sitting in wholeness, I also use ‘sky breathing’ to help connect with the boundless and sky like dimensions of your true self. This is a simple breath-work technique that dissolves the boundaries between the inner and outer world enabling the practitioner to discover unlimited potential.

If you would like to take my online breath-work course you can learn more about it and enroll HERE.

Written by Chad Foreman

What Meditation Does To Your Brain

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 04:44:00 GMT

Meditation Lowers Stress & Improves Emotional Well Being

Meditation is a very powerful and mysterious practice adopted by over millions of people worldwide. There is more and more evidence being presented everyday that validates the healing components of meditation. The aim of this article is to show how meditation directly affects the brain; we have extracted our findings from research studies that have been conducted globally and filtered through hundreds of articles to provide you a summary of the very best information that explores this field.

Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years but in recent times has gone from alternative to be much more accepted in the mainstream. And now conclusive research has found that even people that are beginners to meditation can create immediate positive effects on their brain like enhancing emotional resilience by strengthening connections between the left prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the amygdala.
Neuroscience can tell us a lot about how our emotions and happiness works.

“The prefrontal cortex appears to play a critical role in the unique human capacity to modulate emotions.”

~ Richard J. Davidsomn, Ph.D

Emotions are strongly influenced by the frontal lobe to be experienced as a positive or negative feeling (fear or love), through a set of important feedback loops. The frontal lobe interprets our experiences and then communicates this information through feedback loops with the limbic brain.

Amygdala is a region found in the limbic brain often represented as two almond shaped structures that are responsible mainly for fear and anxiety.

The pre-frontal cortex maybe important in inhibiting activity in the amygdala and dampening response to negative events, and particularly in shutting off the negative response quickly once it has been activated. ~ Richard J. Davidsomn, Ph.D

Having a strong connections between the pre frontal cortex and amygdala suggest that the individual will not “drown” in any negative emotions — Internal balance is restored right away if an individual experiences anxiety, anger, signs of depression or any other negative emotions.

Scientists studied Lama Oser — a European monk with over 30 years of meditative experience whilst he was meditating on compassion, finding that his left-to-right prefrontal cortex activity was quite literally off the chart. This heightened left-to-right brain activity means that he has an abnormally large capacity for happiness!

Meditation develops awareness through nonjudgmental witnessing, you become the observer to thoughts and emotions. This level of mental training allows you to pause and observe, resisting the pull of emotionally charged thoughts that thrive on your attention. This creates stronger connections between the pre-frontal cortex and amygdala, and thus becoming emotionally resilient to negative emotions.

A larger amygdala has been associated with people who suffer from PTSD and severe anxiety. “MRI scan shows that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the amygdala known as the ‘fight or flight’ centre, appears to shrink.” - Tom Ireland

Meditation decreases fear and anxiety by keeping the volume down in the amygdala. Through regular practice, individuals can strengthen the feedback loops between the frontal lobe and limbic brain, resulting in emotional resilience. Anyone who is suffering emotionally should consider practicing meditation regularly as the research now validates that meditation can result in a great deal of emotional healing and emotional intelligence.

How Meditation Affects Brain Waves

The brain waves our mind produces are altered during the practice of meditation. Typically, throughout the day our analytical mind will produce BETA waves - the norm for physical activity.

The calming effect of meditation triggers the brain to produce more Alpha waves - a creative state in the brain which alleviates the symptoms of stress.

Different states of mind, Different brain waves

1. BETA (14-40Hz) - Normal waking state - associated with a heightened state of alertness, Logic and critical reasoning

2. ALPHA (7.5-14Hz) - Deep Relaxation - Associated with learning, concentration and imagination.

3. THETA (4-7.5Hz) - Meditation & sleeping - Associated with deep meditation, the subconscious mind & light sleep, the moment before you drift of to sleep or as you are just waking up.

4. DELTA (0.5-4Hz) - Deep sleep - Associated with deep, dreamless sleep or states of meditation where awareness is fully detached.

Modern day lifestyle can be very demanding keeping the mind in a hyperactive state for extended periods of time — reducing the ability to relax.

FAMILIAR SYMPTOMS?

• Short temper

• Agitation

• Restless

• Anxious

• Irritable

• Impulsive

• Unhealthy sleeping patterns

• Excessive thinking

All of these symptoms are by-products from high levels of stress — operating from an over stimulated mind for extended periods of time (high level beta).

A problematic mind = highly aroused beta state, this results in stress and cortisol being distributed throughout the body. Over production of cortisol is very bad for your health.

Even what we do for relaxation is not really relaxing for your body and brain. For example watching tv, scrolling soical media or drinking alcohol all are leisure activities that can have a detrimental affect on your health.

Technology including: televisions, smart phones and computers radiate an artificial electromagnetic field that zaps our own EM (body) field. Have you ever had the feeling: where you felt “fried” or “cooked” after being in front of the computer for too long? It’s because our body’s bio-electrical field is being “zapped” by the radiation coming out of the device.

WHAT IS RELAXATION?

SOME ESSENTIALS:

• No distractions (No technology)

• Quiet place (Nature)

• Deep belly breathing (diaphragmatic)

• Mindfulness

• Meditation

Other factors to consider that may aid in relaxation :

• Exercise - promotes relaxation

• Herbal tea (various different types)

• Classical music - Soothing music

• Nature

• Journal

• Reading

• Long walks

• Flotation tanks

• Gentle yoga class (yin yoga)

• Sauna

• Juice detox (detox can help eliminate nervous energy)

Meditation is a very effective way to relax the body. When your body is in the relaxation response the parasympathetic nervous system is activated. The RELAXATION RESPONSE is a physical state of deep rest that changes a person's physical and emotional responses to stress "Dr.Herbert Benson" The PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM is concerned with nourishing, healing, elimination and regeneration of the body. "Dr Lawrence Wilson"

RELAXING = REGENERATION/HEALING

ALPHA STATE = more relaxation harmonizing the mind and body.

What does this mean ?

• Creativity

• Relaxation

• Harmonisation

• Balance

• Improved cognitive functioning

• Promotes health and wellness

• Optimal time to program mind for success

• Heightens imagination

• Enhanced visualisation

• Improves memory, learning and concentration

Alpha brain wave state creates coherence between the mind and the body — where transformation begins. This state is most typically achieved when people claim to be “in the zone” or whilst meditating.

By shifting the brain into an alpha wave state through breathing and meditation problematic thoughts subside — re-establishing coherence throughout the mind and body.

Beta mode is our alert wakeful state ideal for processing information throughout the day. However, learning how to consciously shift your brain waves into an alpha state is essential for health and well-being.

“Creative people show higher levels of alpha waves and have bursts of them when solving problems” ~Trevor Johnson

Learning how to observe your thoughts is the key ingredient in reprogramming your mind to a higher level of consciousness. Maybe we are just poor observers, limiting the understanding we have of our minds. Only through meditation can we learn to go back into the operating system to observe our internal mechanics that lie beyond thought. In this way we can short circuit the old habits and cultivate new healthy qualities. Becoming familiar with this process is the great inner journey within.

According to neuroscience as we continue a regular meditation practice, the physical structure of the brain changes. This is a natural response due to the heightened activity in the region of the brain associated with executive functioning — the frontal lobe.

Meditation activates the ‘rest and digest’ response which in turn switches off the production of stress hormones such as cortisol, this allows our nervous system to calm down and return to its natural state (homeostasis).

In summary the research papers from more than 1000 studies suggest that meditation improves our ability to handle stress.

The truth is that meditation will change your approach to life and how you typically handle stress. Meditation is a valuable habit that anyone can develop and it starts with just one breath. This begs the question - are you ready to surrender your stress to the power of meditation?

MEDITATION BENEFITS:

• Lowers Stress Levels

• Healthier Brain

• Increased Dopamine Levels - Improved Mood

• Strengthens Immune System

• Help to overcome Loneliness

• Heightens Awareness

• Reduces Anxiety

• Connects Different Regions In The Brain

• Creates Coherence Between Mind And Body

BRAIN ACTIVITY IS INCREASED IN THESES IMPORTANT BRAIN AREAS:

The Frontal lobe :

- Volume control to shut down the “thinking brain”

- Creativity is optimized

- Enhances your cognitive processing.

- A sense of control is induced

- Attention span is reinforced

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)

- Executive region of the brain

- Governs thinking and emotion

- Higher order cognitive functioning

“We hypothesised that meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the ACC, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus.” ~ Hiroki Nakata - This means that your pain tolerance goes up the more you meditate

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex -an area of the brain that controls worrying.

Amygdala

-An ancient part of our brain

-Constantly scanning environment looking for “threats”

-Directly involved with emotional well-being

-Stress centre (fear)

-Enlarged amygdala represents stress and anxiety (PTSD)

During meditation - we turn down the activity in the amygdala — through regular practice this region of the brain will shrink, decreasing anxiety and enhancing well-being

Insula

-Self awareness

-Emotional intelligence

-Represents health and wellness

Left Prefrontal Cortex

The left side of the frontal lobe is more active when people feel happy. Regular meditation strengthens the left prefrontal cortex - the feel good centre of the brain.

“Thus, larger volumes in these regions might account for meditators singular abilities and habits to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability, and engage in mindful behavior.” - Dr. Arthur W. Toga

Grey Matter

Research shows that meditators have thicker grey matter than non-meditators —the thickness of our cerebral cortex (outer layer of brain), represents attention, sensory processing and complex cognitive skills.

“Meditation might be a possible candidate in the quest for such a positive approach as there is ample evidence for its beneficial effects for a number of cognitive domains, including attention, memory, verbal fluency, executive function, processing speed, overall cognitive flexibility as well as conflict monitoring and even creativity.”~ Eileen Luders

You have the ability to evolve your brain and cultivate the very best version of yourself. The science of changing your brain starts with meditation. I have developed the reprogram your brain online course designed to increase the activity in executive regions of the brain which will enhance your cognitive abilities, reduce stress, help feel good, promote creativity, lessen fear and increase awareness - Learn more about the program HERE.

Written by Oska Phoenix

Five Different Meditations That Use the Breath

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 02:40:00 GMT

The breath has been used in meditation for thousands of years and remains one of the key tools we have to transform our entire being and directly experience the depths of our existence.

One famous meditation teacher said if you want to be free from anxiety live in the breath, others have said the breath is the bridge between the physical and spiritual dimensions of life and ancient wisdom traditions say the breath is actually spirit or the energy of the divine. Even in modern times science has shown the benefits of deep breathing to overcome stress and the connection of our breathing patterns to our states of mind.

There are numerous meditation techniques that employ the breath for various reasons, I would like to offer five techniques that utilise the power of the breath and showcase just how powerful and versatile the breath can be in meditation. These can be done by themselves or all together as a meditation sequence.

1. Deep Regulated Breathing

The first is the most obvious and perhaps the most powerful to overcome stress, anxiety and even depression is deep breathing. Called pranayama (breath control) in ancient Yogic traditions taking control of your breathing pattern has an immediate effect on your mental state and nervous system.

Oska Phoenix has written about four types of regulated breathing techniques to try out HERE

Breathing techniques have numerous proven health benefits and people like Wim Hof have demonstrated the ability of breathing techniques coupled with cold water treatments to ward off disease and boost the immune system.

More and more scientific research is showing the ability of deep breathing exercises to reduce stress and insomnia, help with emotion control, and improved your attention.

I always start my meditation practice with a few low slow deep breaths to consciously relax my body and help bring my mind to the present moment. It really does help to deeply relax my mind and body.

Your breath can be used to ‘fire up’ as well. The dopamine breathing technique taught by Marcel Hoff (Wim Hof’s brother) energizes the body releasing the feel good and healing hormone called dopamine, which not only feels blissful but has powerful healing qualities as well.

Deep breathing is so intimately connected with your physiology that you can use it as a reliable regulator of your nervous system and subsequent emotional states. Whether your shifting a frustrated state of mind, calming the nervous system or developing super focused clarity breathing exercises can do it all.

2. Humming or 'Auming'

Polyvagal theory demonstrates the role of the vagus nerve in regulating our body’s reaction to the world. In brief simply humming stimulates the vagus nerve and activates the relaxation response which directly counteracts the trauma responses of fight/flight/freeze. This is just a mechanical response of your body’s nervous system you don’t have to believe in it you simply have to do it and the results will almost be instantaneous helping you to relax and regulate your emotions.

Humming also slows and lengthens your outbreath which is a key factor in stress reduction and calming your mind. Humming or Auming (saying OM slowly) with another person helps to create a harmonic field of energy which seems to amplify the calming effect and also intimately connect you with the other person or people.

Chanting Aum by starting with a deep Ahh sound rooted at the bottom of your torso then moving through O at your heart then finishing with Hmm at your crown creates this amazing movement of energy through your body known as kundalini. Whatever it is it feels great.

Chanting Aum also has this remarkable effect of connecting you with the reality of life being made of energy. Generally we view the world made of matter but when we connect with the sound of Aum we can discover a wonder insight and experience the world being more like a vibration which modern science particularly field theories agrees with.

3. Mindfulness

Mindfulness really is the foundation of all meditation techniques. Learning to pay attention in a non-judgemental way helps to remain calm, being at ease and develop what meditation teacher Alan Wallace calls attentional stability.

This essential practice for sanity and mental stability allows a mindfulness practitioner to not be controlled or bullied around by thoughts and distraction. Instead one can remain calm and focused in a relaxed way which supports intelligence, creativity and the ability to choose to respond with kindness instead of emotional reactivity.

Mindfulness is the basic sanity of being able to be fully present without compulsively reacting which creates the space for self-awareness.

Mindfulness of breathing is especially powerful to be able to relax and let go of control and allow a natural and healing equilibrium to return the body and mind into balance.

There are a number of techniques to focus on the breath like counting the breath, noticing the air pass through the nostrils which is cooler on the in-breath and warmer on the out-breath or noticing the process of breathing in the whole body.

One of the most powerful ways to do all these practices is to not control the breath but just to observe it using any one of these various techniques. The breath is one of the few bodily processes that can be both automatic and consciously controlled. Learning to watch the breath without controlling it in the slightest can be difficult but when you can completely let go of control and just notice how the breath breathes itself it's a beautifully relaxing experience. To gain mastery of mindfulness the Buddhist call the perfection of tranquility.

Not controlling your breath empowers you to truly be the relaxed observer and find that still point within. This empowers the important meditation skill of being able to observe thoughts come and go without being disturbed by them.

Unlike the popular misconception that you have to stop or control your thoughts in meditation learning to simply observe without manipulating them is a natural great freedom of mindfulness which begins with calmly watching your breath.

4. Using Affirmations With The Breath

Another powerful tool for mindfulness and shifting negative self-talk into positive self-talk is using affirmations. By employing your thoughts instead of being bullied around by them you can cultivate confidence, clarity and present centered awareness.

You essentially use your thoughts to keep you more mindful and focused on the present moment. You create a commentary of what you’re doing and include your breath, for example – thinking to yourself “breathing in I’m walking, breathing out I’m present and relaxed.” You can do it for virtually anything you do anywhere you are. The aim is to keep you focused in the situation at hand.

This can be adjusted to develop good qualities using affirmations. For example you can repeat to yourself on your breath – “breathing in I’m completely confident, breathing out I'm relaxed and trust my abilities.” Or it can be used to develop mindfulness during a meditation session by silently thinking to yourself "breathing in, breathing out" as you do so. This is what I always recommend for beginners who have difficulty taming their thoughts to begin with.

Or you could try a purification technique: breathing in saying to yourself “I absorb peace, clarity wholeness, breathing out I release all my fear and stress.” This is a beautiful technique that can have quick results on your state of mind. You could also try “breathing in I’m grateful for everything I have, breathing out I send love back into the world.”

You can also imagine breathing in light, love and abundance and breathing out black smoke representing stress, frustration and resentment. The options are really endless which means you can get creative with the whole process and see what works best for you.

5. Sky Breathing

There are many different techniques that use the breath and I’ll finish on one of my favourites and a method that is designed to help point out and experience the essence of your being which is the highest form of meditation.

The essence of your being is described in Buddhist and Vedic teachings as being unbounded, empty and clear. A common metaphor is calling the essence of your mind ‘sky like’ in nature. Tibetan Buddhists say that awareness and emptiness is one thing. To help move beyond theory and directly experience the essence of your being you can practice sky breathing.

To practice sky breathing start with imagining how your out-breath dissolves into the sky in front of you. You can do this exercise in a small room or in a scenic outdoor area because there's always the sky in front of you. Take a few breaths to just focus on your out-going breath dissolving and becoming one with the space in front of you.

Then on your in-breath imagine the inhaled oxygen dissolves into the inner sky like awareness in the same way. You can imagine the inside of your body as being totally spacious, blue and sky like. The more you can imagine and identify with a sky like inner awareness the better. But don't get too concerned with visualizations; it's more about sensing these experiences than vivid imagery.

As you continue with sky breathing your inner world starts to feel spacious, open and clear like the sky. Eventually you get the sense that the outer sky and inner sky are one and all boundaries dissolve to reveal the mystic experience of non-dual awareness.

If you would like some more guidance to practice different types of breath-work you can check out my online breath-work course - HERE

Written by Chad Foreman

Why Moving Closer To Fear Is The Path To Freedom And Well Being

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:20:47 GMT

Teachings from the Buddhist Path and Contemporary Psychotherapy

The problem with fear is that we tend to bury it, run from it, ignore it or collapse into it. Whilst these strategies can work for a while to keep fear at bay, eventually it catches up with us. Most of these mechanisms are learnt behaviours and designed to ensure that fear does not expose the underlying vulnerability. To complicate matters, the judgement of fear often adds further layers of complexity. As Psychologist and Buddhist Teacher Tara Brach points out “Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness”.

Unexplored fear can isolate and separate us from life and from support

There are typically two default mechanisms humans use to manage fear. On one end of the spectrum is the avoidant strategy. Here, fear is pushed away, hidden, ignored and suppressed. In our western culture, we have become so acutely accustomed to a myriad of numbing behaviours. These are designed to avoid feeling any discomfort, particularly the intensity of fear and pain. Drugs, alcohol, work, excessive busyness, social media and sex are the usual suspects here. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a collapse and spiraling into the deep pit of fear, allowing it to consume and carry us through its dark and stormy seas. In other words, we over identify and fuse with fear, rather than seeing it as a difficult passing emotion.

In both scenarios, the very thing that fear needs is withheld. It appears that what fear requires most is acceptance and empathy. Acceptance offers us the freedom we ultimately seek. The first noble truth in Buddhist teaching is that life is suffering. When we come to accept this, the struggle subsides.

So how do we break these painful cycles of fear, shame and unworthiness?

Acknowledging our own suffering and cultivating empathy towards ourselves is the antidote to our pain according to Psychologist Tara Brach. Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön takes this approach further and encourages us to adopt a strategy that embraces the Warrior within. This paradoxical approach asks us to step in to the very centre of the pain with an attitude of bravery and compassion towards our suffering self. She notes that “Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us”. It is a method that incorporates bravery to face what terrifies us whilst at the same time holding ourselves in deep and sincere loving kindness and compassion. “Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart” advises Chögyam Trungpa, the Tibetan Buddhist Master.

Ancient wisdom traditions offer us the skills to move towards what we often avoid

In the ancient Buddhist wisdom tradition, it is taught that our emotions are not the problem, rather, it is our relationship to our emotions that makes them problematic and intensifies our suffering. (This view is echoed in many contemporary Psycho-therapeutic approaches such as Gestalt and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)). In this approach, a middle path is offered as a more skilful means in relating to our feelings of fear. On this path, the emphasis is on finding the balance within the extremes of avoidance and over identification. Pema Chödrön refers to this as “holding our seat” in the heart of the difficulty.

Healing is “to turn towards that which is injured” according to Buddhist Teacher and writer, Jack Kornfield. “The invitation of healing, is to feel this great energy of repair and life and let it move through us” he adds.

What is essential in such an approach is to move closer to the core of ourselves – our vulnerability. The contemporary poet David White writes extensively on the power of embracing our vulnerability to overcome our deepest suffering. “Vulnerability” he offers “is the underlying, ever present and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature.”

Psychotherapy is a powerful companion to Buddhist wisdom

Much like in the Buddhist teachings, calling in the spirit of courage and self-compassion serves as a powerful resource in the tender work of healing our wounds. In addition, Psychotherapy utilises the power of the therapeutic relationship to generate what is often referred in therapy as an ‘emotionally corrective experience’. Through ‘Therapeutic Presence’, clients experience the healing shift of being truly witnessed and held in compassion as they bravely face their own fears and shadows.

Assisting clients to engage more skillfully and compassionately with their inner emotional world is at the heart of the tender work that I offer in my practice. This involves deconstructing and relearning what may be a lifetime of internalised ‘unhelpful messages’ from parents, caregivers, teachers and society about fear. Males in particular, tend to be socialised to experience being shut down, shunned and dismissed for experiencing fear. A common coping mechanism is to adapt by burying fear or transferring it into anger. The collateral damage here is that feelings of shame tend to arise along with fear and vulnerability. Shame, after all is a powerful inhibitor.

Your conditioning can be reversed and rewired in the safety of the therapeutic relationship

Here, the therapist can “hold space” for the difficult feelings of fear and shame in a compassionate and non-judgemental manner. An essential exchange occurs when a caregiver or therapist can do this. It is referred to as “being with” in Attachment Theory and is a critical interpersonal communication that rewires the brain in the direction of self-care and self-acceptance.

An additional strategy to calm or regulate fear is to identify and name the feeling. “Name it to tame it”, as Psychiatrist Dan Siegel points out, reduces the intensity of the feelings through a clever system in our brain circuitry that switches off the stress brain. Dan Siegel also highlights the importance of story-telling as a way to organise our feelings and make sense of them. Psychotherapy offers another useful strategy where clients author a healing story for themselves using a creative process such as the use of symbols.

In this process, the picture (the current experience) as it stands is created by clients. It offers an opportunity to bear witness to and observe what is often an internal and hidden process. The client is then encouraged to create a healing picture that is connected with support. In this process clients are empowered by finding their own creative solutions. Pathways (both literally and as well as neurologically) to resources are created where order and structure replaces chaos and fragmentation.

A case example: The story of Jessica

The client Jessica, participating in this process chose a rock that represented fear and a bag representing shame to hide the fear. The dolls were potential support for the fear but were not aware of the need of support given it was hidden. The overriding experience was shame, suffering, isolation and disconnection. In the healing picture, the rock was placed on the bag which now provided a nest and although it felt exposed and vulnerable, it was able to be seen and heard.

T he support was now able to access fear in its raw form and move closer for contact, comfort and reassurance. In this way, Jessica was able to create the “nest of safety” that she came to Therapy to find. The insights gleaned from this process were potent for her as she came to understand the need for her to connect with her own vulnerability in a kind and non – judgemental attitude. Only then can external support be accessed without the burden of shame. This realisation allowed a deep and embodied sense of safety, release and freedom for Jessica.

Written by Sabine Schroeder

Original article @ Empatherapies
Sabine is a Counsellor, Psychotherapist and Founder of Empatherapies. Her therapeutic style draws on her studies in Psychology, various Psychotherapy Training and Eastern Wellness traditions such as Buddhism and Yoga. Sabine believes this path has chosen her and being a Psychotherapist is her life’s work. "It is an honour to assist clients in their healing journeys." - learn more and book HERE

Let Thoughts Go & Live In The Flow

oskaphoenix@gmail.com (Oska Phoenix) — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 05:27:57 GMT

Often in life we are faced with negative experiences, triggering a stressful response in the body. No matter how hard we try to maintain our level of happiness, there will always be someone or some event that will test our patience, trying to penetrate our peaceful state.

However, you hold the power, the choice is yours; whether you fight or flow. Everything outside of you has no power to influence your inner state-of-being without your reaction or resistance.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice. The ancient masters, teach us that having a non-attached attitude towards all experiences and events in life will help create a stress-free life.

Thoughts are actually not the problem it's being attached to them which is believing in them that causes suffering. As one Zen master says "let thoughts come and go just don't invite them in for tea."

Experiences that are out of your control will always take their natural course, so stressing about them or 'over-thinking' them won’t do you any good. As Buddhist master Shantideva said “if you can solve a problem why worry? and if you can’t solve a problem why worry?”

Maintain a balanced mind by observing experiences from a place of mindfulness and non-attachment – which means there is no emotional investment, thus no emotional reaction. This will maintain harmony between your mind and body and help access the flow state.

Once you can gain some space from your thoughts with mindfulness there is a flow to life, a way of energy moving through you that doesn’t become stuck and an access to your natural love and intuition which can guide you instead of being led around by your fears and judgments.

A Story of a Farmer Going With the Flow

A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbours exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbours shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbours cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbours shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Life is transient, in a constant flow of change, there is no room for fixed judgments, for nothing is truly black or white. What seems to be a bad experience now, later can be a blessing.

Life will happen as it happens outside of you, but it is your choice to bring the energy from the outside into your field of consciousness. There will be moments where you will be pulled into experiences, feeling the gravity of certain events or people, but it is wise to always look at it from a higher perspective; understanding you can feel the emotions without getting stuck to them. This is the essence of mindfulness meditation.

The ego will always create drama in the mind, a viscous cycle of constructing a story and then becoming a victim of your made-up character’s fate. This will consume your energy and limit and narrow your consciousness.

This is where your meditation practice kicks in, shifting you from a state of thought-identification to thought-observation. Resting back into your true nature of open awareness. Once you start to calmly observe, letting the drama play out in the mind, without believing in your thoughts and stories they will dissipate, and equilibrium will be restored. Eventually your thoughts will have no power over you at all.

Meditation then is not to control your thoughts it’s to stop letting them control you.

1. Give your unwanted items to others

You can’t take it with you when you gone, so let it go; if you don't use it. Especially if items are associated with past memories, removing items associated with past memories frees you and allows you to stop living in the past. As a Buddhist says: “As soon as I let something go, I create space and experience joy; As soon as I give things away, I find a joy not found in keeping them”.

2. Smile and be grateful

No matter what life throws at you, always remember to smile and count your blessings. Each day is full of endless possibilities. Start it with a smile and remembering three things that you are grateful for. Be kind to yourself and remember the world needs more smiles.

3. Immerse yourself in every moment

Set a reminder to practice embracing - the sights, the sounds, the smells, the emotions, the highs and lows of life in each moment - being mindful of the gift of this present moment. Your mindfulness practice will turn into a habit and before you know it, you will be more present in all your experiences.

4. Forgive more

As Buddha said “holding onto anger is like holding onto a hot coal with the intention to throw it at someone else, however you only end up burning yourself”. Don't let the past be a prison sentence, liberate the shackles from stressful memories through forgiveness. Let go and choose to be present in the moment instead. Forgiveness is not for others it’s actually for your peace of mind and regain your flow.

5. Remember to breathe deeply

Breathing is the perfect example of going with the flow. When we are stressed or anxious our breathing becomes shallow or we even unconsciously hold our breath. By breathing deeply we relax the nervous system activating the relaxation response and we come back to the flow of the present moment.

6. Stop worrying

You can rock on the “chair of worry” all you want but it won’t get you anywhere. You cannot fully appreciate today if you worry too much about tomorrow. Redirect your mental energy and focus into the flow of the moment. When you can find peace and harmony through mindfulness the ups and downs of life are less important.

7. Learn to love everything

Love is the key and actually includes all the other tips. The openness and non-resistance of love are the lubricants that truly allow the ease of the flow state to manifest. One Zen master even suggests you can enjoy your problems. With the right amount of mindfulness you can actually become calm enough to engage in life in a joyful and loving way. Without judgments or fear love is actually the essence of the flow experience. As the great mystic Rumi says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Written by Oska Phoenix

Going Beyond Being Stuck In Mindfulness

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 02:57:25 GMT

Recently I’ve had a few meditation coaching clients that were essentially stuck in mindfulness and wanted to move forward. The practice they were doing is the most common these days which is a modern mindfulness practice of paying attention with bare attention to the present moment during the day and watching your breath or sensations in the body with a similar attention in meditation. Also co-incidentally I had a conversation with a close friend last week who is a mindfulness teacher and she told me her mindfulness practice was actually stressing her out.

So, I decided to share some broader context of mindfulness from the original sources of Buddhism and how that can help people move beyond being stuck. I hope it’s helpful.

Mindfulness Stuck in Meaninglessness

Firstly I’d like to bring up a distinction between what is being taught as secular mindfulness championed by Jon Kabat-Zinn who gives the definition as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally”. And Buddhist mindfulness which is a translation of the Pali word ‘Sati’ which actually has more of a connotation of remembering or recollecting and is part of a richer complex context of right mindfulness found in the Buddhist eight-fold path.

The modern mindfulness practice of bare awareness of the present moment is ethically or value neutral and herein lies the first issue that Buddhists have with modern mindfulness practice and an area you can get stuck in. Just paying attention to the present moment enables clarity and concentration and is also a ‘circuit breaker’ of usual conditioned responses which gives some space to act more intentionally. But how you act is not prescribed in modern mindfulness it only teaches the first aspect of focus. I wrote more about this in Meditation is Just the Beginning where I outlined how a popular mindfulness based therapy called ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) does include the secondary aspect of commitment to your values and is therefore more of a complete practice.

According to the Dalai Lama the art of happiness is to cultivate positive states of mind like compassion, loving kindness, patience and generosity. Mindfulness in these Buddhist terms means being mindful or remembering to act in ways that will bring happiness to yourself and others. This also includes restraining from harming others which is the essence of ethical behaviour. Alan Wallace, a brilliant Tibetan Buddhist teacher reminds us - “In the Pali Abhidhamma, where mindfulness is listed as a virtuous mental factor, it is not depicted as bare attention, but as a mental factor that clearly distinguishes positive from negative mental states and behaviour.”

Alan Wallace goes on to say “…if we stick to bare attention alone, it can also prevent wholesome thoughts from arising! For example, meditations for the cultivation of the four sublime virtues of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity are all practiced with mindfulness but not bare attention. Bare attention is not a complete practice, and by itself it can be helpful and yet very limiting.”

Buddhist mindfulness includes a discernment of what you’re doing, saying and thinking in the present moment and not just a ‘bare’ attention of it. Therefore my first suggestion, to go beyond being stuck in just bare attention mindfulness is to move into a discerning mindfulness which includes directing your actions and attitudes as a Theravadin monk says “right mindfulness (as described in the Buddhist eight-fold path) is not just a matter of focusing your attention; it’s also a matter of remembering the right attitude: the attitude that comes from right effort—the desire to do things skillfully and to let go of unskillful habits. When you have that attitude in charge, your mindfulness becomes right mindfulness, the kind of mindfulness that brings all the factors of the [spiritual] path together.”

I don’t want to denigrate modern mindfulness completely it does hold an important value in itself and that is creating a calm state of mind. Buddhist might call this neutral but it can be very positive if you’re stressed or anxious and in itself can prevent you from getting angry or violent toward others which seems to h ave an ethical value too. It allows the mind to focus intentionally, be flexible and malleable but that could be used to be calm at work and follow the goals of the company which may or may not be ethical or beneficial to the environment or others. This type of subduing mindfulness has been criticised and called McMindfulness because it is so ethically neutral and can easily be used to make people be well adjusted and focused within profoundly toxic work environments and institutions.

Also, in fairness there has been a shift in modern mindfulness to include loving kindness and is often called heartfulness. This type of mindfulness does include the important value of love toward yourself and others as you acknowledge that your bare attention can include a warmth and presence of kindness which has huge potential for moving you away from being stuck in a robotic self-centred witness of the present moment and toward something truly transformative. Jon Kabat Zinn even says “…if you don’t include a sense of heartfulness with your mindfulness you do not truly understand it.” Perhaps his operational definition of mindfulness using the term ‘bare awareness’ needs to be updated to include this intention to honour the full richness of the practice.

Mindfulness Stuck In Ignorance

Modern mindfulness as performed in meditation is actually closer to a Buddhist practice called ‘shamata’ or ‘samadhi’. This is the refining of attention to be stable and pliable. To be able to focus your non-judgmental awareness on one thing and keep it there without getting distracted. This has enormous value in creating a very calm and peaceful state of mind and body which alleviates stress, anxiety and any number of strong disturbing emotions and also subdues a distracted hyperactive mind. This would seem to be of enormous value in today’s busy world and indeed I believe it is valuable.

However, two thousand five hundred years ago Gautama Buddha declared that people were stuck in this type of mindfulness practice and were not truly liberating themselves from the roots of suffering. Instead they were temporarily pacifying mental and emotional afflictions. He went on n to say that a person needs to develop the wisdom that comprehends the true nature of themselves so they can be fully liberated from the suffering of this world.

This is why discernment or an analytical mind was included in Buddhist mindfulness training which could distinguish that every single aspect of your experience was constantly changing and therefore knowing that there is no fixed permanent self became direct knowledge which did have the power to completely free you from egoic ignorance and its subsequent suffering. This aspect of meditation is called Vipassana and is to be united with the calm abiding of mindfulness meditation to be a complete practice.

I won’t go into this too much, I wrote more about it in my blog on how Mindfulness Leads to Special Insight. I will mention that Buddhist psychology states that discernment is actually an omnipresent mental factor which is a fancy way of saying that discernment is always present in your mind even when you are focusing on one thing. In other words, bare attention is never bare, it nearly always has a quality of subtly distinguishing and perceiving what it’s focusing on. This is an important point. It’s almost impossible to focus on something without the subtle concepts of what it is and what it is not.

Therefore, without this knowledge your mindfulness practice of bare attention can subtly reinforce your concepts of things and can even strengthen your ego. Not only are you stuck but you could be moving in the wrong direction. Transforming this ever present aspect of discernment into deep wisdom aligned with the way things really exist is fundamental to Buddhist mindfulness practice.

Essentially Buddhist use a calm and focused mind not only as an intervention to practice skillful and virtuous actions but also as a tool to penetrate the veils of delusion and develop the wisdom that understand the true nature of reality.

Mindfulness Stuck In Duality

Firstly, before getting too deep, it’s worth mentioning the classic Buddhist mindfulness training is derived from a text called the four foundations of mindfulness. The four foundations are the objects you focus on which are the body, feelings, mind and phenomena. Along with the discernment of these things as being impermanent as discussed above, they are also viewed in an impersonal way without containing a separate self. The Buddha advised to view these foundations “in and of themselves”.

To go deeper the most subtle conception that you perceive when focusing your mindfulness is what’s known as the subject/object duality. The sense that there is something doing the focusing and something entirely separate that you are focused on. The mystic schools in all the wisdom traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Western philosophy have discovered that the world is based on an underlying seamless unity which is expressed as multiplicity. Essentially it means that ultimately you are intimately connected to all things and the experience of being separate is an illusion.

To fully drop all thoughts and really come to a non-conceptual awareness of the present moment it is necessary to eventually even drop the object of meditation. Letting go and expanding awareness so you don’t centralise yourself into a narrow laser beam focus and artificially divide the world into separate parts. An advanced meditation instruction found in Dzogchen is " there is nothing to focus on, yet don't get distracted."

As one Tibetan meditation master warns “don’t mentally split into two when meditating, one part of the mind watching the other like a cat watching a mouse.” This is where people can easily get stuck and it's actually a stressful place to be because it requires a high degree of forced concentration.

Since the great mystics and meditation masters have told us that at our core we are actually one with everything and already perfect in that regard; therefore to let go of duality actually implies to rest naturally in your true nature without any effort at all. I go into this in detail in my blog The 6 Foundations of the Natural State of Meditation.

It’s this great release from the dualistic grasping of the small mind that allows us to move beyond mindfulness and directly experience the ultimate relaxation of the sublime realisation of reality. As the meditation master Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche says “when performing meditation practice one should develop the feeling of opening oneself completely to the whole universe with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind, ridding oneself of all divisions.”

The ultimate mindfulness is totally natural and non-dualistic, it’s more concerned with resting in an open presence than focusing or concentrating. Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche goes on to say “The whole universe is open and unobstructed, everything mutually interpenetrating. Seeing all things nakedly, clear and free from obscurations, there is nothing to attain or realize. The nature of things naturally appears and is naturally present in time-transcending awareness; this is complete openness”.

I have found this type of non dual open presence resting the most serene and profound type of meditation and the culmination of practice. However, I also practice and teach starting with dualistic mindfulness practices watching the breath with a stable attention, deep breathing and heart centredness. I believe ultimately it’s a continuum of practice from effort to effortlessness and the meditation journey is filled with rich discoveries of embracing heartfulness, letting go of ego and many other personal and unique experiences of awareness, energy and being.

I have developed the 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help facilitate that spiritual journey and help guide you to experience for yourself all the aspects and fullness meditation has to offer. To find out more about my program CLICK HERE

Written by Chad Foreman

Five of the Top Misconceptions about Emotional Healing

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 02:50:54 GMT

People like me seemed to be doomed to struggle.

I came from a divorced family. I endured physical suffering when my grades were not the best (like straight-As). I didn't have support in dealing with shame, fear, or sadness.

Yet still, I became a Psychologist, then a Mindfulness Teacher, having a wonderful family and a great life.

But in 2015 and I was feeling.... OVERWHELMED. I've given birth to my daughter and all the emotions that I just threw under the carpet were asking for attention. They have risen seemingly out of nowhere!

I tried to CONTROL them, but nothing really worked. And this is because I had it all backwards! So I started my journey into emotional healing... Long story short, using my psychological background, I distilled some very common misconceptions the blocked me from healing and not only me! Lots of people whom I taught seem to have the same problems and they where stumbling on the same 'FAKE-knowledge' around emotions!

1) I Need To Control My Emotions

CONTROL your emotions. Oh no, FAKE-knowledge!… When we try to control emotions, a lot of energy is involved and emotions are strong! It's like riding an elephant and doing our best to turn it into a mouse! Don't try to control emotions, instead the point is NOT LETTING EMOTIONS CONTROL YOU. This is not just a word game, but actually it changes our relationship with emotions: we can give them space, and in that space we can heal, without them overriding our minds.

2) I Have To Get Rid Of My Bad Emotions

Emotions - even those like anger, fear or sadness - are here with a PURPOSE: To show us what's important for us. So, there is no such thing as 'bad' emotions - only misunderstood emotions or too-intense emotions that feel too much. There is lot of advice around eliminating 'negative' or 'bad' emotions and having only positive emotions - which is not even humanly possible - we are given the gift of feeling a vast array of emotions and use them to learn about ourselves. Indeed, we need to find the right tools to tackle them and to make them space, even if they feel so unpleasant. Sadness can easily fall into depression and worry into anxiety, so getting familiar with their triggers and their ways of manifesting can be extremely helpful.

3) I Need To Be Happy All The Time.

"I'm not sad" , "I need to feel happy" - Oh, I've heard these words so many times. Even from myself. But these words can easily be COVER-UPS or ineffective coping mechanisms. And what do they cover up? Maybe something what's inside that is too intense, and it's so difficult to handle... so we choose to avoid it, deny it or reject it. And yes, in our society, it seems that we need to feel certain emotions, and reject anger, fear, disgust... When we are little children, we might be terrified the boogy-man or night-monsters. Our parents tell us to look and see there is no such thing, but this doesn't work for a child. So what are your boogy-emotions? The ones we are afraid to really see?

4) I'll Be Happy When .....

I would be happy, if only... fill in the dots: get a new job, earn more money, be in a new relationship, etc. Happiness seems to come from the our conditons But actually, what modern psychology shows is something that monks knew for thousands of years: it's not the external factors that shape our emotions, but the way we perceive and handle the conditions that is the biggest influence on our own well-being.

5) I have To Be Calm All The Time

Due to the huge influence of the so called 'wellness industry' a myth has emerged that emotional healing means being CALM and "ZEN" all the time - and this is so far away from reality. Feeling calm is an emotion per se. And feeling sadness or joy is also an emotion. And we can learn a way of really connecting with their unique flavours because emotions make us humans. We are so lucky to be able to feel, yet sometimes they just spill out from our soul, from our heart... And it's not our fault, actually our brain was created in this way - to be extra-vigillent to any kind of real or perceived danger and to make us act. So we need to re-train our brain , giving ourselves the gift of connecting the brain with our heart, by making space for our emotions and learning to feel them - yes, to really FEEL whatever is there to feel, without letting them control us.

Because when you heal something, a new space is created into your soul and a new energy can emerge. And the path to emotional healing is easier when:

You have the top psychological tools to mindfully deal with Emotional pain
You understand the basic childhood situations that make emotions feel so difficult to handle
You learn and practice a clear way to navigate difficult and painful emotions
You are adding Mindfulness in relationships, finding your true values and emotional wellbeing
You stop feeling overwhelmed by emotions - or feeling numbness! - in face of difficulty
You connect with a deeper essence of you for emotional healing, even in difficult moments

Written by Adriana Spataru

ADRIANA Spataru is a Psychologist since 2006, Mindfulness MBSR & MBI Teacher, Mindful Coach, Mindful Educator, and the proud Founder of Mindful Psychology. She has hundreds of hours invested in her professional development: Mindfulness Teacher diploma in MBI (Mindfulness-based interventions) and MBSR (Mindfulness based Stress Reduction) - considered "The Golden Standard" in Mindfulness; she is also a Mindful Coach, Mindful Educator, has extensive training in CFT (Compassion Focused Therapy), she is a Trained Professional in Neuroplasticity (Rick Hanson) and also trained with Google's Search Inside Yourself Leadership Program - the most successful training at Google - Find out more and connect with Adriana at Mindful Psychology HERE

Meditation, Consciousness and Time

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:11:45 GMT

The aim of this article is to explore meditation, consciousness and reality offering you insights, perspectives and hopefully a deeper sense of your true self.

The thought provoking subjects chosen for this article might even challenge your mental position on the nature of reality — my aim is never to say it’s this way or that way, rather just present quality content for deep contemplation. Ultimately, I want you to use your intuition to find your own truth.

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between human consciousness and physical reality is a mysterious connection that quantum physics has been unravelling since early last century. Previously it was thought that a ‘Newtonian’ material universe was the foundation of reality. This model became redundant when scientists began to recognise that everything in the universe is made out of energy and intimately related to consciousness.

The model from quantum physics teaches us that energy and consciousness are interdependent, commingled together in a cosmic dance. Similar to the ancient sages who told us that your mind and the world are not separate things.

Physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy, constantly spinning and vibrating — human consciousness can influence the vibration, expression, even the re-structuring of atoms.

“ The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. To understand the true nature of the universe, one must think it terms of energy, frequency and vibration. ”

~ Nikola Tesla

The world of Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg, amongst others teach us that we live in an conscious universe that has a very sophisticated and intelligent force governing its appearance. As they have said:

“ All matter originates and exists only by a virtue of a force…We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter ” ~ Max Planck

“ Not only is the universe stranger that we think, it is stranger then we can think ” ~ Werner Heisenberg

Happiness is Found in the Present Moment

If you believe material objects or money will bring you happiness, then your happiness is impermanent, as it is bound by change.The external world cannot bring you true happiness, it is only a temporary experience. Life moves through you, like a river moving through a stream; trying to hold onto its flow is like swimming against a current and a primary reason why we suffer.

Your real inner self is the source of true happiness which is always to be found in the present moment. It's not bound by change, nothing is coming or going, a divine space that is unchangeable. Experiences will move through you, thats is the flow of life, however true joy is discovered in the presence of your Inner-Self, in the now, not in the past or future. This is an extremely important point as Dudjom Rinpoche a great Buddhist master says: "Since pure awareness of nowness is real Enlightenment, in openness and contentment I found the Truth in my heart."

In reality there is only one continuous moment to be experienced. Peace, love and fulfilment can only ever be found in the reality of the present moment, that's why meditation is so important: to help stop getting distracted by the mind's projections into the past and future and be able to look deeply into the reality of the present moment and discover the good qualites of your true self.

Time is an Illusion

The future moment only exists as an idea. Think about it? In reality you are here and now, your body is always anchored in the present moment, through the breath — the body can only experience the present moment; unlike the mind which can time travel with its imagination.

“Time is a human perception because: The human body. YOUR human body is in all three of the "times"; past present and future. Look at a clock. The person you are now, in the present, in one minute will be in the past. That same person right now is one minute in the future in the future. let me rephrase that: In one minute's time the you that you are now will be in the past. The future you will become the present you and then almost instantly the past you. Therefore, it is the MIND, not the body, can only be in one time at once, the present. It is the mind, or the conscious, or perception that keeps us seeing things in the present. Nothing else, stones, cars, even our own bodies are in only one time at once. therefore, it is a perception, not a force or dimension…”

The past is gone. . .but where is it?

With each breath the past slips away, forming a memory. The present moment is the only point you can access in reality, everything is happening now, in this very moment.

Key points:

• Past and future are only mental constructs.

• Time is a convenient measurement of constantly flowing conditions.

• The only place time exists is in your mind.

• There is only one moment which is like a field stretched out into eternity.

• All experiences happen in the same eternal now moment.

You were born in the now moment, you are reading these words in the now moment, when you take your last breath it will be the now moment. It’s never not now.

By centering your attention on the breath in the present moment you can detach from thoughts and experience for yourself the reality of the one eternal moment. When you can maintain a calm focus; thoughts will not be able to distract you and the space will open up to realise your true-Self gaining access to profound insights about the nature of reality.

“When the mind is still, the whole universe surrenders." ~ Lao Tzu

"When you transcend your thinking mind in the realization of your own pure, timeless, ever-present Awareness, then the illusion of time completely collapses, and you become utterly free of the conditioned cycle of time, change, impermanence, and suffering." ~ Buddhist teaching

You Are the Sky

You are the great blue sky,

The world of time and change are just clouds passing by,

Clouds appear,

Clouds disappear,

But the great blue sky remains the same,

Clouds cannot exist independently without the great blue sky, but the great blue sky can exist independently without clouds.

Are you the cloud?

Or are you the great blue sky?

The present moment is the motionless great blue sky,

Do not try and grasp it with your intellect, it is beyond your intellect (mind).

You must feel it with your heart.

Feel it from deep within your being - your presence.

Living in the Present Moment

Question: What is the analytical mind?

Answer: The mind that:

• Analyses

• Judges

• Observes

• Remembers

• Compares

• Rationalises

• Organizes

The aim of meditation is to use focussed attention to go beyond the analytical mind to experience the simplicity of the present moment with pure awareness.

ATTENTION is an element to your being that you have control over.

What exactly is attention?

Psychological answer: Concentrated awareness

Esoteric answer: A stream line of consciousness, focused energy.

Meditation for cultivating a stable attention:

STEP 1 )

Sit still and take control over your focus and channel your attention inside the body.

STEP2)

Just like you are watching a television screen, start to observe your thoughts and feelings with detachment and calm.

STEP3)

Focus on the breath and feel the body, feel every muscle and cell in the body with your awareness. The magic is in the pure feeling and direct experience of your inner world without judging or labeling.

“The whole purpose of meditation is to move our consciousness beyond the analytical mind and into deeper levels of consciousness. ” ~ Joe Dispenza

IN MEDITATION WE MOVE FROM :

• Distraction to clarity,

• Fear to love,

• Somebody and someone to being no body and no one,

• Material to the spiritual,

• Some place to being no place,

• Being in time to being in no time,

• & from believing that the outer world is reality accessed through the senses, to knowing that consciousness is reality beyond the senses.

MEDITATION TAKES US FROM :

• Survival to creation

• Separation to connection

• Imbalance to balance

• Emergency mode to growth-and-repair mode

• The limiting emotion of fear, anger, and sadness to the expansive emotions of joy, freedom, and love

• Clinging to the known to embracing the unknown

Stoping thinking analytically and vacate the reason, logic, intellectualising forecasting, predicting, and rationalising at least temporarily AND ENTER . . .THE PRESENT MOMENT !!

Being mindful and aware of the present moment for a sustained duration of time creates a very healing state in the body. Feel the aliveness and start to enjoy staying in that space.

The Story of the Beggar

A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for thirty years. One day a stranger walked by.

“Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar.

“I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you’re sitting on?”

“Nothing ” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I’ve been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.”

“Ever look inside?,” asked the stranger.

“No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point, there’s nothing in there.”

“Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger.

The beggar, reluctantly, managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.

I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself. ~ Eckhart Tolle from THE POWER OF NOW

Enlightenment Trap:

Enlightenment is not something you grasp - “I got it” or something you achieve - “I’m finally here”. Its an ever deepening ongoing process, more like a marriage, between awareness and the present moment. See more about the five main ego traps of meditation HERE

It is the fate for many seekers to try and find enlightenment outside themselves, always looking for a higher purpose or means to feel more connected to life. Searching outside of yourself to find the answers that dwell inside your own being is a never ending cycle, that leads to perpetual suffering.

This sort of thinking separates you from the truth and divinity within. Ancient teachings and quantum physics teaches us that the universe is inside you.

“The story of the Universe is inside every atom in your body, each and every one. And after 13.7 billion years, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them have come together, and that’s you. The Universe is inside of you, as surely as you’re inside the Universe.” ~ Science Blog

The person and place you seek from is not real rather it’s a projection or a mental construct that is created by the mind.

We tend to seek enlightenment from a mental position - a system of thought, we believe will bring us a level of peace and happiness. This system of thought or concept is merely a projection, the person who is seeking enlightenment does not truly exist, this makes the ground of the ego very unstable. The mind or intellect cannot truly experience enlightenment.

The feeling of enlightenment is experienced by the true-Self. Only B eing can feel enlightened, in essence enlightenment is already within us, all we have to do is learn to expose our awareness to this beautiful state-of-being.

There is no person to be enlightened, all thinking and concepts are witnessed by the ‘all seeing eye’ - your true self. Understand this truth and you will understand life.

Written by Oska Phoenix

Awakening From The Trance of Social Media

thewayofmeditation@gmail.com (Chad Foreman) — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 02:59:29 GMT

Recently my Facebook account was hacked with the express purpose of taking control of our Facebook page The Way of Meditation. Through my account they made themselves admins of the page and then got my personal account disabled by posting major violations to Facebook’s community standards. Boom, they then had control of our Facebook page and posted weird viral videos every hour which they monetized through ads. In the ten days they had control of our account they accrued $600 in revenue. It seems this is a profitable scam.

After a week of begging Facebook we finally got The Way of Meditation page back and myself and a small team will continue to post inspirational wisdom quotes, images and articles daily. However, to this day I have still not recovered my personal account which was disabled due to posts the hackers made.

I’ve been on Facebook since 2009, had nearly five thousand friends and ten thousand followers. It’s been like my virtual house burnt down and destroyed all my pictures, memories and history from Facebook, I cannot see or recover anything from my account. I’m not sure if this is superficial or not but I experienced a small amount of grief for my loss. However, I didn't get angry or upset, instead I was surprised that I actually felt relief.

I did try to use Facebook wisely. I even wrote an article about how to use social media as a spiritual practice. I ran my own Meditation group, I followed inspirational Zen, meditation and Buddhist teachers and I engaged in discussions about meditation and spirituality.

However, following people easily turned into jealousy, discussions became heated debates and arguments and the endless scrolling become mind numbingly distracting. It didn’t take much investigation to find research that shows Facebook has a negative impact on your mental health .

Social media addiction is a real thing and has been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It can lead to depression, feelings of inadequacy and destroy your attention span. Psychologists have even created a Social Media Disorder Scale ; which is a 9-question survey designed to distinguish healthy and unhealthy social media use.

During the past year, have you ...

1) …regularly found that you can't think of anything else but the moment that you will be able to use social media again?

2) …regularly felt dissatisfied because you wanted to spend more time on social media?

3) …often felt bad when you could not use social media?

4) …tried to spend less time on social media, but failed?

5) …regularly neglected other activities (e.g. hobbies, sport) because you wanted to use social media?

6) …regularly had arguments with others because of your social media use?

7) …regularly lied to your parents or friends about the amount of time you spend on social media?

8) …often used social media to escape from negative feelings?

9) …had serious conflict with your parents, brother(s) or sister(s) because of your social media use?

If you answered "yes" to five or more of these items, you meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis of a "disordered social media user."

It all depends on how you use social media and if you asked me a few weeks ago I would have denied having any problems with it but it’s my feelings of relief and freedom now it’s over that lead me to believe it was a problem for me.

Facebook could easily be called Egobook.

People mostly post projections of themselves in the best light and create images of happiness and joy that are really misrepresentations of their real lives. I’ve wanted to inspire people to meditate and grow and show the best parts of myself but it’s definitely not the whole picture. My life is not as perfect as my Facebook made out.

Not to mention Facebook is designed to be addictive and engage you for as long as possible. In 2019 Facebook experimented in Australia hiding all likes on posts to help users not be as addicted. I remember the few weeks this happened and it was definitely a different experience posting things without being able to see people’s likes. The experiment didn’t last long and it's back to showing all the likes again.

Researchers say: "Despite the emotional toll, more than 70 percent of users check Facebook daily. So why on earth do people keep coming back for more if Facebook causes them to be sad? Researchers say it stems from a psychological term called affective forecasting. Studies confirm that people predict Facebook is going to make them feel better. They assume--albeit incorrectly--that 20 minutes of Facebook activity will boost their mood. They don't recognize that it's actually robbing them of joy."

I feel like I’ve awakened from a trance. I went for a hike in the national state forest the other day and I realised I usually have my phone/camera with me and share pictures on Facebook. That seems harmless enough, but I experienced a different quality of experience by just walking, being present to nature and my wife instead of the usual preoccupation of looking for a good photo spot and striking a full lotus pose for the classic meditation pic. Instead I was just walking in nature being present to its beauty and not caring about the photo opportunity or how any of this will look on my Facebook. I returned to the simplicity of the moment and being free from the grip of Facebook definitely helped.

It seems Facebook had infiltrated my consciousness so much it contributed to framing my reality in much the same way the ego frames everything from its perspective. Having done lots of inner work to become aware of my ego with its prejudices, beliefs and stories I could see that somehow Facebook had coloured my perspective in a similar process.

Before Facebook mountains were just mountains, then Facebook came along and mountains were photo opportunities, now Facebook is over for me mountains are just mountains again.

Instead of reading random things from my Facebook newsfeed I’m actually reading books again, instead of relying on inspirational memes I’m opening the Tao Te Ching, tales of Zen masters or classic Buddhist teachings from my bookshelf. I’m being much more intentional with what I’m reading. I feel my ongoing education and learning is much more directed and focussed doing it this way. I’m also spending more time developing meditation courses, writing blogs and even throwing in an extra meditation session or two for myself often experimenting with different techniques.

I also don’t have Messenger anymore because it was connected to my disabled Facebook account and I’m loving not being ‘on call’ for everyone. Email is great. There’s less urgency and even though I respond daily to emails I don’t feel as compelled to respond immediately like on Messenger.

I replaced the Facebook app icon from my phone with Duolingo , which is a language learning app. Every time I compulsively looked at my phone to open Facebook I saw the Duolingo icon and would take a German lesson instead. I figure if I put as much time into learning a new language as I did scrolling on Facebook I will be able to speak German in six months.

One study found that not being on Facebook meant being less aware of political current affairs – GOOD! - I’m tired of the polarization effect of political views – it truly divides people, I’m sick of being acutely aware of how corrupt laws and politicians are or how our leaders are destroying our freedoms etc. It really is not healthy to consume so much political discourse which is mostly promotional propaganda or demonizing negative smears. There’s rarely a reasonable middle ground on Facebook but that’s probably the case for most media these days.

Ok, so I know it might seem I’m social media bashing, but I wanted to share my experience of leaving Facebook, well being kicked off really and how it’s had a positive influence on my life. Also I wanted people who did follow me on Facebook to know I didn't block you I'm just not there anymore.

My essential meditation teaching is returning to the simplicity of the moment with mindfulness, openness and joy. I feel my life has become simpler again and focussed on positive things. The trance of Facebook has lifted, I’ve regained that portion of my brain and attention that was bound by Facebook.

I also teach that meditation is just the beginning . It’s from a clear space of mindfulness that we can see clearly what helps us to grow and what holds us back, what helps to nourish our mind and body and what depletes it. Your diet is not just what you consume as food but also what you consume as media. Making healthy choices is the best option in life but not always the easiest. For me at least, getting off Facebook has been a move in a positive direction.

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

Why Breathwork Is So Powerful And How To Do It

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 03:25:14 GMT

Introduction to Breathwork

There is new movement in our conscious community called “Breathwork”. It seems more and more teachers, studios and alternative platforms are promoting the benefits of breathwork.

How often are you breathing? I mean, actually breathing. Deep, mindful, belly breaths that truly oxygenate your entire being?

In fact, many of us go about our busy schedules and it’s almost as if we don’t have time to truly, deeply, BREATHE!

Once you do tap into harnessing the power of your breath, the results can be breathtakingly awakening.

Breathwork is an active breathing technique that retrains our breathing patterns into an open, healthy breath. By focusing on the mindbody connection, we start to improve our health on all levels:

Benefits of Breathwork

Physical

• Increases oxygenation throughout the body

• Relieves tension and detoxify

• Stimulates circulation

• Improves respiratory capacity

• We increase our energy

• Boost our immune system

• Helps relieve anxiety

• Helps manage unsettled feelings

• Detoxify our cells

• More control over feelings of anger

• Improve sleep

• Improves our overall well-being

Emotional

• Reduces worry, stress and anxiety

• Enhances the awareness of self-sabotaging patterns

• Relieves depressive and negative emotions

• Improves mental and emotional clarity

• Increases creativity

• Improves self-esteem

• Experience more peace, joy and compassion

Spiritual

• Allows deeper meditation and connection to your true self

• Direct access to deeper levels of relaxation

• Promotes greater sense of presence

• Experience greater awareness and love

• Strengthens your connection with Spirit

Did you know?

The monkey mind can be effectively re-trained through breathwork to improve focus and experience life from an awakened perspective.

One of the quickest ways to determine if someone is healthy is to examine their breathing pattern. If the breath is slow or shallow, rapid or irregular, you know that something is off. Shallow breathing can trigger of the stress response, keeping your body in a state of “emergency”.

IMPORTANT POINTS:

• Shallow rapid breaths creates anxious feelings, stressing the body.

• Long deep breaths help us feel calm, centred, grounded and energised.

How we breathe often indicates how we feel. The reason for this is because deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which takes us out of fight or flight (the sympathetic nervous system).

• Activating parasympathetic nervous system:

• Slows down your heart rate

• Lowers your blood pressure,

• Helps create deep feeling of calmness

• Reducing your overall stress and anxiety.

We now know that breath positively affects the nervous system but it actually goes beyond the nervous system.

Changing your breath literally changes your brainwaves! Neuroscientists have made a direct correlation between an increase of alpha brain waves - a relaxed creative state associated with being in “the zone”.

Breathwork is an effective way to shift your brainwaves from beta to alpha and even theta, thereby decreasing negative thought patterns, stress and depression levels.

DIFFERENT TYPE OF BRAIN WAVE STATES:

Gamma Waves: Heightened perception and consciousness

Beta Waves: Most of us are spend our walking days in beta, where we’re attentive, thinking, making decisions, problem solving . But in beta we can also feel agitated, stressed, tense, hyper alert, afraid or obsessive.

Alpha Waves: This is when we are relaxed, reflective and aware and in the present moment.

Theta Waves: This is an even more relaxed state where we are open, intuitive, and receptive and can have deep insights or aha movements beyond our normal conscious awareness. This can occur in breathwork, deep meditation or in sleep.

Delta Waves: Our slowest brain waves which occur mostly in deep dreamless sleep where we lose awareness of our body.

"Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.
Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Four Different Types of Breathwork

There are many different types breathwork technique. Four of the most popular approaches today are the Wim Hof Method, Holotropic Breathing, Box Breathing and Soma Breathing.

Lets explore these techniques, what they’re about, what you can expect, and how you can practice them safely and successfully.

Wim Hof is considered by some to be an adventurer, an endurance athlete, and a Dutch philosopher.

Hof has an uncanny ability to endure cold temperatures in extreme circumstances. He developed this ability through extensive training that allows him to control his breathing, heart rate, and blood circulation. Hof believes that ordinary people can control their bodies to accomplish difficult feats, and he teaches these techniques through online and in-person classes.

He developed the Wim Hof Method to teach people how to learn to control their bodies to achieve exceptional goals.

Breathwork is the art and science of applying breath awareness exercises and conscious breathing techniques as a bridge, a force, and a tool for health, growth, and change—in spirit, mind, and body.

1. Get comfortable

Find a comfortable place to do your breathing exercises where you won’t be disturbed. You can sit or lie on your back, but do not do this exercise whilst driving or standing up.

2. 30-40 power breaths

Once you’re comfortable, you can start to breathe in and out 30 times. This is essentially deep breathing at a steady pace in and out through the mouth. Inhale fully but don’t exhale all the way out. As you inhale you should feel your belly rise and on the exhale, you should feel your belly fall. It may feel a bit like you are hyperventilating, but you are in control. Like me, you may also feel a tingling or lightheaded sensation throughout your whole body, when you do this for the first time. This is perfectly normal.

3. Hold your breath

After doing 30-40 Wim Hof power breaths, empty your lungs of air and retain the breath for as long as you can without force. During the retention, I found it relaxing to close my eyes and focus on the space between my eyes. Just remember to set a stopwatch if you’re interested in recording your results. You might want to see how you progress with the breath retentions if you plan to do this regularly over a set period of time.

4. Breathe in for 10 seconds

After the breath retention, take a deep breath in and hold it for a further 10-15 seconds, before exhaling.

5. Repeat steps 1-4

Repeat the whole process for another three rounds. Remember to record your times down, so you can track your progression.

6. Meditate after 3 rounds of power breathing

After the power breaths, you can then go into your regular practise of meditation or meditate for five minutes if you’re a complete beginner by closing your eyes, bringing your awareness to your breath and focusing on the space between your eyes.

Holotropic Breathwork

There is not a “proper” way to do holotropic breathing other than the instruction to “breathe deeper and faster than normal” so this is not a “guided” breathwork experience except in a very general sense.

The important thing is to move more air through your system than you normally do. After 15 or 20 minutes, your body will normally find its own rhythm and you will generally no longer have to think about it. However, for people who want additional guidance, prior participants have found the following suggestions helpful when they start the holotropic breathing session.

1. Full deep breaths – make each breath full and deep, breathing into the “bottom” of your lungs so that when you breathe in, your belly should move out a bit (i.e. “diaphragm breathing”).

2. Continuous - “circular” breathing – the breathing in such a way where there is no gaps in the breath..i.e. not holding your breath at any point. When your lungs are almost full, you turn the breath around and start exhaling. When your lungs are empty, you immediately turn the breath around and start inhaling. This creates a breath pattern whereby you are always breathing in or breathing out, creating a circle of breath.

3. Faster than normal – You also want to breathe a bit faster than you normally would. However, you do not want to breathe so fast that you create tension in your body…your body, and especially your lungs, should be relaxed, without straining, so that the breath can be maintained for a long period of time without tiring yourself out.

4. Mouth vs Nose Breathing – It is easier to move air quickly through the mouth and mouth breathing tends to be more supportive of emotional release so most people find that breathing in and out through the mouth supports their process better than nose breathing. However, some people find that mouth breathing is uncomfortable for them in which case nose breathing is fine also.

But, again, after 15 or 20 minutes, everyone’s body will generally find their own rhythm and way of breathing. There are as many breathing styles as there are breathers.

“Deep breathing calms the body, clears the mind and opens the heart.”

— Chad Foreman

Box Breathing

Box breathing is a powerful, yet simple, relaxation technique that aims to return breathing to its normal rhythm. This breathing exercise can help to clear the mind, relax the body, and improve focus.

The technique is also known as “resetting your breath” or four-square breathing. It is easy to do, quick to learn, and can be a highly effective technique for people in stressful situations.

People with high-stress jobs, such as soldiers and police officers, often use box breathing when their bodies are in fight-or-flight mode. This technique is also relevant for anyone interested in re-centering themselves or improving their concentration.

Box breathing is a simple technique that a person can do anywhere, including at a work desk or in a cafe. Before starting, people should sit with their back supported in a comfortable chair and their feet on the floor.

It's essentially: inbreath 4 seconds - hold for 4 seconds - outbreath for 4 seconds - hold for 4 seconds repeat until calm.

Close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose while counting to four slowly. Feel the air enter your lungs.
Hold your breath inside while counting slowly to four. Try not to clamp your mouth or nose shut. Simply avoid inhaling or exhaling for 4 seconds.
Begin to slowly exhale for 4 seconds.
Repeat steps 1 to 3 at least three times. Ideally, repeat the three steps for 4 minutes, or until calm returns.

Soma Breath

So while SOMA Breath does fit into the category of breathwork, SOMA Breath also fits into the category of Pranayama. But it still doesn’t totally fit into either category.

SOMA Breath is a complete holistic system of breathwork techniques. There is no one size fits all, and SOMA takes into account the fact that every single person is unique and may require different breathing techniques depending on their needs (especially if health related or medical).

SOMA breath incorporates many different technologies including all the ones in the WHM. The WHM mainly works through intermittent hypoxic training, rhythmic breathing and relaxation.

SOMA uses these and adds movement, music, visualization and other yogic techniques like muscle locks to enhance the exercises.

Source: somabreath

In every moment, the breath is nourishing us. It is continuously working to keep us alive. It is working to help us to move and to function. It gives us the power to think and to create. And in every moment, it is reflecting and expressing the truth of our being. It reveals our state of our health and the level of our consciousness.

Breathwork awakens pure life-force energy—creative energy, healing energy. You can consciously use this energy in any way you choose. You can use it to generate luminous thoughts, ecstatic emotions, and pure pleasure. You can use it to fuel gentle and loving behaviors, and to motivate creative and productive actions.

Written by Oska Phoenix

Meditation and the Polyvagal Theory

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 01:32:29 GMT

Applying the Polyvagal Theory in Your Meditation Practice

The Polyvagal Theory is a concept recently developed by psychiatrist Stephen Porges which explains the parts of our nervous system, and how they handle stressful situations. In essence, he says that our body responds to experiences in three ways: fight-or-flight, immobilisation, and calmness (or our normal, peaceful state).

Defining the Three Responses

Fight-or-flight is the response of our sympathetic nervous system when it senses danger. This danger can be a real threat or even an imagined threat can cause activation of the fight or flight response. However, the other two responses — relaxation response and the immobilisation response—are both feelings of calmness invoked by the parasympathetic nervous system. This system has a major nerve called the vagus nerve . It has two parts: the dorsal (back) and the ventral (front). As a means to calm the body, the dorsal is what causes our body to shut down when we experience something traumatic this is the freeze response.

The ventral side of the vagus nerve, on the other hand, is the part that induces the feelings of calm and saftey called the relaxation response. I ntentionally activating the vagus nerve has the potential to create feelings of safety, deep states relaxation and help overcome trauma, anxiety, stress and even healing inflamation in the body.

Activating the Vagus Nerve

Porges also notes that your body can be trained to activate the vagus nerve and therefore turn on the parasympathetic nervous system and states of relaxation. This is why he highly favors body-calming activities like meditation, as it does a lot to calm your system. In fact, the Polyvagal Theory is heavily involved in the best practices for meditation and has given even more scientific validity to why meditation is so powerful for healing the body and mind.

Here are some ways that you can intentionally activate the vagus nerve:

Find a Safe Place

Find your safe place. Contrary to popular belief you don’t need to be in a zen garden (though studies do show that fresh air helps calm the body). When choosing a place to meditate in, simply find a comfortable space in your home where you feel safe. This can be anything from your bedroom surrounded by pictures of your family, or the kitchen while you wait for your cake to bake. The important part is that you feel the safest wherever you are. It can also help to create a sacred space within your home that is your meditation sanctuary where you can meditate regularly.

Connect with Other People

Aside from your environment, safety can also be found by being surrounded by other people. This feeling of connection also stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system, which allows your body to calm down. To this end, you might want to partake in community sessions, meditation classes or even spiritual retreats. Make an effort to connect with fellow practitioners. There's a big community out there.

If you can't physically be with others you can also visualise yourself surrounded by friends, family and even spiritual beings. Simply imagine being surrounded and meditating with a supportive community of spiritual allies can help you feel connected.

Relax your Face Muscles

This is a meditation "trick" that many people do not know about. As written about in Chad Foreman's article on how a simple smile can relax your entire body . Because of the close connection between facial nerves and the vagus nerve simply by relaxing your face muscles you can instantly achieve a state of rest.

Deep Breathing

Aside from feelings of safety, another thing that can stimulate the vagus nerve is calm your system with some deep breathing exercises known as breathwork. Breathwork is hugely popular at the moment and polyvagal theory explains why it eliminates stress and activates deep states of relaxation so effectively. I highly recommend The Way of Meditation's course The Art of Breathing .

Chanting Om or Humming

Chanting Om has been shown to activate the vagus nerve too. You can simply hum or chant om, either works well. Chanting Om with a group is an incredible experience as the sound resonates through-out the whole room and it's easier to fully surrender and connect with the practice. The polyvagal theory explains why this ancient practice creates such deep states of relaxation and bliss.

Detach from Thoughts

Often it's stressful thoughts of worry and fear that keep you in a constant state of 'fight or flight' which is the polar opposite of the relaxation response activated through the vagus nerve. Learning meditation techniques like mindfulness will help you disconnect from thoughts and give your nervous system a break and a chance to reset to a new normal where you can maintain a sense of ease. T hrough other techniques mentioned above like deep breathing and chanting you can also detach from thoughts and get similar results.

Written by Reese Jones

The Importance of Having a Spiritual Community

Tue, 05 May 2020 03:08:22 GMT

Your Sangha is your Spiritual Community

Spiritual community is one of the most important aspects of the spiritual path. In Buddhism and some other yoga traditions, it is known as “Sangha" and is a central part of meditation practices.

Sangha refers to the community of people on the spiritual journey. Traditionally, it was used to denote a community of ordained monks or nuns. But more recently the term is used to describe a wider spectrum of spiritual practitioners.

So we can find Sangha in meetings with advanced or enlightened teachers. But we can also find it by spending time with other fellow spiritual seekers.

Paramahansa Yogananda once said, “Environment is stronger than willpower.” You may have plenty of will power on the path, but find yourself in a negative environment, or around people who hold you back. If this is the case, it’s hard to reach your highest potential. Most of us are not able to grow far beyond the energy we’re surrounded by.

This post is about how to find spiritual community. When we do so, we deepen our spiritual lives and improve our practice. During the early days on the path, many of us read endless meditation books and blogs, and watch tons of YouTube videos.

While there’s nothing wrong with that, you’ll probably get to a point where you realize that you need to be around other spiritual seekers if you want to truly evolve.

Why We Need Spiritual Community

If you wanted to be a musician, you’d hang out with other musicians. If you wanted to be a politician, you’d hang out with people who talk politics.

So if you want to deepen your spiritual life, it’s important to spend time with like-minded people. Here are a few reasons why:

Improved Practice

Meditation is fairly straightforward. We sit and focus on our breath and bring the mind back when it wanders. But there are also many possibilities for making errors and taking wayward paths. It’s simple, but not always easy!

More advanced meditators can give you advice, show you techniques, and answer your questions. This helps you refine your process and improve over time. It helps you to stay on the right track.

Consciousness Raising

Spiritual practitioners don’t spend much time on superficial chitchat or idle gossip. They get straight to the heart and talk about deep issues.

This helps to raise your consciousness towards higher thinking and spiritual ideals. It also pulls your mind away from the trivial concerns of everyday life.

Good Company

On the spiritual path, it can feel a little isolating early on. You may find that some of your friendships start to fall away. Some people even experience feelings of isolation.

When you go to meditation meetings, you’re likely to meet people you relate to. You can share your experiences and enjoy each other’s company. It makes you feel a part of something bigger. Plus, it’s nice to be around like-minded people.

Greater Accountability

You may find your practice becomes more consistent and disciplined. Your motivation increases when you see other people on the same path as you.

Some people even buddy up for accountability. You can check on each other’s practice and talk about how it’s going. This way you have a greater drive to form the habit and become a daily practitioner.

Deeper Inner Peace

So, your meditation is becoming more consistent and disciplined. You’re finding that your practice is deeper because you understand better what to do. Maybe you’re also spending more time thinking about higher ideals, love and joy. As a result, you find your daily sense of inner peace growing. You’re calmer as you go about your days, less worried, less stressed.

Shared Energy

I’ve saved the most important until last. Sharing energy with advanced meditators is very powerful. You may find immediately when you’re in their presence that your meditations are deeper.

You are sharing in the vibrations that they’ve cultivated over years of practice. So, when you’re amidst this spiritual energy, you’re magnetized along the spiritual path.

How To Find a Spiritual Community

So, all this is great, but how do you actually find spiritual people? What actions can you take to help you network and find support? Here’s a list of 9 ways to do it:

1. Go to meditation and yoga classes

Try to find classes in your area. You can search online, and especially on Meetup.com to find something that looks like it might be a good fit.

It can be a little scary the first time, which may be what puts some people off. But you might make some incredible friends and get the support you need. So it’s worth facing those fears.

2. Join a Facebook community

Facebook has many groups where you can find spiritual community. In these groups, you can get involved, have conversations, and share about your journey.

Chad Foreman’s The Way of Meditation Community is one of the best around. It’s an uplifting place where you can associate with other long-term meditators. Head over there to join the group.

3. Reach out to people you know

You may already know someone who is into meditation or yoga. You could send them a message on Facebook to see if they can help you out. When people are into something, they’re usually happy to share their knowledge.

Ask them if they want to meet up or if they go to any cool groups that you could join. This is a quick and easy way to make a spiritual friend.

4. Attend an online group meditation

There are many online classes and guided meditations around these days. They are often shared on Facebook groups. You can find some on the Way of Meditation Community.

Live classes may be on Facebook Live. If they’re on Zoom or another webinar platform, then you may need to enter your email. But it’s a small price to pay for attending a live meditation. Some may also ask for donations or payment.

5. Take an online course

All of The Way of Meditation's Courses have interactive forums to ask questions and leave comments. But some courses do have a community aspect online. Taking a course tends to put you into the “inner-circle” of a meditation teacher and help connect with other practitioners. This is a great way to deepen your practice and means you have a direct link to ask them questions and seek help.

6. Go on retreat

This for me may be the most powerful and effective way of finding spiritual community. It is throwing yourself in the deep end.

When you go on a retreat, you’ll be alongside many spiritual seekers, some of whom will be far more advanced than you. You’ll get a chance to spend time with professional spiritual teachers who will help you along the path.

Plus, a whole week or more of meditation won’t do you any harm. Try to make some friends and stay in touch . Check out Chad Foreman's regular One Day Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.

7. Go on a pilgrimage

Going on a sacred journey can be a powerful way to meet people. You’ll be spending a lot of time with others, as a pilgrimage can be a few weeks.

This is a unique opportunity to connect with spiritual devotees. The purpose of the journey is spiritual connection, so the vibes are high and the energy is beautiful. Again, stay in touch with the people who stand out.

8. Start a your own spiritual group or meet-up

If there are no spiritual groups in your area, why not start your own? It only takes two or three people to make a group. If you can find a couple of people interested in meditation, you can get together and practice.

This is how I started on the path actually. My friend Ryan and I used to sit and meditate together in Thailand, and often a couple of other people would join us. Afterwards, we’d speak about the spiritual path. There is powerful energy in people coming together to grow spiritually. You could even advertise if you were feeling brave.

A Few Tips Aboout Spiritual Community

Finally here are a few tips before you get started.

Get involved

Be active in the community. If you’re in a Facebook group, be sure to ask questions, answer questions, and get involved. It’s easy to join and then take a back seat. At the start, you may ask more questions. But as time goes by, you’ll become more of an authority, and people may begin to ask you questions and seek your advice. Your responses to questions may even be included in a blog post at The way of Meditation like this one - Everyday People Answer the Question What is Meditation?

Be respectful and kind

Within the spiritual world, there are a variety of paths, and a range of opinions. Always try to respect the opinions of others.

There’s nothing worse than when someone’s comment turns into a nasty, heated debate. It doesn’t help anyone and it serves only to expand the ego. Let other people have their opinions and be polite and respectful. You may not agree, but that doesn’t mean you need to be unkind. If you need to correct someone, do it kindly.

Don't be afraid to invest

For some reason, people seem to think that everything meditation-related should be free. Free meditation stuff is OK, but like anything in this world, you get what you pay for. If you’re willing to pay for courses, retreats, and classes, you will get more out of your practice. You’ll also connect more with the teachers and students in that community. Start with quality inexpensive courses like The 21-Day Meditation Challenge and go from there.

When the student is ready...

There’s an old saying in India that I’m sure many of you have heard: “When the student is ready, the teacher will come.” Well the same goes for spiritual community. When you’re ready to take the spiritual path seriously, the right people will come your way. They will find you. Everything is unfolding as it should, and all things will fall into place at exactly the right time. Trust in the divine plan.

Written by Nick Michie

Nick is a certified meditation teacher and owner of Two Steps From Bliss. He has been studying and practicing meditation for 8 years, mostly through the lineage of Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you want to check out Nick’s work, Click this link to download a free meditation starter pack . It contains a guided meditation, video lesson, and mini ebook on meditation.

Meditation Helps to Overcome a Broken Heart

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 01:58:16 GMT

At some point in our lives most of us will experience a broken heart, either through a relationship ending or the loss of a loved one, we will feel the turbulence of unsettled emotions within our bodies.

In this article we will explore how meditation can be a great bio-hack to counteract the negative effects of heart break and flush out unsettled energy caused by from the loss of a relationship.

It is important to note that the body is not biased on the external circumstances that cause the body stress, whether it’s a relationship or a loss of a loved one, it all comes under the umbrella of stressful feelings for the body.

Heartbreak can cause a large amount of stress, especially if you truly loved someone. This stress can affect how we feel emotionally and physically, and may take weeks, months or even years to recover from.

What Happens Inside The Body When We Feel Heartache?

When we invest our time and energy into someone, we form a relationship. In romantic relationships there is a certain level of chemistry in the body that allows us to feel love and pleasure. The body becomes addicted to the chemical cocktail of hormones that are released through our relationship from interacting and being intimate with our partners.

#Something to think about

When we “miss” our partner, it could well be the anticipation of a chemical reaction in the body we are “missing”.

When we break up from the relationship, our bodies go through a massive withdrawal process as the primary “stimulus” being your partner is not around anymore to trigger a chemical reaction that gives the body feelings of joy, happiness, euphoria, etc. In addition, our thoughts about losing the “feeling of love”, can trigger even more stressful emotions in the body.

The mind naturally anticipates worst case scenarios creating fear and anxiety in the body. The mind tells the body a narrative based on the “loss” of the relationship, which usually is one that is fear based, creating unsettled feelings in the body.

Studies show that your brain registers the emotional pain of heartbreak in the same way as physical pain, which is why you might feel like your heartbreak is causing actual physical hurt. The language we use to describe heartbreak – “I feel like my heart’s been ripped out”, “it was gut wrenching”, “like a slap in the face” – all hint at the way we associate physical pain with emotional pain.

There is even a medical term called broken heart syndrome that may be misdiagnosed as a heart attack because the symptoms and test results are similar. In fact, tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances that are typical of a heart attack. But unlike a heart attack, there’s no evidence of blocked heart arteries in broken heart syndrome.

In broken heart syndrome, a part of your heart temporarily enlarges and doesn’t pump well, while the rest of your heart functions normally or with even more forceful contractions. Researchers are just starting to learn the causes, and how to diagnose and treat it.

#Interesting point

The chemical reactions caused by being in love are like drugs and we can easily become addicted to them.

#Scientific breakdown:

Dopamine and oxytocin in particular are hormones which make us feel good and want to repeat that behaviour and are released at elevated levels when we’re in love.

Soon as heartbreak happens, as mentioned these “feel good” hormone levels drop and are replaced with stress hormones such as “cortisol” creating feelings formed from fear - the fear of being alone is common factor on why we feel so much anxiety.

Meditation is Medication

Sitting still and being aware of your thoughts and feelings, without identifying with them allows the body to naturally heal and flush out unsettled energy.

How?

When the mind constantly pays attention to stressful feelings caused by heartache, scattered energy is generated in the body and then channelled to the brain to keep neural networks firing and wiring that are associated with the pain and suffering (heartache).

The more we identify with feelings associated with heartache, the more conditioned we become to such a biochemistry leading to the body craving more heartache, quiet simply put, the cells of the body become addicted to this level of chemistry.

Through meditation, we learn to sit still and not identify with such emotional states, therefore there is no more energy going toward emotional pain causing stress. Rather we become open, allowing the “river” of feelings to flow through the body, like currents of energy.

“Where your attention goes, energy flows”

Your attention charges up emotional states in the body, enriching connections in the brain that are associated with such states. This creates a viscous cycle of thinking and feeling, resulting in an unsettled state of being. The more you repeat this state the more you become conditioned to feel this way.

You have to break the cycle.

Meditation Works

Meditation is a serious bio-hack as it allows you to press the “stop” button! Putting the break on this neural feedback loop. By interrupting the feedback loop, the connection is weakened.

Sit still….feel….and breathe….without attaching your attention to thoughts or feelings.

This opens up your awareness, allowing the body to flush out the unwanted energy. There is no more fuel to feed the negative thoughts and emotions therefore you can break the negative cycle of heartache.

Practice this bio-hack to accelerate your comeback! Instead of unconsciously practicing “suffering” or “heartache”.

Through practicing mindfulness and meditation you can become conscious of where your attention goes, don't waste time feeding emotional states in the body that do not serve your highest potential.

Once you’ve successfully healed your emotional and physical addiction to the person you’ve broken up with, your mind and heart become clear again so you can focus on things that bring you joy and happiness.

SIT STILL, FEEL, and BREATHE …

To go deeper and understand and practice these methods of recovery check out my FREE three-part online course on how to break free from past relationships, reclaiming your power back.

Written By Oska Phoenix

12 Ways To Raise Your Vibration

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 02:15:47 GMT

Your “vibration”, universal life energy or higher self-frequency is in the simplest terms your state of being. Everything is made up of light energy and everything emits its’ own unique vibrational energy.

Like attracts like - so the personal energy signature you vibrate with influences the experiences, people, and situations you attract in your life.

Raising your vibration leads to your experiencing higher fields of energy and intelligence. In this way, raising your vibration is crucial to your wellbeing.

I don't know about you but personally I find my energy at times to feel “scattered”, totally out-of-alignment with my inner presence and the Now moment. And it’s all thanks work, modern day stresses and my attachment to my phone.

I feel I lack motivation at times and find myself consumed in my thoughts. Until I snap myself out of it and remember that I have some awesome bio-hacks to snap me back into my “zone” of self-development - feeling great and living in a state of creative joy.

Here are 12 great ways to raise your vibration when you feel scattered or need to get back in the zone.

1. Practice Gratitude

Taking a few moments to practice gratitude magnifies positive emotions.

When we take time to express gratitude for our blessings, we allow ourselves to appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we indulge more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted.

2. Eat Raw Organic Vegetables

Raw vegetables are fully of energy through photosynthesis. When we eat raw foods, we absorb the energy from the sun which helps the body refuel and recharge. Shayna Komar, a licensed and registered dietitian a says "...incorporating raw foods, specifically vegetables and fruits, into your diet can have numerous health benefits. You will likely have more energy, better skin, improved digestion and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease once you get used to eating raw food,”

3. Take Cold Showers

Cold water increases the body’s metabolism because it has to work harder to maintain a stable temperature. Cold showers create a sense of invigoration and alertness, which may prompt a person to be more physically active. Some benefits Wim Hoff says taking cold showers can produce are "...reduced stress levels, h igher level of alertness, m ore robust immune response and i ncreased willpower."

4. Sun Gazing

Gazing in the morning or evening sun rays when they are light and easy to absorb is great way to raise the bodies vibrations.

Absorbing the sun’s energy through your eye stimulates the Pineal Gland as the sun’s energy moves through the eyes and charges the hypothalamus tract, which is the pathway to the rear of the retina leading to the brain. In addition, sun gazing boosts production of serotonin and melatonin (the feel-good hormones). Lastly this ancient practice helps relieve stress and anxiety from the body.

5. Grounding

Grounding, also called earthing, is a therapeutic technique that involves putting the body in direct and uninterrupted contact with the earth. This means that skin needs to touch soil, sand, water, or a conductive surface that is in contact with the earth. According to emerging research grounding helps increase energy in the body, improve sleeping patterns, normalize blood pressure and blood flow, just to name a few.

6. Fasting

Most types of fasts are performed over 24–72 hours. Intermittent fasting, on the other hand, involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting, ranging from a few hours to a few days at a time. Fasting has been shown to have many health benefits, from increased weight loss to better brain function. Fasting can be a very spiritual experience and help liberate unsettled energy from the body when combined with meditation.

7. Meditation

Meditation helps calm your nervous system, improves your mood, and brings about greater feelings of peace—all high-vibe qualities that will benefit your state of being. Mindfulness and loving kindness are highly therapeutic too which helps to heal from trauma and put you back in touch with your naturally high vibration of consciousness.

Meditation helps to raise your vibration level fast by consciously letting go of the lower states of vibration which are holding you back like impatience, anger and fear. By being in the now you free yourself from the past so you can achieve your highest states of vibration in the present.

8. Breathwork

Breathwork appears to send a signal to the brain to adjust the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, which can slow heart rate and digestion and promote feelings of calm. Consciously, controlling your breathing, has been shown to reduce stress, increase alertness and boost your immune system. Ancient yogis used breathwork to control the energy, resulting in improved vitality.

9. Clean Your Space

Cleaning can be an outlet for energy and negative emotions too. De-cluttering your space provides you with a cleaner environment, more comfortable atmosphere, promoting a more relaxed vibe.

Setting up an area for your meditation and breathwork practice is great idea for you to feel more motivated to practice daily.

10. Exercise

Exercise has been known to be a great antidote to fight off stress and many health condones. It really is a cure for nearly everything in life. Exercise releases endorphins, dopamine and many other chemicals to fight stress. After a good session, the energy in the body is flowing, promoting feel good vibes, you can share with the world.

11. Chanting The Mantra OM

The mantra Om is considered to be one of the most important sounds in all the universe and has been chanted for thousands of years. This ancient practice is more than a powerful sound, the sound changes our vibration, becoming calmer and more peaceful so we can receive, positive energy. Chanting gives us clarity so we can change our patterns of thought. It also helps to release toxins and removing negative feelings and increasing our vibration.

12. Consuming High-Vibe Music/Podcasts

Listen to music that is of high vibration and leaves you feeling uplifted rather than depleted. Have a break from social media and listen to an uplifting podcast. Be as selective about your media intake as you are about the quality of the food you eat, and you will find newfound energy in your day.

My Morning Routine

- Breathwork (soon as I wake up)

- Meditation/Chanting (20 mins)

- Cold shower

- Fasting (until lunchtime)

This regime really helps kick start my energy and keeps my vibe high and vibrant for the day.

Summary

In addition to a good meditation practice, surround yourself with people who lift you up, rather than bring you down. Spend time only with people who make you feel good about yourself, people who believe in you, support you, and are interested in resonating at a high frequency just like you are. And be open to trying new things that help raise your vibe. As Dr. Joe Dispenza beautifully puts it; If you really want to create a new personal reality then you need to change your personality - your energy being at the core of your personality. So, give the above practices a try and raise your vibe and walk into your new reality feeling radiant.

Written By Oska Phoenix

Discovering the Profound Dimension of Inner Space

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 05:35:33 GMT

Inner Space, the final frontier, where ‘psychonauts’ explore a dimension unfamiliar to most but which is the training ground for countless mystics and meditators through-out the ages.

Modern science has become expert at discovering the qualities of things with form. The laws of physics outline exactly what chemicals do, what cells do and generally how matter and energy operate.

However, as science discovers more and more about matter and energy and probes deeper into their nature it finds ever increasing expanses of space. It finds no static building blocks of the world which it predicted it would. Instead it finds the mysterious world of subatomic particles which make up everything but the problem for science is they are mostly composed of vast dimensions of space.

Carl Sagan famously said “Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.” And a modern writer and scientist has put that into perspective when she said: “An atom is mostly made up of empty space. If you remove the empty space from every atom, the entire world's human population could fit inside a sugar cube.”

But is space really empty? Science writer Mike Mcrae seems to believe it isn't when he says, "what we take for the complete absence of matter and radiation is an infinite field of possibility from which particles emerge."

Also according to mystics the invisible (not material) aspect to the universe is not empty at all instead it’s full of intelligence, consciousness and unmanifest potential.

Inner Space is Inseparable from Awareness

Firstly, the space that will be explored in this blog is inner space which is inseparable from an aware presence. Modern science has long tried to remove the subjective conscious aspect of existence from the material world. Relying on objective measurements and striving to exclude anything psychological or spiritual that does not have a material basis. This could be at once their greatest triumph and also a big deviation from the full picture.

Eastern yogis and spiritual contemplatives like the Buddha discovered the void in a direct experiential way. The Buddha called it Sunyata and claimed it was the ultimate level of reality. Others before and after the Buddha also had a direct experience of the world where all contents of the mind have been quietened or removed to reveal an experience of vast space. However, they did not or could not ever remove the conscious presence inseparable from the void.

The wisdom traditions that I practice and follow closely from Tibetan Buddhism call the ultimate and final reality a direct experience of the inseparability of voidness and awareness. They sometimes refer to awareness as the essence of existence inseparable from the nature of emptiness. Just like wetness and water are inseparable; awareness and the void have one inseparable existence.

The ancient spiritual texts of the Vedas call this ultimate reality Sat-Chit-Ananda. Sat means existence or being, Chit means consciousness and Ananda means bliss.

Inner Space as the Ground of Being

The sky like or space like nature of our own being is the ground of our existence. In other words, it’s the unchanging foundation of all experiences.

The ground of being is your ultimate identity not the passing conditions of the body and mind. Meditation teacher Pema Chodron sums it brilliantly when she says, “You are the sky, everything else is just the passing weather.”

Connecting with this inner space empowers a direct experience of openness and freedom and develops insight into your true nature. As one meditation teacher says, “enlightenment is ego’s biggest disappointment” or from a Zen master: “there’s no such things as an enlightened person, only enlightened activity”.

These teachings point to the fact there is no central person or independent entity that is you. Your actual identity can only be found when you are free from a limited centralised idea of yourself and you awaken to your ultimate dimension of space like awareness.

As it states in the Vedas: find out what you are not and the realisation of what you are will dawn spontaneously. It says quite emphatically that you are not your mind and you are not your body. But if we are not those things then what in the world are we? The answer lies beyond this world of things in the realm of inner space.

Inner Space as Freedom from Suffering

Awareness is the essence of who you are, and inner space is your nature. The experience of this can be found by realising that you are noticing your thoughts, you are noticing physical sensations of your body and you are noticing emotions. That implies you are not those things and you are the common witness behind all those things.

Within meditation we can detach to a point of becoming the silent witness and this is an important stage of meditation exemplified in the practice of mindfulness. However, it’s easy to still have the sense of being an ego with a camera watching everything pass by. The key is to turn your attention around 180 degrees to look within at what is doing the looking to discover its nature.

This goes beyond mindfulness to a special insight into your real nature. It’s not just a flashlight of attention beaming out its more like a vast space without boundaries that can intentionally narrow to focus on one thing.

It’s because it’s boundless and space like that the experience can seem timeless. Things with form are bound by time. Everything passes through stages of becoming, changing and ending. But what about the inner space like nature that is not a thing because it’s space? An essential quality to understand about our space like nature is that it does not arise newly, it doesn’t change, and it doesn’t end. Its nature is not form. In other words, it's not a thing operating within the realm of time.

This can be directly experienced and has by thousands of people through-out history. It's an experience of peace and joy mostly because it’s outside the stressful realm of time. It’s an experience of complete openness, freedom and peace.

Beyond the dimensions of birth and death it transcends suffering and offers the complete fulfillment of the human potential.

Within the untouchable vast expanse of inner space all experiences are simply passing by. The weather cannot stain the sky it merely colours it momentarily. The inner space like nature naturally allows and accepts all passing experiences without resistance or stress. It’s in this open natural acceptance that the flavour of real peace and joy can be tasted.

Written By Chad Foreman

Chad is the founder of The Way of Meditation and has been teaching meditation since 2003 and is determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time. Chad now offers Private Online Meditation Coaching and has also developed an incredible course called The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Discovering Inner Space is from Day 12 of the 21 Day Meditation Challenge.

Discovering Inner Space Guided Meditation By Chad Foreman (20min)

The Science Of How The Mind Affects The Immune System

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 11:31:40 GMT

Psycho-Neuro-Immunology

Psycho - thoughts and emotions

Neuro - brain and nervous system

Immunology - the study of the immune system

Psychoneuroimmunology is a relatively new study on how the mind influences the immune system. There is conclusive research that indicates that our thoughts and feelings have a direct affect on our immune system function. The aim of this article is to breakdown this science into a simple to understand format with practical applications.

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI for short) is a study of the Mind-body connection. PNI researchers study how our emotions and thoughts impact:

- The brain

- Hormones (endocrine)

- Nervous system

- Immune system.

Your thoughts affect your immune system. It can work the opposite way as well —-changes in the immune system create changes in your nervous system which lead to changes in your emotions. Quiet simply put stress and unhealthy eating habits can influence how you think and feel.

PNI research is concerned with the subtle interactions between our nervous, endocrine and immune systems and disease. The interaction between the different systems are complex but can be explained in a simplified manner.

For example, if you are experiencing fear, anger or other emotions that may increase your stress level, then these unsettling thoughts are picked up by the brain. The brain then stimulates the endocrine system to release hormones that have an adverse effect on the immune cell’s ability to divide. This causes a decline in immune function which may result in your becoming more susceptible to illness. ~ Patty Carrosicia, R. N.

Simply put - your mental state affects your immunity. Research today is beginning to unravel the complex connection between your psychological state and your immune system.

The Immune System

The immune system is a complex network of cells and proteins that defends the body against infection.
The body’s protective unit - first line of defense.
The immune system protects body against alien bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites (invaders).
Destroys invaders using an army of white blood cells, natural killer cells and T-cells.
Promoting good gut bacteria is the key to a strong and potent immune system.

The immune system is comprised of organs, tissues, cells and cell products that all work together to fight harmful substances like the pathogens that cause infection and disease.

If our lives are greatly influenced by the hormones of stress, then the natural function of the immune system is suppressed, which leaves us more prone to illness or disease.

When stress is prolonged or unrelenting, it becomes known as chronic stress. Chronic or bad stress can be detrimental to mental and physical health. Constant worrying about things like family or problems are examples of chronic stress. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is another form of chronic stress.

The immune system is a collection of billions of cells that travel through the bloodstream. They move in and out of tissues and organs, defending the body against foreign bodies (antigens) such as bacteria, viruses and cancerous cells.

The main types of immune cells are white blood cells. There are two types of white blood cells:

- Lymphocytes

- Phagocytes

There are two types of lymphocytes:

B cells - produce antibodies which are released into the fluid surrounding the body’s cells to destroy the invading viruses and bacteria.

T cells - if the invader gets inside a cell, these (T cells) lock on to the infected cell, multiply, and destroy it.

When we’re stressed, the immune system’s ability to fight off antigens is reduced. That is why we are more susceptible to infections.

The stress hormone corticosteroid can suppress the effectiveness of the immune system (e.g. lowers the number of lymphocytes).

Healthy Mind Vs Stressful Mind

Being positive and having a healthy perspective could be the difference between longevity and disease. Every thought you have produces a chemical which signals the body to feel exactly the way you are thinking. In turn your thoughts will generate feelings, and your feelings will generate thoughts. This creates a vicious cycle — being mindful of your thoughts in the morning could be the difference in what type of day you have.

The release of stress hormones is the result of a number of complex and interacting factors such as the interaction between the stressors and our perception of the stress. How we perceive an event plays a very significant role in whether the stressor triggers our stress response or not.

One of the most important factors of stress management is the role that our perception plays in stress. Most people believe that it is external stressful situations or people that cause their stress. But this is not accurate, if it were everybody who was exposed to a particular stressor would be affected, which is not the case — we all react to “stressful” situations differently.

For example; if our perception is influenced by pessimistic thinking style, the potential event will be perceived as more of a threat than say another person exposed to the same potential stressful event but who has a flexible, non-rigid, optimistic thinking style.

How you perceive reality effects not only your physiology but also your health and wellbeing.

Stress

Stress can cause unhealthy behavioural coping strategies such as:

Drinking
Smoking
Drugs
Gambling
Shopping
Eating

Stress is also linked to:

Headaches (migraines)
Infectious illness (flu)
Cardiovascular disease
Diabetes
Asthma
GI issues (gut health)
Auto immune disease

”Your cells will either be in a state of growth or protection and if your mind is ‘stressed out,’ then your cells are in a suppressed state, a.k.a breakdown mode—which will leave your body wide open and more susceptible to illness or disease.” ~ Bruce Lipton

Chronic stress:

Creates chronic inflammatory conditions.
Suppresses the smooth operation of the digestive system.
Lowers the immunity of those who otherwise have a healthy immune system.

When long-term stress becomes chronic, high levels of cortisol (stress hormone) begin circulating in the blood for an extended period of time.

All you need to know is that excessive amounts of CORTISOL run HAVOC in your body system.

We can reduce our stress levels by changing our thinking habits — outdated negative perceptions can lead to distorted thinking patterns which can paint events much worse than they actually are — keeping the vicious cycle of stress turning.

Our perceptions can be shaped by past experiences — perceiving reality through the lenses of the past. Let’s face it not all of our experiences have been full of joy and love, so it’s critical to identify the perceptions that are outdated and change them to healthy ones.

Stress Management Tips

Keep a positive attitude.
Accept that there are events that you cannot control.
Be assertive instead of aggressive. Assert your feelings, opinions, or beliefs instead of becoming angry, defensive, or passive.
Learn and practice relaxation techniques meditation, deep breathing and mindfulness
Exercise regularly. Your body can fight stress better when it is fit.
Eat healthy, well-balanced meals.
Learn to manage your time more effectively.
Set limits appropriately and learn to say no to requests that would create excessive stress in your life.
Make time for hobbies, interests, and relaxation.
Get enough rest and sleep. Your body needs time to recover from stressful events.
Don't rely on alcohol, drugs, or compulsive behaviors to reduce stress.

Cells can transmit and receive non-physical packages of information that influences their behaviour.

Think about it - a stressful state changes the heart beat to be erratic which sends out pressure waves (informational waves of energy) to signals cells to change their behaviour (emergency state).

Stress disrupts all the major organs in the body that contribute to having a disrupted energy field.

When you are stressed, the cells in your body will be given information that keeps them in a protective state.

"Cells are either in a state of growth (harmony) or protection (stress) — they cannot be in both." ~ Bruce Lipton

Our conscious minds have the power to influence cell behaviour — cells respond to thoughts — the stronger the emotional charge behind the thought, the more cells react.

Factors that influence cell behaviour:

• Stress

• Diet

• Exercise

• Sleep

• Perception

• Mind set

• Emotions

How you process and define different aspects of your life ultimately signals your cells to be in a state of growth or protection.

Learning to consciously harmonise your mind and body will enable you to upkeep the integrity of the cells in your body.

Question:

How does my mood effect my immunity?

Answer:

If you regularly experience low vibrational emotions such as fear, anger or other emotions that may increase your stress levels, then it will be extremely difficult for you to maintain balance within the systems of the body.

Low vibrational emotions will begin to disturb your thoughts because the brain will pick up on the emotional feedback from the body.

The hormonal system in the body (endocrine) is a major player when it comes to maintaining a healthy balance. Stress disrupts the natural order of the endocrine system resulting that can result in chemical imbalances.

There are many medical conditions that remain a mystery to doctors and science that maybe caused by chemical-hormonal imbalances in the body. If the adrenal glands are overactive (stress hormone glands) then the other glands suppressed from their natural function.

The adrenal glands are taking up all the energy to activate stress hormones which suppress the other glands from naturally maintaining chemical/hormonal balance in the body.

MEDITATION IS MEDICATION

Meditation induces the relaxation response in the body which allows the body to reset and balance — creating coherence within all systems of the body. The relaxation response is our physical way of reversing the effects of stress and the physical stress response.

Individuals with high levels of stress should adopt a regular meditation practice to restore balance back in the body.

Stressful energy compromises the immune function which may result in the body being susceptible to disease.

IMMUNE SYSTEM SUPPRESSANTS:

• Stress

• Abuse

• Trauma

• Victimisation

• Guilt

• Anger

• Regret

• Self-Pity

In other words - emotional suffering can lead to immune system suppression.

Since your immune system, for reasons unknown, responds to both negative thoughts and positive thoughts, meditation creates the perfect environment for the immune system to flourish. This means better health, more energy, and greater happiness. In case you didn’t know, these are the ingredients for a wonderful and productive life.

How To Strengthen The Immune System

Positve emotions - enhance the immune system by shifting the production of chemical — being more optimistic, will result in stronger cell-mediated immunity — flooding immune cells that respond to an invasion by foreign viruses or bacteria.

When you are in a harmonious state (Heart-mind coherence), your body and all of your systems are aligned and working synergistically, which promotes health and wellness. When you are in a stressful state, the body systems are out of alignment, causing disruption and dysfunction in the body.

RELAXATION RESPONSE

"The relaxation response is the process of de-escalating the stress response and inducing relaxation through activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.” ~ Dr. Herbert Benson

“When we are too accustomed to stress, the body forgets how to relax. Rather, it remembers how to stress.”

What Does NOT Activate The Relaxation Response:

• Watching television (mind is still stimulated)

• Electronics

• Internet

• Socialising

“There are many methods to elicit the Relaxation Response, including visualization, progressive muscle relaxation, energy healing, acupuncture, massage, breathing techniques, prayer, meditation, tai chi, qi gong, and yoga. True relaxation can also be achieved by removing yourself from everyday thought and by choosing a word, sound, phrase, prayer, or by focusing on your breathing.” ~ Dr. Romie

Having a healthy mind and practicing meditations will align all the major systems of the body:

• Respiratory - More rhythmic breathing

• Cardiovascular - Heart rate slows downs

• Immune - Releasing more white cells

• Lymphatic - Improves circulation

• Endocrine - Balances hormonal levels

• Digestive- Allows body to rest and digest

Some causes of digestive issues can be stress related, but we are not told to meditate. Instead, we are given medication for a short-term fix that doesn’t resolve the underlying issue.

How can your digestive system run smoothly when you are so tense and stressed?

Researchers have found a wealth of evidence that suggests positive emotions can enhance the immune system, while negative emotions can suppress it.

For example, individuals can take up to a year to recover a healthy immune system following the death of their spouse, and long-term caregivers have suppressed immune systems compared with persons in the general population.

“Greek philosopher Aristotle identified that when a part of the body does not function properly, the mind will become unbalanced in some way also. On the other hand, if the mind is calm and relaxed, Homeostasis within the body is induced, which allows the most optimal level for the body to self-heal.”

Ancient understanding has always emphasised that the mind and body are connected and one with each other. PNI sheds light on how important communication between the mind and body really is, and that fostering a healthy connection between the mind and body will gift us with the health that we seek.

Psycho-Neuro-Immunology (PNI) Recap

• PNI is the study of the interaction between psychological processes, the nervous and immune systems within the human body.

• PNI examines how our thoughts and emotions have an impact on our health.

• Research shows that stress can suppress the immune system’s ability to ward off illness.

• Research from PNI shows us that even 30 seconds of practicing a relaxation technique can improve communication with the mind-body connection, reducing the effects of stress and improve the quality of sleep.

Bringing mindfulness to your thoughts and emotional reactions can have a significant impact on your sense of well-being. Realising that you have the power to command your body to be in a state of resilience or breakdown is a major realisation towards true health.

Our state of mind affects all the major systems in our body, so it is crucial to pay attention to our thoughts, moods, emotions, behaviours, reactions and perceptions.

Unconscious reactions can trigger stress in our body while responding through presence can keep our bodies in balance. Meditations have been designed to increase self-awareness and restore inner peace and harmony — resulting in a stronger immune system.

Written by Oska Phoenix

The Six Foundations Of The Natural State Of Meditation

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 03:08:56 GMT

The Natural State

The natural state of meditation also known as effortless meditation or non meditation stems from non-dual traditions like Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra, Japanese Zen , Chinese Chan and Indian non-dual traditions like Shaivism and Advaita. The common view in these traditions is that we are never separate or distinct from being whole and complete as we are.

The view is important. The third patriarch of Zen, Master Seng-Tsan wrote a classic text translated as Faith In The Original Mind. Meditation is often seen as a method beyond the realms of faith but in effortless meditation faith in an inherently perfect nature is extremely useful at the beginning. It’s faith until a direct experience of what teachers are pointing to is realised then it becomes knowledge or Self-awareness.

The direct experience of what the teachers are pointing to is the reason for meditation. Therefore I have included one line instructions at the end of each foundation to help you give it a go and see for yourself.

In the natural state the meditator is connecting with something beyond the realm of the mind. Zen master Bankei called it the Unborn Mind because it is never born or created; it's eternally present. Effortless meditation is resting within a perfection and wholeness that is already present, it is not created through meditation practice it is discovered.

The Six Foundations

1. Non Grasping

Non-grasping means you cannot grasp or comprehend the natural state of meditation with concepts. The paradox is we are discussing the topic with words and concepts. That’s why teachings like this blog are often called pointing out instructions. Teachers can point to something for you to see for yourself but as the Zen saying goes don’t get caught looking at the finger pointing to the moon look at what’s being pointed to. Experience it for yourself don’t use this information to create more philosophy.

It's not your mind that understands the natural state it’s a whole being experience. What some call a direct experience unmitigated by words or concepts. In this way it's sometimes referred to as naked awareness; a non-conceptual awareness not clothed in judgements and mental constructs.

In meditation non-grasping is facilitated by a constant letting go of thoughts. More than that it’s a consistent disbelief of thoughts. One Tibetan master states “ thoughts are not the problem; it’s grasping at them that causes suffering ”. Therefore, a deeper abidance is necessary, accompanied by a profound relaxing and an opening to the totality of immediate experience.

It's very important to mention that non-grasping also means not grasping onto this is the 'right way' and that is the 'wrong way'. This makes it difficut to fathom at all but that's the point. Complete openness to what's happening without any internal commentary.

The wisdom of the natural state cuts through all illusions laying bare reality as it is.

Any attempt to grasp the natural state with your thinking mind will not only fail it will become a big obstacle to resting in the natural state. When your mind says “I’ve got it” it hasn’t. What it boils down to is best described in the first line of Tao Te Ching “ the Tao that can be named, is not the real Tao ” .

INSTRUCTION: Allow thoughts to pass by without attaching them to your experience.

2. Stillness

Stillness is a great pointing out instruction and one of the few direct methods. The only thing to do in the natural state of meditation is to sit still. Of course this is not even neccesary but for the sake of 'practicing' this type of meditation sitting still is extremely useful and a cornerstone of meditation training.

Meditators are often told about the monkey mind. A mind that is constantly jumping from one thing to the next. In fact, it seems we are hardwired to notice movement above and beyond all else. So, pointing to stillness is really getting at what is not moving, what is peaceful.

All impermanent things move. In fact, all things move but what is being pointed to is beyond that which is either created or destroyed, in other words the natural state is not a thing or an object to focus on. The natural state of meditation is transcendent of our usual conceptions of time and space. Some have called it primordial as in Dzogchen, others have called it eternal, one Tibetan master calls it " the essence of nowness ".

As modern spiritual teacher Adyashanti often points out the natural state or what he calls pure meditation is not a ‘state’ at all. Any experience that newly arises in meditation is not it. Anything that moves or changes is not it. In Vedic meditation there is practice called 'neti neti' which means not this, not that . Essentially anything that appears to awareness, is not it because it is not complete or the whole picture.

As Eckhart Tolle says “ Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions. ”

INSTRUCTION : Sit still and rest in the unmoving awareness of the present moment.

3. Non Fabrication

This is an important point that can quickly connect you with the natural state of meditation. It’s important because it’s easy to think that meditation creates the natural state but the truth is meditation helps to discover the natural state not create it or fabricate it through a technique. That's why it's called non-meditation it's not a technique that produces a result.

Non-fabrication means to stop trying to manipulate your experience in any way. This explains why it’s called natural because it’s not created through effort it already exists, naturally.

Non fabrication means you don’t have to make any effort to fabricate or create any state of mind or any particular emotion. It also implies that you let things be without interfering in your experience in any way. You don’t have to create good thoughts and you don’t have to get rid of negative thoughts; you simply let all thoughts pass by themselves.

This level is also associated with not being attached to pleasant, relaxing or even mystical experiences in meditation. Often when we’ve experienced awesome meditations, we try to re-create that experience and become disappointed when it doesn’t happen. This can be a big obstacle especially for experienced meditators.

This also relates to another aspect of the natural state which could have been its own category and that is being aimless or goal-less. That is not trying to create a certain outcome, not having an aim in mind. You’re not doing something to create a result you are simple being.

In Zen there is a central meditation practice called Zazen which generally means ‘ just sitting ’ which is a way of saying non-fabricated sitting. It’s the ‘just’ that’s important. There’s nothing else left to do in meditation other than just sitting.

INSTRUCTION: Just sit without making any effort at all to create a particular experience.

4.Non Resistance

Along with not trying to create any experience during the natural state of meditation you also don’t have to resist anything either. This is a powerful method to let go of stress and come into alignment with what it. Eckhart Tolle goes so far as to say “ Non-resistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. ”

Non-resistance is another way of saying acceptance. This is very therapeutic when it comes to difficult emotions and troubling thoughts. It’s normal to want to fight with them and get rid of them but the ancient sages and now the the modern mindfulness movement are both saying the same thing; by allowing and accepting difficult thoughts and emotions they lose their power over you and you provide space for them to pass by.

Fighting and resisting thoughts and emotions adds fuel to the fire and can actually double the amount of suffering you are experiencing. For example you can get angry about being angry, sad about being sad or increasingly fearful about being afraid.

There’s the old saying “ what you resist persists ” and there’s definitely truth to that. In fact stress, anger, anxiety and even depression come from wanting the present moment to be different than it is. By not resisting and instead simply allowing the present moment to be as it is you undercut the basic struggle with what is and allow a sense of openness and freedom to emerge in its place.

INSTRUCTION: Notice your current state of being and accept it as it is without trying to remove anything.

5. Simplicity

I was once at a teaching with a Tibetan meditation master who was teaching the natural state of meditation and I asked an intellectual question related to Buddhist paths of purification and karma etc because I was immersed in those studies at the time. I thought my question was very impressive and would even test the teacher, but he answered by saying it’s like the Beatles song "let it be, let it be" and he sung it to me.

The teacher’s response did not directly answer my question but it has stayed with me ever since as a brilliant antidote to my overly analytical mind. So often we want reasons, explanations and intellectual certainty but the natural state of meditation is related to being a simple meditator not a scholar. Just let it be.

It’s a huge freedom not having to know everything. Not having to explain everything in complex terms and scientific rhetoric. Instead the freedom of not knowing and simply being is a pure pleasure only found in the simplicity of the natural state. Alan Watts even calls it " the wisdom of not knowing".

In Zen, unanswerable Koans where given to students to help break free from the tendency to always use the thinking mind to navigate life. A Koan snaps the thinking mind wide open and reveals the open spaces of awareness, intuition and spontaneity. As Zen master Suzuki famously said “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Returning to simplicity is returning to pleasure of just being, which encourages a child-like natural joy. Simplicity is embodied by living in the breath instead of dwelling in the constantly agitated and problem-solving thinking mind.

Simplicity is not stupid it’s humble. Simplicity isn’t avoiding problems it’s approaching life with a gentleness and openness that is well equipped to enable our innate intelligence to shine forth.

Great scientists like Einstein have admitted that some of his greatest break-throughs in science were not while he was obsessively thinking about a problem but instead came when he was relaxed and not thinking about anything at all .

INSTRUCTION : Follow your breath instead of following your thoughts and you will soon be abiding in the simplicity of just being.

6. Self Luminous Awareness

There is something to be aware of, something to recognise. It just cannot be grasped by the mind, it doesn't move, it's not newly created, it's not produced by resisting anything and it's so simple it's difficult to accept.

Self awareness is the key ingredient and is often overlooked in meditation instructions. I'm talking about the self-radiance of non-dual awareness because it’s not one thing looking at another it’s simply the source of light illuminating itself.

Self-luminous awareness is effortless. It’s not like you turn the light on in meditation it’s actually always shining you simply stop casting shadows with your mind and allow the light to shine on all aspects of experience. That’s what light does.

It’s like a lamp that illuminates the room and also illuminates itself at the same time. They are not two separate lights.

As Dzogchen master Lama Surya Das says the natural state of meditation is “bringing your entire being into complete, unified presence”.

When you are practicing normal types of mindfulness practices you become naturally aware of your surroundings and what you are doing. During the natural state of meditation you become naturally aware of who you are in the deepest and most complete sense.

You are simultaneously aware of your surroundings ‘as they are’ and you also gain deep insight of your total being. You are both the source of light and intimately connected with what it illuminates.

In meditation this is called a realisation of your true Self or knowledge of the absolute nature. I don’t want to pretend it’s easy to understand because it’s not. That’s why there are six foundations to support the skilful practice (non-practice) of the natural state and allow the dawning of your sky like nature to emerge through the clouds and shine brightly and unmistakably.

It's like your real home, your true resting place. You can immediately recognise it and feels very familiar.

INSTRUCTION: Notice that there you are unbounded awareness with no dividing lines and rest in the totality of that beingness.

Written By Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

Does The Law Of Attraction Really Work?

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 01:09:10 GMT

Of course, it does. And everybody is always using it whether they realize it or not. But how can you make it work for you? That can be a challenge. Yet a little study and a little practice, and you can do it.

For example, everybody has experienced that, when they buy a car, they start noticing the same make, model and color on the road everywhere. That’s the Law of Attraction working on a very fundamental level. This basic instance is simply your mind being focused on – pleased with – your new purchase. So, your eyes become vigilant to see what you are meditating on. Yes, you are meditating: You are thinking and feeling positive about this object. So, you see it everywhere.

The same thing happens when you apply the Law of Attraction consciously. You think about some object or circumstance, and you feel the wonder of it as though it already exists; and pretty quickly you start noticing little instances of that object or circumstance. That can grow into the reality of it appearing into your life.

As meditation Teacher Alan Wallace says: “...if you were able to focus your attention at will, you could actually choose the universe you appear to inhabit.”

The Story Of Physics

Not the math and science of physics - The Story of Physics. Once you understand this, you’ll understand how to make the Law of Attraction work for you.

The universe is filled with energy: The universal energy field. It’s everywhere, in everything; and even exists in the emptiest parts of outer space. Energy is always vibrating, waving, flowing, spiraling, and spinning in vortexes. These vortexes naturally pair up in double helixes (the shape of DNA). The forces inside the double helix sucks energy down its middle and concentrates it. Concentrated energy becomes matter. Now, that’s simplistic, but it’s a story of explanation, not science.

Now, let’s shift perspective from the fantastically vast to the inconceivably small. Scientists have been teasing out and identifying the tiniest particles, called quantum particles. These are the particles that make up the protons, neutrons and electrons in an atom. Quantum particles are so small that, if one was the size of your index finger, the energy field surrounding it would extend all the way out past Jupiter. It takes three of these particles to make a proton, and three more to make a neutron. These things are tiny!

But more to the point, they take up vast amounts of space by virtue of their energy fields, which are empty of matter except for the miniscule particle. That’s a lot of space. You probably heard your teacher talk about how an atom is mostly space. When we touch a table or chair, it is actually just the energy fields resisting each other. They’ll tell you that we don’t really exist, because we’re more than 99.99999% space. But I want you to realize that all that space is filled with energy.

Everything Is Energy

The entire universe is full of energy, including the energy that makes you. And the energy is always moving. You were expecting certainty? There is no certainty. Everything changes all the time.

Now, that brings us to meditation. We do meditation to help us recognize that there is no certainty. The point is that, we create mental constructs about what we think is real, so that we can have something firm to understand. But that is all illusion. We are energy beings, and energy is always flowing through us and around us and between us.

Some masters will tell you that nothing is real. This is why they say that. At its most fundamental, the physical part of reality is virtually non-existent. Reality is a vast amount of space filled with energy. You need to contemplate this for the next nine months to just get a clue as to how fluid and uncertain reality is. Just give up all your expectations and thoughts and feelings about thoughts. Empty yourself of all mental constructs and illusions. Vacate the lie that the universe is physical. The physical part is insignificant compared to how much energy there is.

So, that’s the first part of this: Belief. You can believe in a physical universe, or you can learn to work with the Law of Attraction, which is all about energy. Energy moves to create circumstances. Energy condenses to become matter. Matter is energy. E = mc2.

Energy Fields

Once we are empty of preconceptions, expectations, thoughts and emotional junk – once we are empty – then we need to understand the nature of our energy being.

For more than 300 years now, our culture has formed around Isaac Newton’s version of a physical world, where objects are separate from each other and bounce off of each other like billiard balls. With the advent of quantum physics, we now realize that everything is made out of vibrating energy. As the famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman said, “Everything jiggles.”

Energy condenses to create matter, but it is still basically vibrating energy. Since all matter is vibrating within a universal energy field, it is sending out waves into the field. Our bodies are doing the same thing, and even our brains and hearts are sending waves into the aether around us. The HeartMath Institute in California has done research that shows the brain and the heart each produce a certain amount of energy in the form of an electromagnetic field.

“The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body,” according to HeartMath Institute Director of Research Rollin McCraty. “The electrical field as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG).”

The heart, like the brain, generates a powerful electromagnetic field, according to McCraty. HeartMath studies show this powerful electromagnetic field can be detected and measured several feet away from a person's body and between two individuals in close proximity.

You may have noticed this when you’ve been alone in a room, and suddenly, you realize – without seeing or hearing anything – that another person has entered the room. The human body generates an electromagnetic field that interacts with others. That human field is energy extending feet beyond the skin. You extend beyond your skin.

In meditation, we can calm our brain and heart down to the point where we can sense this energy flowing through and around us. However, this high state of sensitive awareness is not the most astounding thing.

By synchronizing our brain and heart energies in meditation, our electromagnetic field changes. Not only that, in meditation, our DNA changes. Since we can consciously change our personal fields, we can send a new kind of wave into the universe.

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas (verse 22) refers to this single-mindedness unifying the brain and heart: “Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, … a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."

The idea behind the Law of Attraction is that, by bringing the heart and brain – feelings and thoughts – into a singular energy, human beings can broadcast energy waves that interact with the universal energy field. This creates a form or a coherent pattern for whatever we desire. That consciously held, coherent pattern then naturally draws the object or circumstance of matching energy frequency into our life.

You have experienced this unifying of brain and heart when you have “connected” with a person across the room. Human beings have been doing this unconsciously from ancient times without really realizing what we were doing. Now, we do so consciously with practice, with a pretty good idea of how we form our life – our circumstances – by holding our singular desire, by interacting with each other to magnify the energy, and painting that pattern in the universal energy. Amazing!

Written By Christopher Aune

Original article @ Christopher Aune Blogspot

Eliminating Attachment And Aversion To Experience Peace

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 03:54:56 GMT

Attachment and aversion are the main two obstacles to experiencing peace according to the Buddha. However, like many words that have migrated two thousands years into the present day the meaning and context has changed so I would like to offer an easy to understand version of what attachment and aversion actually mean and how to overcome them.

I was stunned at the simplicity of this teaching when I first heard it from my Guru at the time. It was one of those teachings when he said, “if you just to remember one thing about Buddhism remember this”. So of course, I sat up and made effort to understand and memorise what he was about to say.

Put very simply attachment is over-estimating the ability of something to bring you happiness and aversion is the opposite in that you over-estimate the ability of something to bring you suffering.

The key term is over-estimating. It’s a core delusion colouring our present moment and projecting qualities onto people and the world which simply do not exist the way we think. Wrongly believing we need to get something or remove something to achieve peace and happiness.

What Is Attachment?

Overestimating the happiness a person, object or experience can bring you.

Attachment is very close to addiction. Things you cannot live without and crave on a regular basis. Things and people you compulsively pursue in the name of happiness and fulfilment but the core delusion is you are pursuing things that will not bring you any lasting happiness and their power to make you happy diminishes over time.

Upon closer examination it’s possible to realise that happiness is not coming from the person or object you’re attached to.

We put so much time and effort craving and pursuing things we think will make us happy we leave hardly any time to cultivate the real causes of happiness and peace. As Lama Yeshe once said, “if we pursued enlightenment with the same enthusiasm as we pursue our hobbies we would all be awakened in no time.”

There is also something called healthy attachment in modern psychology. Healthy attachment to care givers is very important especially to a child and healthy attachments to partners, friends and family also play a big part in our happy healthy existence. But the key is understanding their limitations. It’s when you OVER- estimate the happiness those relationships can bring that causes all the problems, addictive and possessive traits start to appear and unhealthy consequences ensue.

Therefore, in all situations a healthy dose of wisdom understanding the limitations of that happiness is needed. You don’t have to give up all the people and things you love just to experience the illusive inner peace me and others constantly harp on about. You just need an understanding of the reality of the situation.

The Buddha tried to give up all attachments by leaving his community, friends and family to meditate constantly in the forest with wise men. But he eventually discovered that was an extreme to be avoided and it made him weak and no closer to enlightenment. He recommended a middle way avoiding the extremes of austerity and poverty and the other extreme of hedonism and addiction.

The middle way is giving up the extreme of believing pleasurable experiences will bring you lasting satisfaction and also letting go of the idea that giving away everything will bring you peace. In other words, the middle way is giving up attachment and aversion.

A powerful insight is to understand that your partner "cannot make you happy”. This is simply taking responsibility for your own happiness and not relying on others to provide it for you. A relationship can be a joyous partnership, but it will go down hill very quickly if you rely on the other for happiness or blame them for your suffering or in other words have attachment and aversion present in your relationship.

What Is Aversion?

Overestimating the suffering a person, thing or experience can cause you.

The other side of things is aversion. Aversion is believing you cannot possibly be happy if such and such is present in your life. We have many aversions to people, work and especially uncomfortable feelings. we project that it's that person that makes me unhappy but on closer examination we will see in reality it has more to do with our reactions and not as much to do with others or the situation.

Sometimes we are not overestimatig the suffering something can bring we are seeing the situation clealry. There are conditions that cause harm to people that can be avoided.

The balanced view of aversion understands there are things that are very toxic to the human condition that should be avoided. Having an aversion for cruelty or envirnmental degradation are examples of 'healthy aversions'. I think it’s extreme to blame a tortured prisoner of war survivor for their suffering entirely. It’s not just their ‘story’ that continues to cause the trauma survivor's suffering, the physical damage to the neurological functioning and nervous system is now beyond doubt in post-traumatic-stress-disorders.

There is a middle way to understanding the suffering of aversion too. We can improve our conditions to enable happy healthy lives; it’s not just all about how you perceive the world.

When I first heard these teachings about attachment and aversion twenty years ago I thought I could become a super-human enlightened person where absolutely nothing could harm me because my mind training was too powerful. I could eliminate all suffering just by reacting differently.

Authentic teachers admit that after awakening there is still ups and downs in life and the pursuit of constant bliss is another delusion in the attachment category.

The philosophy gets deeper and deeper the more you go into it and has profound implication to how we can skilfully navigate life but I would like to switch to the method part of this blog which is easy to understand and practice and give some tips for overcoming attachment and aversion.

Meditation Practice For Overcoming Attachment & Aversion

Firstly, it starts with the acknowledgement that happiness and suffering are not entirely dependant on outer circumstances and that the way our mind perceives people and things plays a monumental role in our happiness. This is one of the first and most important realisations on the spiritual path and upon this basis we enter meditation/spiritual training.

Things are never 100% bad or 100% good. Seeing the good in the bad and the bad in the good is another way to let wisdom in and avoid extreme views. The Yin / Yang symbol expresses the truth of this reality.

There are many ways to reduce attachment and aversion. You can try to cultivate equanimity. Not getting too excited over supposedly good things and not getting too depressed about supposedly bad things. In other words not attaching labels.

Something as simple as giving away material things you’re attached to can start to loosen the grip of attachment. Challenge yourself to leave your comfort zone and try things you have had an aversion to in the past. Or simply notice that things that brought you great joy in the past no longer have that effect, or things that scared you in the past don’t bother you anymore. Seeing the impermanence of the happiness and suffering supposedly brought on by things and people goes a long way to moving toward the understanding of how big a role your mind plays in shaping your experience.

Finally, the meditation to practice is a mindfulness type of meditation. Where you sit calmly and find joy in doing nothing. Finding the natural joy of just being is a powerful way to discover the peace beyond conditions. You already have the potential within you right now to experience the peace and happiness you have been searching for.

By letting go of attachment and aversion and simply experiencing the joy of the moment we empower an enlightened nature to manifest. This means letting go of all those projections about where you think happiness and suffering come from. Letting go of all projections which are actually your thoughts superimposed on the world around you. Finding the space between thoughts is a place naturally free of attachment and aversion.

Try a meditation right now. First read this and then sit quietly with your eyes closed. Say to yourself: there is nothing I need to add or remove right now to experience the simple joy of being and then sit calmly for a few moments ignoring thoughts and concentrating on watching the breath.

Written By Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

Science Shows How We Can Control Our Gene Expression And Evolve Consciously

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 05:12:32 GMT

Epigenetics - The Science Of Human Empowerment

Every thought you have causes neurochemical changes, some temporary and some lasting. Your thoughts, lifestyle choices and diet contribute to your genetic expression — welcome to the world of epigenetics. This evolved science of genetics teaches us that we are the mavericks of our genetic destiny with the capability to evolve intentionally and consciously. The old belief that we are hostages of our DNA and victims of heredity, couldn't be more false. The aim of this article is to explore and breakdown epigenetics into a simple to understand science.

Epigenetics

Epi - means above.

Epigenetics - means above the genes.

“The term epigenetics, which was coined by Waddington in 1942, was derived from the Greek word 'epigenesis' which originally described the influence of genetic processes on development” ~ Waddington C.H., The epigenotype

What is Epigenetics?

“Epigenetics is the study of cellular and physiological traits, or the external and environmental factors, that turn our genes on and off, and in turn, define how our cells actually read those genes. It works to see the true potential of the human mind, and the cells in our body.” ~ Bruce Lipton

Epigenetics is a now an established science showing us that we can reprogram our genetic structure by shaping our attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs.

We can reprogram our genes in ways that empower and propel us into new levels of self-mastery. This is done by sending new information that changes the way cells behave and communicate with each other.

Once we identify the perceptions and out-dated beliefs that limit our gene expression, we can begin to open up to more holistic forms of cellular expression.

BREAKDOWN

1. The sensory receptors detect thoughts and beliefs

2. Triggering the brain to release chemicals into the body

3. Signalling off cellular behaviour

4. Controlling genetic expression

It is important to note that the brain can release chemicals into the body just by thought alone — focused thought can trigger a cascade of chemicals in the body, signaling genes to turn on and off.

What does this mean?

The way you perceive reality is triggering of a cascade of chemical responses in the body that ultimately controls your gene expression.

That's right... the way you define reality on a moment-to-moment basis is modifying and regulating your gene expression.

Source - brucelipton.com

Source - Biology of belief

Source - renewingallthings.com

Pre-Determination Vs Self-Determination

Up until now, we have had a major misunderstanding of how our genes really work; some of us even believe that cancer is hereditary. So if our parents had cancer, then we would most likely be prone to cancer ourselves. This misconception is limiting, leading us to have a victim mentality and be disempowered.

“In New Zealand, there was a study conducted in a town called Dunedin in which a thousand individuals were studied from birth up to their twenties. What they found was that they could identify a genetic mutation, abnormal gene, which did have some relation to the pre-disposition to committee violence. But only if the individual had also been subjected to severe child abuse. In other words, a child with this abnormal gene would no more be likely to be violent than anybody else and, in fact, they actually had a lower rate of violence than people with normal genes. As long as they were not abused as children.”—James Gilligan (Extracted text from Zeitgeist moving forward)

What does this mean?

It implies that even if you have certain genes that were genetically inherited from your parents, it doesn't mean that they will turn on.

NEW REVOLUTION OF THINKING

Epigenetics is a revolution in our understanding of how life really works, from the micro level of our cells to the macro level our lives. Opening up those who understand it to new levels of human empowerment and the ability to consciously evolve.

You are the master of your DNA; you can change your emotions, thoughts, and beliefs at any given moment! You have the power to control your biology! Bruce Lipton calls this new scientific frontier the " biology of belief "

How does it work?

If you consider a DNA sequence as the text of an instruction manual — the information package that explains how to make a human body. Epigenetics is the science of your mind going through this manual with different coloured markers, highlighting which information to express and which information gets discarded.

Question:

So why do some people express healthy bodies and others express disease?

Answer: It's like using different coloured markers to highlight certian passages. Your thoughts, beliefs and perceptions will highlight which information is important, giving every cell in your body direct access to the most relevant information to express.

“For example, someone might use a pink highlighter to mark parts of the text that need to be read the most carefully, and a blue highlighter to mark parts that aren't as important.”

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - Biology of belief

The Power Of Consciousness

Through the science of Epigenetics, we now know that we are not doomed by our genetic inheritance. A change in human consciousness can produce a direct change in our gene expression. We have the power to influence our genetic destiny by turning on genes we want and turning off genes we don’t want through a variety of different factors, some of which are:

Meditation: Learning to control your attention and calm your mind

Lifestyle: Exercise or active lifestyle VS being overly sedentary

Diet: Healthy diet and detox VS chemically processed diet and toxins

Perception: Optimistic VS pessimistic (emotional and mental diet)

“Think of the human life span as a very long movie. The cells would be the actors and actresses, essential units that make up the movie. DNA, in turn, would be the script—instructions for all the participants of the movie to perform their roles. Subsequently, the DNA sequence would be the words on the script, and certain blocks of these words that instruct key actions or events to take place would be the genes. The concept of genetics would be like screen-writing. Follow the analogy so far? Good. The concept of epigenetics, then, would be like directing. The script can be the same, but the director can choose to eliminate certain scenes or dialogue, altering the movie for better or worse.” - Extracted from - whatisepigentics.com

KEY POINTS

• You have the power to control your genetic destiny.

• Every moment you are reengineering your gene expression.

• Your thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions, pre-determine your genetic destiny.

• Over-active stress hormones change the way genes are expressed, causing illness or disease.

“When we think our thoughts and feel our feelings, our bodies respond in a complex formula of biological shifts and alterations.” ~ Joe Dispenza

EVERYTHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE

• Diet

• Thoughts

• Perceptions

• Feelings

• Lifestyle

• Relationships

• Sleeping patterns

• Exercise

POWER OF PERCEPTION

“How we perceive reality and interpret the data we receive from our senses as factual information—whether that information is actually true or not—and the meaning we give it produces significant biological changes on a genetic level. Thus our genes interact with our conscious awareness in complex relationships. We could say that meaning is continually affecting the neural structures that influence who we are on the microscopic level which then influence who we are on a macroscopic level.” ~ Joe Dispenza

Please take a moment to absorb the above information.

All of these factors can eventually cause chemical modifications around cellular structures; turning genes on or off over time. Additionally, in certain diseases, various genes will be either up-regulated “on” or down-regulated “off”.

Source - cwilsonmeloncelli.com

Source - Biology of belief

Source - nature.com

The Healing Revoltuion

How we perceive our environment and process reality on a moment-to-moment basis is changing the internal chemistry in our bodies. It's like two identical computers (twins) downloading completely different software (apps) that then changes their functionality and operation.

Scanning your life to be threatening (anxious) or constantly dwelling on some worst-case scenario, will trigger of a cascade of stress hormone in the body.

FACT

Your brain doesn't know the difference between a focused thought or a real-life experience — if you’re sitting there dwelling on some anxious/stressful outcome, then your body will trigger of stress hormones as if the thought was real.

In fact, what we mentally rehearse every day and the emotional diet we feed our body daily, determines our genetic expression.

Your mind is the commander, and the cells are the soldiers. Cells are waiting for signals from the commander on how to behave. If the commander tells the cells to be strong, resilient and positive, then they will; if the commander tells the cells to be afraid, fearful or anxious, then they will. Ultimately, this will dictate the fate of the cells and gene expression.

Conventional medicine has taught and programmed us to believe that healing is a concept done through external means.

When we receive a diagnosis from a medical practitioner who will, in turn, prescribe us medicine in some sort of form, which we anticipate will make us feel better (heal).

This is a very limiting belief system on the body’s independent capacity to heal from disease, creating a very dependent relationship in an industry that doesn’t entirely have our best interests at heart.

However, mainstream medicine does have its place.

Modern day medicine does an excellent job of healing but the point here is that the human body is very powerful system at self-healing and epigenetics is the gateway for you to reconnect with that mysterious power that lies within.

When it comes down to chronic pain, mainstream medicine generally only provides a temporary fix and struggles to understand or heal the underlying issue; especially when we consider the subtle forms of energy within the body.

FACTORS THAT NEED TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY OUR MODERN MEDICAL SYSTEMS :

• Quantum physics (Mind and Body are connected)

• Epigenetics

• Emotional Diet

• Stress levels (How it affects the body’s field of energy)

• Meditation (Deep breathing/pranayama)

• Herbalism

• Detox

• Fasting

• Energy healing

"It is common to associate doctors with healing, so unless the doctor tells us otherwise, we generally accept any ill-fate prescribed to us as factual."

HOW MANY TIMES DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Often psychological issues or mental conditions are treated with anti-depressants or anti-anxiety pills. These substances of “healing” tamper with the natural production of chemicals within the body, which really only disguises the underlying issue, which in turn create a dependency based relationship with the substance.

Poor emotional states are a reflection of some deeper issue that needs more attention than a pill-based medication. You can’t put a band-aid on an infection and expect it to get better; it requires a little bit more attention from a different angle.

In the long run, sustained use of medicinal candy will cause a chemical imbalance, and the substance/pill will be associated with a counterfeit sense of happiness, which is often short lived and can lead to further altercations down the track.

INTERESTING FACTS

• The Body produces over 100,000 proteins plus 40,000 regulatory proteins needed to make other proteins

• The human body has 37 trillion cells and 23,688 genes

• Genes work in systematic cooperation with each other to make proteins

• Each gene can be expressed in thousands of different ways

• Proteins control our immune system, digest our food, heal our wounds and support/maintain the day-to-day operations of our bodies

• Humans only express around 1.5 % of their DNA while the other 98.5 % is classified to be “junk DNA.” (It's not actually junk—they just don’t know how all that DNA is used yet)

• The human body is a protein making machine: Muscle cells make actin and myosin; skin cells make collagen and elastin; immune cells make antibodies; thyroid cells make thyroxine; bone marrow cells make haemoglobin; pancreatic cells make enzymes like protease, lipase, and amylase

Source - consciouslifestylemag.com

Source - drkatharina.com

Stress Is Dangerous

Question:

How does stress effect gene expression?

Answer:

Stress is one of the major causes of epigenetic changes in the body — knocking your body out-of-balance. Stress hormones produce unsettled energy in the body, which can accumulate over time, leaving our cells vulnerable to absorb this negative energy.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as we have outlets of expression to discharge the stressful energy:

- Meditation

- Exercise

- Yoga

Stress can upgrade the integrity of our cells or it can breakdown our cells.

Think of stress as an opportunity to enhance one's life if you take the right steps! When the body triggers the production of stress hormones, the body’s physiology changes either sending you down a spiral of poor health or upwards to new heights of well-being.

A fast paced lifestyle combined with the amount of information we process daily puts the body through various degrees of stress. If you feel overwhelmed by the stress in your daily life, regaining balance may be as simple as bringing your awareness back to your breath (meditation).

Breath awareness and deep breathing will slowly trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, which acts as a brake on the production of stress hormones. Listen to one of our StressFit meditations today to bring your body back into homeostasis (balance).

Take a moment to consider all the stress affecting your life and wonder how different your life could be if you had a bullet-proof mind, unaffected by the world out there:

• Relationships

• Physical appearance

• Dealing with different personalities

• Running late to a meeting

• Traffic Jam

• Failed internet connection

• Loud noises

• Work/deadlines/presentations

• Financial status

(Just to name a few)

# IMPORTANT NOTE

The overactivity of stress hormones in the body; mobilises unsettled energy that can influence our gene expression. Unsettled energy can be disruptive to our bodies natural chemical order, thus shifting our state-of-balance. It is essential to have an outlet of expression to discharge this unsettled energy.

The fight or flight response triggers the production of stress hormones that enables a massive amount of energy to ensure our survival.

In fact overactive stress hormone production wrecks havoc on our body and at a cellular level, our body is not designed to handle the constant bombardment of stress hormones.

Over time, this will cause dysfunctional signals in cellular communication, and the outcome of this is genetic mutation — disease or illness. There are a variety of factors that one can be prone to keeping our body in a constant state of stress or survival mode, and this is what we call living in the 21st century.

There are ways to stop the dysfunctional signals, reprogram the gene expression and master your biology. I have created an online course on mastering your biology with epigenetics to help empower people to heal and evolve consciously.

Written by Oska Phoenix

Meditation As A Refuge From Suffering

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 01:51:34 GMT

I would like to introduce a concept that’s not common in the modern mindfulness movement and probably not very familiar to non-Buddhists and also re-translate the idea for people familiar with it. The idea is about ‘taking refuge’.

In Buddhism taking refuge is an entry into becoming a Buddhist and is most commonly taken as refuge in the triple gem – Buddha, Dharma and Sangha which is taking refuge in the teacher, the teachings and the community following the teachings, respectively. This practice is the starting point to escape the conditions of suffering, eliminate ignorance and liberate into freedom and peace. Buddhists usually recite the ‘refuge prayer’ before any formal meditation session.

The triple gem protects you from negative states of mind and firmly places you on the path to enlightenment but how does it actually do that? My Buddhist teacher whom I studied with for over 5 years full time living in a Buddhist community would always say the ‘real’ refuge is the Dharma. It is the actual thing that protects the mind, transforms it and opens up the possibility to realise the deepest nature of your being. Dharma is the actual practice of loving kindness, mindfulness and understanding the real nature of yourself and the world.

A Safe Place

Firstly, I want to mention the safe place that meditation can be. Setting up a beautiful sanctuary in your home where you feel inspired, safe and at home to practice the sacred art of meditation. Adornng the space with spiritual allies like images of the divine feminine, Buddha, Christ, angels and other guides and spiritual helpers that you can call upon to enhance the sense of being protected and feeling safe which are essential for healing and growth. This safe place is where you take the time to look directly at your feelings, emotions and thoughts without fear. A safe place to face yourself and your traumas and stress with gentleness and understanding. A safe place to allow difficult energies to arise out of the dark corners of your mind, where they have been hidden, and release them within the compassionate stable attention of meditation.

Changing Direction

I would say taking refuge in meditation implies we are a bit lost, struggling and our strategies for peace and happiness have fallen short of their mark. From this place of vulnerability and surrender we adopt new strategies and methods to help heal, transform and create the life we want for ourselves and others. Basically we turn to something for help.

This first stage is about admitting what you have been doing so far has not created the peaceful, stable and joyful mind you would like. Everybody already naturally takes refuge from difficulties and suffering in something. Whether you turn to friends or partners in troubling times or you reach for drugs or alcohol or even if you distract and overcome negativity through working harder or going to the gym, we all have a ‘go to’ when presented with suffering.

Taking refuge from suffering should not increase or delay the suffering but should serve to manage it skilfully and eliminate its causes. The Buddha more than 2,500 years ago promised his methods are a pathway leading away from suffering and toward the elimination of them entirely. And today scientific research has conclusively shown how mindfulness, loving kindness and meditation can reduce and eliminate serious mental and emotional distress.

Trusting the Process

Secondly, taking refuge implies putting your trust and faith in something. Unlike unconsciously reaching for a drink, the phone or other distractions when things get tough you reach for a few deep breaths, opening yourself to the experience through mindfulness, transform the situation with loving kindness or come to rest in the ultimate refuge of non-dual awareness. Importantly, unlike blind faith, the trust you develop in your meditation comes from your own direct experience and the more regularly you meditate the firmer that trust becomes.

A meditation teacher or mentor is important as well as a community of like minded people to support your practice is very helpful too but ultimately it’s your responsibility to use and strengthen the tools that will assist you directly to protect yourself from harm and eliminate the fundamental causes of mental and emotional disturbance.

For example, perhaps you might not think to do a loving kindness meditation when you are troubled but I have found loving kindness is actually a powerful refuge from your own suffering and a direct antidote to selfishness and being overly self-focussed which often amplifies and exaggerates the issue at hand. Having loving kindness opens your heart to the fact that others are suffering too, not just you, which gives you a greater perspective and also helps you enter a space of healing and growth that love and compassion provides.

How often have you said things you wished you hadn't or have done things you regret and can't even believe you did? This is usually caused by unconscious or subconscious drives that you were not even aware of at the time. Mindfulness helps to protect the mind from auto-pilot. Breaking the cycle of being controlled by conditions and allowing the inner space for wisdom to arise helping to make conscious choices based on your values and goals in life. In this sense mindfulness helps to protect you from your own stupidity.

Reliability

Next, taking refuge in meditation is a true and lasting friend that is always there for you no matter what and can always be relied upon. Whenever you feel angry or about to shout or you want to destroy someone or something a few deep slow conscious breaths is always available. Connecting with heartfulness and kindness is a flick of a mind set away to help transform hatred and jealousy and resting in the wide-open spaces of clear awareness is ever present right there in amongst the turmoil. Meditation is the most skilful means available that can be trusted and relied upon.

An essential aspect to mindfulness and meditation practice is being able to detach from thoughts about the past and future and be able to direct and consume your attention into the present moment. This in itself is a huge refuge from suffering because so many of our troubles are not actually happening in the present moment instead, they are often fears, doubts and desires about what could happen in the future or how the past could have been different. Being in the now is a simple and powerful remedy to these types of mental projections.

Simply becoming familiar with present centred awareness protects the mind from negative thought loops and useless ruminations and helps to skilfully manage whatever is happening with clarity and honesty. Mindfulness has become a revolution in psychotherapy known as the third wave after the first wave of Freud’s psychoanalysis and the second of cognitive behavioural therapy. Mindfulness is now recommended by doctors, psychologists, counsellors and even psychiatrists as an effective frontline treatment against stress, anxiety and other mental and emotional disturbances.

A Catalyst For Reaching Your Full Potential

Finally, we take refuge in meditation in the same way a mountaineer would trust the ropes helping them get to the top. Ultimately meditation promises to reveal and connect you with your authentic nature. Hatred, greed, ego etc are all apparitions that come and go within your experience but are not one with your true identity. In other words, they can be removed, just like clothes, to reveal the naked radiant awareness that is your real identity and highest potential.

Therefore, taking refuge in meditation is not just to overcome suffering but is also a reliable means to blossom to your fullest potential as a human being. Buddha advised on his deathbed not to worship him when he died but instead to follow the path he presented, and we too can achieve the same results. In other words, the Buddha advised to take refuge in the path of meditation.

I can personally testify to the efficiency of loving kindness meditation to transform your emotions, mindfulness to bring about a calm stable attention and non-dual awareness to reveal an infinite dimension of spaciousness and bliss. The way of meditation is a holistic approach that engages every dimension of your being and everybody can access this refuge at their own level of understanding and practice. This incredible inner technology of meditation is now available to everyone to turn to for refuge, transformation and self-realisation.

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

How I Became A Meditation Teacher

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 02:14:49 GMT

In the year 2000 I was living in Brisbane, Australia and steadily growing disillusioned with the goals of our modern society. It seemed ridiculous to work most of your time for food and shelter, desperately looking forward to the weekend and that longer holiday getaway once a year. I also had a growing interest in Buddhism which started when I learned mindfulness techniques to improve my performance and control my emotions when I was training to be a professional tennis player. The combination of these two things led me to a Chenrezig Buddhist Institute on the Sunshine Coast, Australia.

I decided to follow my heart and ‘drop out’ of the rat race. I gave away what little possessions I had and moved to the Buddhist Community where I soon had the privilege to stay in a retreat hut situated remotely on the 160 acres of land at the centre.

I volunteered (karma yoga) as a receptionist in the Dharma shop and joined the full-time study program the monks and nuns and serious lay practitioners would attend. It was an awesome lifestyle studying Buddhism with the community, doing only 15-20 hours a week work, hanging out in the Big Love Café having profound discussions and meeting some amazing people including other volunteers from all around the world.

I loved the philosophical study which cut to the heart of what reality really was and the best way to live as a human being. I loved my daily practice which focussed on generating great compassion for all sentient beings and meditating. I would often meditate in silence in my retreat hut, accompanied only by the sounds of nature and simply bliss out. My hut used was very primitive without electricity or drinking water but that was its charm and it was an incredible experience to live there for so long. Literally carrying water and chopping wood for the fire as the Zen saying goes.

As many others did living this lifestyle, I made the commitment to become an ordained Buddhist monk. This was a big challenge and perhaps too much of a culture shock going from board shorts to wearing robes and other issues like how to support myself financially as it was not free to live there even as a monk. My time as a monk lasted about a year before putting back on my board shorts and living as an average guy again. Don’t get me wrong I loved being a monk for that time and would recommend it to anyone to experience the discipline and the freedom being a full-time spiritual practitioner has to offer.

Things were going great for a few years living that way and then one fateful day in 2002 I was working at reception and a visitor came in and said there were a bunch of people waiting in the meditation room for someone to lead a guided a meditation. It appeared the person who was scheduled to do the guided meditation had forgotten to turn up. There was a bit of embarrassment on management’s part, but no-one wanted to do it, so I jumped in eagerly and said I’ll do it. As a former tennis coach I was not shy in teaching people or talking to an audience so I borrowed a singing bowl from the shop, ran up the steep hill to the meditation room, turned up huffing and puffing, sat on the meditation cushion and gave my first guided meditation class.

Apparently, I was good at it and started to take regular meditation classes. It soon became clear that I was not leading people strictly in the orthodox Tibetan Buddhist approach. I would always ‘freestyle’ my classes not reading from a book as others would do but spontaneously guiding people from my own knowledge and experience from my own practice and study. I always prayed and meditated myself before giving a class and when giving the classes I felt like I was channelling a higher/deeper state of consciousness that was not actually ‘me’. It was very rewarding and a beautiful experience to have the honour to guide people in that way and I felt like I got just as much benefit from leading the class as others would being guided.

In a debate once I was told by a senior nun that I should be teaching beginners about the hell realms not as a psychological state, as I saw it, but an actual place people will go if they commit negative karmic deeds. I was told people were not there to relax or feel good but to be taught the harsh reality of the human situation. I disagreed.

This tension steadily grew between myself and the orthodoxy until the breaking point came when a woman who had attended one my guided meditations had somewhat of a mini orgasm doing the breathing exercises. She decided to talk to one of the nuns about her experience to get some clarity about what happened to her and all hell broke loose. I was summoned again by the senior nun and asked exactly what I was teaching people. I told them I was teaching breathing exercises, visualisation and other practices but unfortunately these were considered Tantric in nature and meant to be secret in that particular Buddhist tradition.

I was told in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to teach my way to leave the property and do it somewhere else and that’s what started my pursuit of leading classes my way.

When I say I teach ‘my way’ it’s actually not as unique or original as it sounds. My style of understanding and teaching stems from great meditation masters who have also taught advanced practices to beginner students in modern times and translated ancient teachings into the vernacular of the current culture. One such teacher was Lama Thubten Yeshe who ironically founded that particular Buddhist centre and many more around the world and he would teach this way. He even wrote a book about the advanced practices and far from being secret it was available to anyone who bought it. When I brought all that up in one of my ‘meetings’ with the nuns they said he was an enlightened master so he can do it, but I was not allowed.

I do not consider myself an enlightened master in any way but the techniques I taught were also similar to pranayama (breathing techniques) you would find in an average yoga class and actually not that complicated and easy to learn. It was in the easy to learn and the attainment of quick results that Lama Yeshe said were the reason they were perfect for Westerners and I agreed whole heartedly as I experienced the results myself and saw it in others too.

I still did the guided meditations at the centre, but a nun attended my next few guided meditation classes to keep an eye on me and I was ordered to only teach the basics of mindfulness and other beginner’s practices which were not ‘practices’ at all but more like reading out Buddhist teachings. I wasn’t even aloud to turn the lights down or light a candle which I had been doing up until then because that was considered ‘new age’ and nothing to do with meditation according to the fundamentalists in power at the time. I was also told people could not lay down either and must sit up straight. I would teach the correct meditation posture but I would also allow people to get as comfortable as they liked even if that meant lying down. One particular person had a back injury and unfortunately stopped coming to classes because she could not lay down during the sessions. So with the horrible fluorescent lights shining bright and everyone sitting up comfortable or not I attempted to continue leading classes at the Buddhist Institute.

It wasn’t until I filled in for a nun running meditation classes outside the Institute that it all took off. The nun had started to lead a regular group close by at Maroochydore and when I filled in for her, as Frank Sinatra said, “I did it my way”. It was away from the centre and they were my clear instructions to only teach my way ‘off site’. However, when the nun returned to take over the class a few students secretly told me they liked my meditations better. They invited me to lead a guided meditation covertly in one of their garages and that’s when my ‘career’ as meditation teacher really began.

My meditation group soon secured a more suitable location (not in a garage) at a nice hall in nature and the class grew. I left the Buddhist Institute and my sangha (Buddhist community) who I felt rejected me somewhat and I also left behind my beloved meditation hut which I ended up living in for five years in total and re-joined the world. I started to record a few classes and started my own website where I put the recordings and starting writing blogs and that was the birth of The Way of Meditation and my career as a meditation teacher.

I now hold regular meditation classes and retreats around the Sunshine Coast , have a following of over 210,000 on my Facebook page The Way of Meditation where my posts reach a million people a month and I also offer online meditation coaching. I am still finding a place as a meditation teacher balancing the traditional aspects of Tibetan Buddhism with the ever-growing modern secular approaches to mindfulness.

Ironically the meditation the nuns tried to stop me from teaching is now one of my popular guided meditations and blogs. It’s called Tummo the Bliss of Inner Fire (Tibetan Kundalini) and I continue to teach it in my retreats and now have an online course which people seem to be loving and get a lot out of it.

I hope continue to teaching, continue to learn and grow myself from the honour and privilege it is to teach meditation. I hope to help guide people to connect with the inherent positive qualities of their own minds and awaken Buddha nature which I believe is one of the most urgently needed transformations needed in this modern world.

Written By Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

9 Attitudes To Deepen Your Mindfulness

Fri, 30 Aug 2019 16:00:00 GMT

These 9 attitudes that help deepen your mindfulness come from the secular guru of modern mindfulness Jon Kabit Zinn. Jon has been tirelessly working to bring mindfulness into the arena of medicine and healing and the popularity, research and huge movement that mindfulness has become is largely due to his efforts. Jon created MBSR or Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and it has spawned a whole new era of psychotherapy and mindfulness based health interventions.

Mindfulness has many scientifically proven health benefits including improved physical, mental and emotional health. It is actually a holistic type of therapy essential for sanity and intelligence.

Jon’s definition of mindfulness is the current most popular working definition used by health professionals and mindfulness teachers. It is the ongoing moment to moment awareness that arises when observing the present non-judgmentally.

Jon says that this seemingly simple directive found in the definition is an extremely difficult thing for humans to do and therefore these 9 attitudes that accompany mindfulness training are an essential way to deepen your understanding and experience of mindfulness training. These 9 principles are all intimately connected and interwoven. Mastering just one of them you can master them all and therefore you may prefer to just focus on a few and not all of them.

This is my own commentary on the nine attitudes of mindfulness as outlined by Jon Kabit Zinn. I also include the video of Jon explaining the 9 attitudes at the bottom of this blog.

Beginner's Mind
This is a term coined by Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki and is a key element in mindfulness. It refers to seeing the present moment in a fresh and open way. Suzuki said that “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities ; in the expert’s mind there are few.” Ironically having an innocent and open attitude helps to cultivate creativity and intelligence. Without labeling or pre conceived opinions of the situation your whole being is free to engage with the moment and empower your ability to ‘think outside the box’.

Non-Judging
This appears in the definition of mindfulness and is the key principle that gives rise to a clear seeing awareness. Judging becomes a veil or a filter to the present moment and colours everything we experience and imprisons us in our own narrow reality tunnel. By not judging we can enlist a type of awareness that clearly discerns the situation outside of our own conditioning. This is an enlightened type of awareness that is not bound by our own experiences but instead engages all perspectives, holds all opinions lightly and allows the widest and wisest scope possible in any given situation.

Mostly we constantly judge by either stamping like or dislike, or love or hate onto everything we encounter. This constant subtle and sometimes not so subtle judging comes from the mind’s search for happiness in the objects of the world. Therefore by deepening our conviction that true and lasting happiness comes from our own clear awareness and warm heart undercuts the mind’s tendency to constantly judge and try to move toward things perceived as pleasant and move away from the unpleasant. Therefore we don’t get as obsessed and addicted by the pleasant or as fearful of the unpleasant.

Acceptance
Acceptance is not passive it is an active recognition that things are the way they are. How could they be any different? Resistance to the way things are is a major cause of mental and emotional suffering and is fighting against reality itself. It also one of the most misunderstood principles of spirituality and mental health. It does not mean you shouldn’t try and change anything, this is the wrong understanding of acceptance. I like what Zen master Suzuki said “You’re perfect the way you are, and you could use some improvement.” I think the best place that transformation begins is from a clear awareness of the situation and that must include a level of acceptance.

Letting Go
Letting go reminds us that we can let things be. Letting go is letting go of being caught in desires for things to be different. Letting go is the key to freedom because clinging to things is a self imposed prison. Alan Watts explains that we let go every out-breath and to cling to life is as foolish as trying to cling to the in-breath. By letting go we allow things to flow into our lives. By letting go we don’t fight and resist change. By letting go we trust the process.

Trust

Trust is both being trustworthy and trusting. Trust is a recognition that we are not in control of every little thing in our life and many things vital to our survival are going on constantly and we trust that. We can trust ourselves by listening to the subtle signals our body and intuition give us in every moment. And we can trust others by not thinking the worst of people and by not pre-judging people based on their looks, age, gender or ethnicity.

Trust is also a type of confidence in yourself and in the world. Trust is not gullible just like being kind is not a weakness. Trust that you are capable of discerning the difference between friend and foe. Trust the process of ongoing non judgmental awareness to be healthy and healing and you can also trust that you can handle difficult situations with grace and dignity.

Patience
In my blog stop rushing and start arriving I explained the modern illness of the hurry disease. People are so often rushing to get to the next thing that they forget to enjoy and be in the present moment. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh said “if you cannot enjoy doing the dishes you will not enjoy what you’re looking forward to doing later on. Looking to the future becomes a predominant habit in people’s lives which cripples their ability to enjoy the present moment.

Patience is also keeping calm when things are not going your way or are going way too slow for you. Patience is actually a major attitude that protects your mind from anger and is highly recommended by Buddhists. Patience enables the ability to keep calm under pressure and reminds us to enjoy the small moments of life, because life is made up a series of small moments.

Non-Striving
In my blog the art of doing nothin g I explain the deepest and most profound teaching on meditation which is to just Be. Without manipulating, changing or forcing things in any way which puts you directly into the flow of now. To just be with life without an agenda. Non striving is not about having no goals or to be aimless - it is the ability to go with the flow. As Lao Tzu says “I do nothing and everything gets done.” It’s a way of acting without trying to act. Action happens by itself, spontaneously – rather than being contrived, it is more direct and natural and therefore more effective and appropriate.

Non striving recognises that happiness is not found in achieving or accumulating things but instead can be found in the stillness of awareness in every moment. Non striving is synonymous with peace, freedom and a deep sense of contentment with the way things are.

Gratitude
Initially Jon Kabit Zinn just wrote 7 attitudes of mindfulness but extended it to include the important aspects of gratitude and generosity. Gratitude is a way to protect your mind from constantly complaining and finding the negative in things. Psychologists call it having a negative bias and it's damaging to our mental health. To enjoy the present moment with a sense of reverence and humility. By slowing down and bringing gratitude into our present moment we bring a sense of delight and focus on the positive in life. Even when things are bad we be grateful for surviving them and learning from those events. Gratitude is always an option and a very healthy option indeed.

Generosity
In my blog Meditation and Generosity I explain how giving someone your presence is the greatest present of all. In fact it’s often all our children want is our attention. Being generous recognises that there is more happiness found in giving than clinging on to things. Generosity embodies a warm heart and kind attitude. Jon Kabit Zinn describes mindfulness as to also mean heart fullness. An open and generous attitude of being present. Being non judgmental is also a great gift to others and a foundation of a healthy relationship.

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad is the founder of The Way of Meditation and has been teaching meditation since 2003 and is determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time. Chad now offers Private Online Meditation Coaching and has also developed an incredible course called The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness.

Everyday People Answer The Question: What Is Meditation?

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 01:10:59 GMT

I Asked The Facebook Meditation Community

After I finished the blog The Guru Is Dead I decided to mine the resource I'd been preaching about that is within the heart and mind of every single person. We have The Way of Meditation Facebook Community where there are so many beautifully minded people practising a broad range of different meditations from different traditions. We come together as an online community united as human beings sharing our experiences and knowledge with no leader or Guru just a common interest in peace, love and unity.

So I posed the question to the group for the purpose of writing this blog, what is meditation? This question had come up before and I was in awe of the responses so I asked again and below are the honest, authentic and incredibly enlightened answers from everyday people:

What Is Meditation?

“Meditation is a process where the doer gains nothing but lose anger, stress, anxiety, fear, jealousy, hatred and suffering. It's a process through which one learns the purpose of life. Through meditation One can easily taste the nectar hidden inside. This is the nectar of happiness , peace and love.” ~Pankaj Nijhawann
“Meditation is quieting the mind and being in the present moment as an observer.” ~Ciria Moore
“Meditation is saying yes, even when you’re saying no. Whatever is happening, it is a deep yes, until you realise that everything was already allowed. Until you realise that we are always saying yes, we just don’t recognise it.” ~Jack Preston
“Meditation to me is taking full responsibility for your state of mind. Being quiet enough to hear my inner self, to know once I oversee my human condition, I am a true source of awareness and connected to everything to become the ultimate observer of the human experience.” ~Juanita Heart
"Meditation is the gateway to infinite possibilities." ~John Torres

“Meditation is looking within, past the muddy waters of the mind. It filters out the ego so that you can swim in the deep clean ocean of the consciousness.” ~Thane Govinda
Meditation is calming down, looking inside, analysing, distancing from many things....deeper understanding of myself...and much more.....wonderful daily work integrating meditation from morning to night.” ~ Christine Steck
"Meditation is the intentional use of attention to alter consciousness." ~Daimon Sweeney
“Meditation is a tool for knowing Oneself/Truth. It's the only tool that pulls us from somewhere else and brings to the moment (Consciousness). It relates with how to prevent our inner chemical factory from working against itself. In simple words Meditation = Consciousness.” ~Priya Sharma
"I experience meditation as practising, consciously aware and knowing, realizing the True Nature of both absolute and relative realities. I seek the day meditation ceases and Samadhi begins." ~Jerry Collwel
"It’s the art of cessation without effort." ~William T. Langill Jr.
“Meditation is an act of self-love. When we give ourselves the gift of stillness, we receive the embrace of the loving-kindness presence. This gives us a boost that we can use throughout our day. Every interaction is an opportunity to expand our inner loving kindness toward others, which is the same as to say, toward ourselves.” ~Adriana Winters
“Meditation is the practice of being present with the source of everything. Meditation is removing attention from thoughts, emotions and bodily perceptions to be open to awareness of the flow of all-that-is on every vibrational level. Prayer is a type of meditation wherein one imagines a specific expression of the universal consciousness, and focuses mind, feeling and perceptions so that it creates the energetic vibrational pattern of what is imagined within the universal consciousness, which then manifests it in physical form.” ~Christopher Aune
“Meditation is being mindful of the four aspects of a person to develop wisdom i.e. to observe the truth of all aspects of a person to be impermanent and have no self. This is the right path to Nirvana.” ~Hla Hla Win

“Meditation is the quiet ever-present home of awareness itself, your own true nature. Unique to all in it's preparations until one is one with everything, beyond everything and the emptiness of everything simultaneously. Meditation is free. All the best things in life are. You are.” ~Kirk Dalgrin
“For me meditation is a process which is never ending. Meditation’s main purpose is PEACE. Listening to your inner voice is Meditation. It calms your mind and helps you to connect with your inner self. It makes your mind clear about your soul purpose in this life.” ~ Rakhi Malhotra
"Meditation is to observe silence like the stillness beneath a soaring bird's wing." ~Sanjay Khetan
“Meditation is like two, two-way mirrors reflecting on what is both externally and internally occurring, seeing a true reflection of inward and outward self. Like with all mirrors when light hits it, that beam shows you where you need to go and focus your energy. It's peace in pieces, you can both observe and act.” ~ Angela Owen
“Meditation is the highest form of Oxygen in your body, mind and Spirit which makes you feel intoxicatingly happy within your System. It helps you to experience the higher dimensions of our Universe making us feel that our life is a continuous rhythm. It helps us to raise our
level of concentration thus making us read our bio memory.” ~ Madhulika Kapoor
“Meditation is to become the observer, not the participant.” ` SJ Wolfe
“To observe and look at your real self.” ~ Kenta Nilsson
“Finite meets infinite.” ~Meghraj Menghani
"When meditating we look within. A question arises “what am I looking at?” Meditation is to take a change of view point. Looking to see what one is. One looks to see what is seeing. An answer arises out of one in the moment. “I see it now!” Enlightenment." ~Vincent Van

The Guru Is Dead

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 02:17:35 GMT

Entering A New Era Of Self Empowerment

Friedrich Nietzsche famously said "God is dead' referring to the end of religion and the victory of reason over faith. His declaration first sited in 1882 may have been premature since today religion is still prevalent in western culture and I would like say something similar about the Guru today. I would like to declare the Guru is dead. The Eastern Guru that is, the one that gives you blessings and just by mere association can redeem sins, liberate people from their suffering and take you alongside them to promised lands. The concept has been abused by charlatans for long enough and is unnecessary even in the traditions that advocate the primacy of the Guru. It’s time to evolve.

The fall of prominent Gurus due to sexual and emotional abuse of their students is all too prevalent these days at least in the Tibetan Buddhist scene that I’m connected with. There have been many but recently the two most famous are Sogyal Rinpoche the head of the Rigpa Organisation and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche the head of the Shambhala Foundation. These two huge Buddhist organisations with hundreds of thousands of members have been rocked by the ‘me too’ movement where brave woman have had the courage to finally stand up and say my Guru is a total creep.

Buddhist Guru Sogyal Rinpoche (pictured above) author of the best selling spiritual classic “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” was a brilliant teacher of spiritual concepts however it appears he was also a scandalous womaniser and abused his power on countless occasions to sexually molest woman . There is a huge conflict here of spiritual wisdom and his abusive behaviour. However if we see these people as just great teachers who are also flawed human beings it can start to make sense.

However, this blog is not about the revelations of those abuses, even though it’s an important part of the demise of the power structures of traditional Tibetan Buddhism where the Guru is firmly placed at the pinnacle of the pyramid as supreme leader and spiritual inspiration. Just like the Catholic priests who have been outed for their sexual abuses and rocked the faith of Catholics all around the world the fall of the Tibetan Buddhist Gurus has challenged the faith of many Buddhists around the globe me included. But there is a spiritual path forward without the high priests and Eastern Gurus, one that relies on methods not on association with Gurus.

This blog is not even about the massive power imbalance between Gurus and students that have created cults and the conditions for horrible abuse and misuse of that power, although that power imbalance is a good reason why the Guru should die (metaphorically speaking). This blog is not even about the corruption of funds by the Guru and the luxury they often deem from their role (often inherited). This is all part of it though and others are covering these issues with courage and dignity and books are now being written about these topics.

My point I would like to make is that practising meditation and spiritual methods does not require the worshipping of another human being it requires diligent practice of the methods. Even the Buddha supposedly said, “do not rely on me, rely on the path”. And the traditional eightfold path of Buddhism does not mentioned Gurus anywhere. Instead we find clear instructions on how to live a wise and virtuous life.

My former Guru (yes I was a devotee) has not been outed as an abuser except for an account of a nun friend of mine who told me our Guru had struck her with his heavy wooden mala across the face and had done it often to other women too. That was the final straw for me. I was sick of the Buddhist apologists under the hypnotic delusion that the Guru can do no wrong and accounts like this were often seen as a blessing for the person being beaten instead of the crime which it should have been reported as.

I left that religious institution to teach people the amazing methods I had learned which was the birth of The Way of Meditation. I am very grateful for learning from my teachers and I would like to make a distinction here between teachers and Gurus. Spiritual teachers are invaluable holders of knowledge that impart their wisdom so to empower students with the methods to overcome mental and emotional suffering and to achieve states of health, joy and insightful wisdom. They are invaluable and deserve our utmost respect but not blind faith. Don’t throw away your faculties for being reasonable just to follow someone devotedly.

My teacher (former Guru to me) always emphasised the importance of Buddhist methods to overcome suffering and just knowing about them was never enough you have to actually practice them regularly for them to take effect. Daily meditation and spiritual practice has been the cornerstone of spiritual traditions for thousands of years. My teacher would make the analogy of a doctor prescribing medicine. He said it was no good just getting the medicine from the doctor you must take it as prescribed which is the most important thing. Taking this analogy further you don’t need to worship the doctor as a supreme lord for the medicine to be effective, you should respect their knowledge but it’s the taking of the medicine that is the active ingredient in this equation.

My teacher would also dislike people coming to him with their everyday problems. Just because a person knows about and has actualised a certain method of spiritual training does not mean they know everything about everything or are even good at everything. Just because a person can sit in deep concentrative meditation does not mean they know how to run a company or manage family relationships or even how to cook. They are not the all-seeing wise men people think they are.

I often thought experiencing the petty politics and bickering of the Buddhist centre I lived at for six years that if all these devotees worshipped each other the same way they worshiped the Guru this place would truly be an enlightened community.

I have been a tennis coach in the past and the highest compliment for a teacher is for the student to transcend your own skills and become superior. The passing on of knowledge and seeing it flourish in another is by far the greatest reward as a teacher. But can that ever be said for a Guru? Do Gurus want to be superseded by their students or do they generally maintain their power and authority until they die? I think we all know that a Guru having played the role as the superior person never relinquishes that authority or admits a student has surpassed them and this is also a part of the disempowerment of a student that can never become the master.

The real source of power, love and wisdom is not from the Guru or sitting at their feet praying for redemption, healing or enlightenment. The real source of power is from within the hearts and minds of every person. An untapped reservoir of peace, love and deep insight and the key to unlock that potential is meditation. The mysteries of consciousness are only just starting to be understood and the limitless potential of human beings begun to be realised. To fully empower the individual, we must kill the external Buddha (famous Zen saying) and find the real Buddha within.

Spiritual teachers are people too. They are not avatars or perfect human beings or Buddhas incarnated. They fart, make mistakes and have bad days too just like the rest of us. Seeing human beings as infallible and perfect is a sure-fire way to create unnecessary power imbalances ripe for abuse, disempower the individual from their own truth and the blueprint for a cult.

There is inner technology that comes from the Tantric tradition which utilises the power of the mind to project positive qualities onto another (the Guru). In psychology this is called transference and it’s utilised as a spiritual method within eastern traditions. However, you do not need another person to use this technology. You can use the power of the mind and project onto yourself an image of an enlightened being made of light. This is an extremely useful tool ironically for ego transcendence and transformation of our usual mundane and self-defeating perceptions of our self. You can also unite with higher states of consciousness through visualisation of radiant light and merging with it, you don’t need to project all of that onto another person for this inner technology to work.

The practice of entering into a Guru relationship has been abused by the Guru, taken advantage of by charlatans, disempowered devotees from their own source of wisdom, undermined the confidence of devotees and created numerous cults and fostered cult mentality. Is having a Guru really worth it when there are other far safer and more effective methods for spiritual transformation in line with modern values of individuality and equality?

I realize I will offend many people with this article. Saying the Guru is dead to devotees is like telling Christians Jesus was just an ordinary man. But I write this for my own self- expression, to help others who are confused about the role of the Guru and to offer an alternative.

Since my journey began on the spiritual path I have challenged tradition and authority and forged my own way as I advocate others to do as well. As a meditation coach when people do inevitably ask me for life advice my response is always to try and guide people to trust themselves and their own intuition and not follow the norm or expectations.

There is absolutely no need to put a human being between you in your divinity. If you want to worship something worship your own inherent potential for spiritual enlightenment, worship your own capacity to love others deeply and worship your ability to be your unique self.

Just like the movie Kumare where an average guy pretended to be a Guru by telling people the Guru was within them but people still worshipped him as a cult leader. It seems to be ingrained in humans to idolise and to follow but perhaps we can get past that, evolve and truly empower and support each other as equals. I too have been seen as a Guru no matter how much I emphasise I am just a teacher and a spiritual friend travelling the path alongside anyone I teach. It also seems people just don’t know any other way than to idolise, or they project qualities that simply are not there, or it’s been conditioned into them through the spiritual tradition they follow.

In conclusion the Guru is dead because we all need him to die. We need to move past antiquated power systems that maintain imbalanced hierarchies. To fully be empowered to find the abundant inner resources we all have and not be distracted by the personality cults of the Guru. Kill the Guru and find out that the Guru will always live on inside us all, not one person or one group but in all people.

If the Zen saying goes “if you see the Buddha in the street, kill him!” I would like to say, if you see a Guru in the street don’t bow, shake their hand as an equal. You can learn from them but also teach them. Everyone can be a teacher, and everyone has something to offer.

The real power is spiritual knowledge together with the methods that work to overcome suffering and find the balance, peace and wisdom latent within everyone. Don’t rely on others to transform your mind and heart. Rely on your own diligent effort to make it happen. Learn from teachers and remember the highest respect you can give your spiritual teacher is not to worship them as Gods or perfect human beings but to put into practice what they have taught and fully embody the wisdom you have learned.

Written By Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

The Science Of Balancing The Heart And Mind

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 01:37:12 GMT

Heart-Mind Coherence

Stressful emotions like anxiety or worry, anger and fear, tend to cause a desynchronization in the activity in the brain and nervous system, which directly impairs cognitive functions. Heart-Mind coherence is when the heart and mind are synchronized and functioning in balance harmoniously. The aim of this article is to explore how this connection can determine a great deal of the way we experience life.

Heart-mind coherence is used to describe the relationship of ‘consciousness’ in-between the heart and mind and by extension, the coherence of all systems within the living human body.

Coherence implies order, structure, balance and alignment between the heart and the mind, which means balance — homeostasis of all the systems and organs within the body.

OPTIMISING YOUR FUNCTIONALITY

Having an efficient breakdown of communication between the heart and mind is the key ingredient in enhancing your cognitive behaviour.

YOUR HEART GENERATES AN EM FIELD

The heart’s EM (electromagnetic) field is driven by a continuous pulse similar to the beating of the heart and a rhythmic breath.

What affects the integrity of your EM field?

• Lifestyle

• Stress

• Breathing

• Diet

• Sleep

• Toxins (Alcohol/Drugs)

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - The Coherent Heart

Do you participate in deliberate breathing techniques to remove the toxic effects of stress?

Research has shown that our breath is a very powerful tool when it comes to influencing the EM pulse. Through certain breathing techniques, we can access the field of the heart, which means that we can start to promote an energising state of heart-mind coherence.

What we consider to be our heartbeat can be better thought of as pressure waves that carry information and an electrical pulse. The heart’s pressure waves or vibration is a filed of energy that carries information to all the cells in the body. An erratic or anxious pulse can result in the cells shifting into a state of emergency — stress, which can breakdown cells.

Cells are being signalled by the heart to modify their behaviour and expression continuously through these waves.

Question:

Okay, let's just digest this for a moment. Your heart beat is a carrier of information to the cells, so when you are feeling anxious and dwelling on negative experiences, what message are you sending to your cells?

Why do cells breakdown leading to disease and illness? Could it be due to stressful palpitations of the heart?

StressFit SPACE (take a moment)

THINK ABOUT IT?

Next time you stress-out, think about: what messages your erratic heartbeat is sending to your cell? Not to mention the scattered/distorted energy flow between your heart and mind.

Others have taken this information to the next level like over at IN5D website they say:

“We propose that the heart’s field acts as a carrier wave for information that provides a global synchronizing signal for the entire body. Specifically, we suggest that as pulsing waves of energy radiate out from the heart, they interact with organs and other structures. The waves encode or record the features and dynamic activity of these structures in patterns of energy waveforms that are distributed throughout the body. In this way, the encoded information acts to in-form (literally, give shape to) the activity of all bodily functions—to coordinate and synchronize processes in the body as a whole. This perspective requires an energetic concept of information, in which patterns of organization are enfolded into waves of energy of system activity distributed throughout the system as a whole.”

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Through vibrational output, the EM field has an effect on the stuff inside every living cell in the body. The rhythm of this pulse that stems from the heart has a major role in the state, inner balance and harmony.

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - The Coherent Heart

SOURCE - Heart Intelligence

Heart Brain Communication

At Heart Math Institution , recent research has shown that the communication between the heart and brain is a dynamic, ongoing, two-way dialogue, with each organ continuously influencing the other’s function.

Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways:

• neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses)

• biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters)

• biophysically (through pressure waves)

• energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions)

“Communication along all these conduits significantly affects the brain’s activity.” ~ Heart Math Institute

When the relationship between intellect and emotions synchronise, our our cognitive abilities will flourish as a result.

If the heart-mind relationship is out-of-whack (impaired), which we may experience from time to time, mental and emotional difficulties will arise and give birth to:

- Anxiety

- Addictive habits

- Excessive thinking

- Impulsive energy

- Frustration

- Anger

- Emotional dwelling

Just to name a few side effects.

If our emotional intelligence is not in alignment with the tasks that the mind prescribes, we will lack the motivation and drive to accomplish difficult tasks because we are not fuelling our actions with the most powerful vibrations such as love, joy, or bliss.

“Every moment of every day, your heart is having a conversation with your brain. Your thoughts are a direct reflection of how you feel.” ~ Greg Braden

IMPORTANCE OF HEART-MIND COHERENCE

• Promotes positive feelings

• Loosens the hold of stress

• Improves mental focus

• Creates inner harmony

• Reserves life force energy (Chi)

• Activates heart intelligence

• Creates more harmonious relationships

• Accelerates your ability to reach your goals

• Aligns the body’s major systems (lungs, digestive, endocrine, etc.)

• Lowers stress levels

• Promotes healing in the body

• Enhances consciousness

• Optimises emotional centres in the body

• Enhances mental awareness/function

• Keeps the body in a state of harmony, peace, and balance

More Benefits of Heart-Mind Coherence:

• Deep relaxation & a steady heartbeat

• Feelings of being grounded and centred

• Increased sense of well being

• Better sleep

• Enhanced focus

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - The Coherent Heart

SOURCE - Heart Intelligence

SOURCE - healthy-heart-meditation.com

Trust Your Intuition

"A study described in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine was reported by psychophysiologist Rollin McCraty and his colleagues from the Institute of Heartmath in Boulder Creek, California. McCraty's group simultaneously measured skin conductance, heart rate, and brainwave activity before, during, and after 26 participants viewed emotional and calm pictures. They found that both the heart (p < 0. 001) and the brain (p < 0. 05) responded about 5 seconds before the future emotional stimuli, and to their amazement, that the heart responded before the brain. They also observed significant gender differences in the processing of this future information (women performed better, on average, than men). They concluded: "Our findings suggest that intuitive perception is not a discrete function produced by a single part or system of the body alone. Rather, it appears that intuition may, in fact, be a system-wide process involving at least the heart and brain, together, in the processing and decoding of intuitive information.” - Excerpt from - viewzone.com

WHOAAAaaa…..

Let’s just digest the above information for a second. According to this research there is scientific proof that the human heart is plugged into a field of information that is beyond the physical realm of space and time, and intuitively can process information up to five seconds before the event.

What does this mean?

If you are already plugged into a greater field that triggers your heart to respond seconds before an event, then it’s most likely possible that you can access more information from this or these fields.

Maybe we can intuitively, through our hearts, interact with fields of information that exist on a higher plane of frequency. We believe through meditation, you can strengthen this connection creating a stronger intuition.

Just imagine if you intuitively knew if certain outcomes were congruent with your personal desires before they happened — wouldn't this ability allow you to make wiser decisions?

OPENING YOUR EYES TO THE UNSEEN

Our senses (eyes) are sensitive to a very narrow band of frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum — a continuum of all electromagnetic waves.

White light is a particular type of electromagnetic radiation that can be seen and sensed by the human eye. There is an enormous range of frequencies within the EM spectrum that

our senses cannot detect — our eyes cannot see ultraviolet, gamma or X-rays. Therefore it’s very likely that there maybe other bandwidths of information (frequencies) outside of our five senses.

SOURCE - khanacademy.org

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - The Coherent Heart

SOURCE - Heart Intelligence

The Sixth Sense

The heart is a powerful bioelectric field generator

“The heart’s electrical field is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain. This field, measured in the form of an electrocardiogram (ECG), can be detected anywhere on the surface of the body. Furthermore, the magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 5,000 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain.” - Excerpt from - Heart Math Institute Research

The heart is the most powerful bioelectric and magnetic field generator in our body. The heart radiates powerful electromagnetic energy that permeates every cell in the body, including those of the brain.

This electromagnetic signal that stems from the heart is so powerful that it radiates beyond your skin, all around you in a 360-degree sphere, and as far as ten feet into the space around you. Nothing else in the body has such a strong electromagnetic force.

This field of energy that stems from the heart is fuelled by the emotions that we feel; greatly determining the intensity of the field being projected. The heart field is continuously interacting with the environment and other fields of information outside of our senses.

I LIKE YOUR VIBE

The heart is continuously interacting with vibrational fields from the environment and people. Certain feelings we process on an intuitive level may be the result of the hearts interaction.

Did you know - the heart is also a hormonal organ — producing hormones that can directly effect the brain.

The heart may also be responsible for the production of Oxytocin fondly referred to as the love hormone.

“The love hormone Oxytocin — plays an important part in our emotional and social development.”

HERE ARE SOME FACTS ABOUT THE HEART:

• The ‘heart brain’ is in constant communication not only with the brain but with every cell in the body and also other fields that are near (other people) via these EM fields. ~ Heart Math Institute

• The heart is classified as a gland because it produces hormones which are constantly signalling messages to other glands to secrete specific hormones throughout the body. ~ Bruce Lipton

• The constant bombardment of stress and shallow breathing has scattered our heart field, resulting in a weak pulse.

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - The Coherent Heart

SOURCE - quantumtraininginstitute.com

SOURCE - traumatys.com

SUMMARY

#KEY POINTS

• The heart and mind act like a dual processor of information.

• Both are in constant communication with one another.

• Both have the ability to influence each other’s states.

• Thoughts can change the beat of the heart.

• Heartfelt emotions can change the patterns of thoughts.

• Creating heart-mind coherence results in a healthier life.

• Trust the intelligence of your heart.

• Realise that your heart is plugged into a greater source of information.

• Make it habit to let go of the intellect time to time and surrender to the intuitive nature of your heart.

• Incoherence can lead to health issues.

LET’S RECAP THE KEY POINTS

• Research by the Institute of HeartMath in California has shown that the heart is the most powerful generator of electromagnetic energy in the human body.

• The heart’s electrical field is capable of generating about 60 times the amplitude compared to the electrical activity of the brain.

• The magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 5000 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain.

• The electromagnetic energy of the heart not only surrounds every cell of the human body but also extends out in a 360-degree manner around the body creating an energy field of influence called the “Toroidal field.”

• Your heart is constantly interacting with other people’s brain waves, sharing vital information on an emotional level.

• Research conducted at the Institute of HeartMath suggests that the heart’s field is an important carrier of information.

When we experience positive emotions such as love, appreciation or joy, we release rhythmic and balanced waves of energy; leading to a strengthened heart-mind connection.

YOUR VIBE ATTRACTS YOUR TRIBE

Positive emotional patterns are more organised, healing, and calming for the body and are fortified when we consistently feed the mind positivity. Everything in our reality is ultimately vibrating matter/energy. If we understand the principle ‘like attracts like energy,’ then it’s in everyone's best interest to keep their fields operating in a very rhythmic and coherent manner.

This energy or pulse will radiate out into the environment; everyone that comes into your field will also feel your pulse on some level and be affected by it. This is best understood when you walk into a room and you say to yourself, “I like that person’s vibe,” meaning you felt their vibrational field. The degree of information that is exchanged beyond our conscious awareness within these moments of social connection greatly determines our relationship with others.

Ultimately you attract, what you project. The heart will magnetically pull experiences and people that are congruent with its vibration.

GUIDED MEDITATION

Here at The Way of Meditation we recognise this new science and our team has developed meditation techniques to directly influence the heart’s EM field. Our meditations are designed to synchronise the heart and mind, and as a result, this will lower stress levels. Learning how to induce coherent states in the body means that you can operate from an optimised field of resonance, bringing your body back into balance and harmony.

Try one of guided meditations from the RESTORE YOUR INNER BALANCE Online Course

The 5 Qualities Of Buddha Nature

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 03:39:26 GMT

Buddha Nature The Hidden Jewel Within

Buddha Nature is the most precious spiritual concept I have ever learned. Within Tibetan Buddhism all of the different schools have a threefold classification of the teachings from Buddha, they call it the three teachings or turnings of the wheel of Dharma. Buddha Nature is what the third turning or teaching is all about. The first turning is about karma, the second about emptiness and the third is all about Buddha Nature.

This is where Buddhist teachings link in with the perennial philosophy , a term coined by Aldous Huxley, where he explains the commonality between all ancient mystic teachings. A common ground sharing the idea of a universal spiritual essence as the source of all existence.

It’s known by many names, I like the term Buddha as a symbol for being awake or pure consciousness or enlightenment. Buddha Nature is simply your true Self, a nature that is simultaneously transcendent of but inclusive of human nature. Your higher Self as the ground of your being. That ancient primordial essence within you that is at the heart of all experiences.

As do so many meditation masters from Tibetan, Japan, Thailand, China and elsewhere, I hold Buddha Nature as the shining gem of inner refuge and the purpose of spiritual practice a virtual hidden gem within our own being.

In Tibetan Buddhism Vajrayana is the spiritual path of the indestructible diamond within which is Buddha Nature. Vajrayana uses an immanent enlightened essence as a spiritual path and goal. This is where I draw my inspiration for the following teachings about the five aspects or facets of Buddha Nature. Although these facets are describing seemingly different things they are referring to the one nature.

5 Aspects Of Buddha Nature

1) Buddha Nature Is Hidden

This is the first point to be made about Buddha Nature. I can’t tell you why it’s hidden, that’s actually a bit of a paradox because Buddha Nature is complete and perfectly aware and yet there’s a manifestation of not knowing its own identity. It’s a paradoxical journey back to where you started, where you never really left. A journey of growth, maturing and evolving. Heroically shedding old skins and becoming a new person only to finally realise what you where growing into was always right here already complete.

If in essence I’m perfect already why should I practice anything? The best answer is because you have not realised or seen for yourself what you really are.

It's also hidden because Buddha Nature is an extremely subtle phenomena, which is a fancy was of saying it’s not obvious. The reason for this is because it cannot be grasped by the intellectual mind or even perceived through the five senses. It’s Buddha Nature itself that becomes Self aware within you, or it awakens through you to become Self luminous.

2) Buddha Nature Is Empty

Just like space cannot be held or seen but contains the entire universe, Buddha Nature has a space like quality which is intangible. Often experienced as a nothingness or emptiness it is better described as an openness or boundlessness. Infinite nature is another clear way to express it. Without boundaries.

This boundless nature is impossible to understand with the thinking mind as hard as we might try. Even if you think you understand infinity, it’s still just a mental concept and far removed from the direct non conceptual connection with an infinite nature.

Scientific research into physical things, still have not found any fixed physical things. Looking deeply into any object we find space and fluctuating energy patterns popping into and out of existence. This inconvenient truth of physics conveniently points to the perennial wisdom of mystics. The universe is made of an invisible intelligent substance/field which is what Buddha Nature is and physical forms bubble up and out of that.

3) Buddha Nature Is Awareness

Buddha nature is not just empty like space it’s also aware. This is a key point and meditation traditions tend to emphasis one or the other, either the empty aspect or the aware aspect but the truth is it’s a combination of both. Two sides of the same coin. Empty and aware.

Self-enquiry is an ancient and powerful meditation method to come ‘face to face’ with your true nature, your Buddha Nature. Look now and see if you can turn your attention around and experience awareness itself. What do you find? Where is awareness? What shape is it? It’s these types of enquiries that lead to the discovery of Awareness being utterly unfindable and empty.

Again it has been known by many different names in different mystic teachings throughout history. I like the term clarity or knowing. Others call it the light or luminous nature. Whether you call it awareness or the witness it’s pointing to the same thing which is so close to us yet so often overlooked. It is at the heart of our real identity. I am awareness is the one thing that is always true everything else passes by, comes and goes.

4) Buddha Nature Is Love & Bliss

We are not talking about some dry bedrock passive screen behind existence as some teachers seem to point to, we are talking about a universal intelligence, the creative patterns, harmony and flow of life. A common mystical experience across all traditions is the profound feeling of love for all of existence often accompanied by intense bliss. This is a natural experience because its woven into the very existence of reality and is often naturally experienced as a sense of awe and wonder or the appreciation of a beautiful sunset.

Buddha Nature has a particular type of love grounded in the direct experience of boundlessness or openness where you see yourself in others, in fact you see yourSelf in everything. This is not a romantic or sentimental type of love it’s literally the fabric of the universe. Often spiritual traditions emphasise this Love and Joy aspect of Buddha Nature and it becomes a gateway to this divine essence.

When you recognise Buddha Nature within others it’s called love when you recognise it within yourself it’s called wisdom.

Incredible bliss has also been taught as an access point to the divine. Tantric schools emphasise this facet of Buddha Nature which seems to get blocked due to ignorance and energetic patterns that close down access to the natural bliss of Buddha Nature until it’s awakened through spiritual practice or sometimes even by accident. After all joy and bliss is your very essence and totally natural.

5) Buddha Nature Radiates Form

Buddha Nature endlessly expresses Itself. This is a non-dual way of saying that Buddha Nature is everything that exists. This might sound a bit grandiose a statement but what else are you going to call everything? Buddha Nature reveals itself as a complete paradigm. A way to view ourselves and the world that is spiritual in nature.

As I started out saying this is a universal principle. It’s a paradigm prevalent in all major world religious and a view that could unite humanity. Slightly Pantheistic in its interpretation of reality but a lot of scientists are even starting to be tempted by idea that everything is consciousness.

What we call form is really just vibrations of energy holding certain patterns we call atoms that make up the entire universe. These energy forms radiate from Buddha Nature the same way that heat radiates from the sun. Making a mysterious journey from the absolute formlessness of the essence into the expression as form.

Summary

To be totally clear all these things are not separate they only explained separately so we can understand them and begin to approach the enormity of what the universe really is. Becoming aware of Buddha Nature is the goal of all spiritual practice whether you access it through meditating on emptiness, being unconditionally loving or resting in awareness they all eventually lead to the totality of Buddha Nature.

Written By Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

Neuroplasticity: The Science Of Changing Your Brain

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 03:31:09 GMT

Neuro - The cells in the brain

Plasticity - The ability to shape, remould and restructure the network of brain cells.

Scientists now know that the brain can change itself. It is a plastic, living organ that can change its own structure and function. The aim of this article is to explore this revolutionary discovery, known as neuroplasticity; considered one of the most important developments in modern science of our understanding of the brain.

Imagine how different your life would be if could easily increase your memory, creativity, concentration and learning ability!

BASIC BRAIN TERMS

Neurons - Brain cells

Neural network - Jungle of brain cells clustered together

Synapse - The junction point between neutrons

Neurotransmitters - Chemical messengers for neurons

Did you know y our brain can physically change?

Yep, that’s right...

Neuroplasticity is an umbrella term referring to the ability of your brain to restructure itself, both physically and functionally, throughout your life due to your:

• Environment

• Experiences

• Learning

• Behavior

• Thinking

• Emotions

From the time the brain begins to develop as a child and until the day we die, the connections between the cells in our brain reorganise in response to our changing needs and environment.

“The brain is more plastic-like than it is hard wired—it can mould, shape and modify its structure given the right instructions.”

SOURCE - Evolve your brain

Shifting Paradigms

“The old model of the brain's inability to regenerate new nerve cells is no longer valid. It has been proven that certain areas in the brain can generate fresh cells.” ~ Neuroscience

THREE BRAIN MYTHS

• After a certain age the brain is hardwired to a set of programs that make up your personality.

• We cannot change our personality traits.

• We cannot train our brains.

These myths are very limiting and outdated perceptions!

Need-To-Know Brain Facts

• Genes do not determine the fate of our brains . Thanks to lifelong neuroplasticity, our lifestyles are as important as our genes—if not more—in how our brains grow and our minds evolve.

• Physical exercise and increased fitness promote brain functioning through a variety of mechanisms, including increased brain volume, blood supply, and growth hormone levels.

• Routine activities do not challenge the brain . Keeping up the challenge requires going to the next level of difficulty, or trying something new.

• Brain training can work; evidence-based brain training includes some forms of meditation, cognitive therapy, cognitive training, and bio/neurofeedback.

• Chronic stress reduces and can inhibit neurogenesis (growth/development of brain cells). Memory and general mental flexibility are impaired by chronic stress.

• There is increasing evidence that meditation and biofeedback can successfully teach users to self-regulate physiological stress responses.

What is biofeedback?

“It is a technique to learn how to control internal functions normally outside of conscious control. You learn this by using sensitive instruments that measure and display physical or mental processes—making you aware of things that you can’t easily feel or detect on your own”

~ brainworksneurotherapy.com

SOURCE - sharpbrains.com

SOURCE - Evolve your brain

How The Brain Really Works

By understanding the mechanisms of the brain, we will understand both its capacities and its limitations for thought and emotions.

Our brains changes every day as we experience new things (real or imagined). Focused attention can rewire the brain — be aware of your thoughts as they shape your reality.

#KEY POINTS

• Our neural networks rewire when new information is processed.

• The brain will physically restructure itself when our beliefs and perceptions change.

• The brain noticeably changes shape with attention, meditation, exercise, diet, and habits of life.

Synaptic Pruning

"Synapses are the connections between neurons that transmit chemical messages. When we learn new information and skills, synapses get stronger. We even generate new ones, a process called neurogenesis. During vital periods of cognitive development, we shed old synapses to make room for higher quality connections that can support more complex mental function. This neural spring cleaning is called synaptic pruning."

Thoughts and other stimuli can “rewire” the brain by strengthening useful synaptic pathways and weakening less used ones.

FACTORS TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION

• Learning new information creates new connections in the brain. When you encounter something, unfamiliar or even difficult, go for it. Use this opportunity to learn something new.

• When you fully focus your attention on new information or activities, neuroplasticity is heightened.

• Have new experiences that are stimulating and heartfelt; focus in on the finer details, objects, conversation, colours; be aware of the smells and sounds.

Did you know - you can impact the physiology of your brain by changing your behaviours, attitudes or perceptions?

A common phrase in the field of neuroscience that gets used to describe this is “neurons that fire together wire together”.

“So if learning forges new connections in our brain, then remembering is enriching and sustaining the new connections in our brain.” ~ Evole your brain

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that lead to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” ~ Muhammed Ali

#IMPORTANT POINT

Learning new information creates new connections in the brain. However, if you don't remember or repeat the information/activity, the brain will eventually eliminate, or “prune,” the connecting cells that formed the pathway.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Repeating information or activity will activate the neural network—groups of neurons that fire together—creating stronger connections.

Remembering important points or aspects of new information will help strengthen neural networks. Reflecting back on the information or activity you have just learnt will help sustain long-term relationships between neutrons.

Mentally rehearsing activities you have just learnt, whether it be a new movement in sports/martial arts or a new dance move will fire up circuitry systems in your brain, as if you were performing the movement in real life. Major sporting clubs have visual coaches that put athletes through mental rehearsal as a part of their training.

#QUICK RECAP

Your thoughts, emotions and perception of the environment re-wire the brain — shaping your reality.

Ohh, don’t forget...

Your perception of yourself - how you view yourself; makes a huge difference on your neurobiology.

So be kind to yourself …

KEY POINTS ON BEING KIND TO YOURSELF

Perception - Shift your point of view from negative to positive.

#Quick Tip

If you find this hard to do, then seriously put yourself in the shoes of people in third world countries that are suffering for the bare minimum before you start complaining about first world problems.

Affirmations - Repeat positive affirmations that area true to your life every night with emotional conviction. Meditate on the gratitude and appreciation you have for your truth.

Mirror - when you look at yourself in the mirror, just smile and say something nice: “You’re beautiful!” or “ You’re going to change the world!” or “My greatest gift is the happiness I offer people!” or “I love you!”…

Yes, self-love is a very powerful inhibitor of biochemical changes in the body!

Meditate - every night or every morning (or both); give thanks — express love for everything that brings you happiness.

Meditation increases the thickness and strength of the frontal cortex of the brain; ageing decreases the size of the frontal cortex. Studies have shown that meditators experience less of this decrease in the frontal cortex. In other words, the gray matter in their brain upholds its thickness, resulting in a healthier brain.

"According to a new study led by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), meditating for just eight weeks has been shown to alter the brain’s gray matter, which may be at least part of the reason why practitioners experience significant improvements in memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress." - havard.edu

Summary So Far

Our brain can change in response to the experiences and emotions that we feed it. Neuroplasticity means that we can structurally change how our brain works by changing our environment, thoughts, and actions. As we incorporate new behaviours and thinking patterns, the brain adapts to these changes, forming new synaptic connections. This is why starting a new habit (like exercise) is difficult but as the brain adapts, it becomes easier and easier until it becomes second nature!

SOURCE - meditation-research.org
SOURCE - Evolve your brain
SOURCE - The Rewired Brain
SOURCE - universalclass.com

Apply This Knowledge To Your Life

So you have learnt the basic science of neuroplasticity but now lets take this information to the NEXT LEVEL.

I want to give you infoformation that applies to your life, not just some technical jargon that makes up a good article.

QUESTION:

What happens if I change the way I think, act and feel?

ANSWER:

“You will change your personality!! Your personality creates your personal reality!! Your personality is made up of the way you think, the way you act, and the way you feel.” ~ Joe Dispenza

Here are some basic principles you need to know in order to create a new you:

Every thought you have produces a chemical in your brain that signals the body to feel exactly the way you been thinking.

Feelings generate an electromagnetic pulse that signals the brain to think exactly then way that you’re feeling.

Thinking the same way every single day only produces the same feedback loops that become redundant over time.

This becomes a vicious cycle:

- We become victims to your thoughts

- We become victims of your environments

- We become victims to our emotional patterns

Sure you want to change and apply this new science, but first, you need to understand how your subconscious mind operates or else it will be an uphill battle.

CONSCIOUS VS SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

The information below is extracted from the teachings of Bruce Lipton

The mind controls:

• Life

• Biology

• Nervous system

• Behaviour

The mind is divided into two parts:

1) Conscious mind:

• Personal identify

• Source

• Spirit

• Who you are

• Creativity

• Your wishes

• Your desires

• What you want from your life - answers that manifest comes from the creativity of your conscious mind

2) Subconscious mind:

• Recording device - playback device

• Records life experiences

• Memories

• We can push a “button, ” and play back the tape and it responds to those experiences

The subconscious mind is like a recording device with a set of programs that make up your personality.

So how does it work? (simple explanation)

Remember when you learnt how to drive a car?

The first time , you were fully focused and “aware” in the moment, little fearful but attentive to the task at hand. and then the second time it becomes easy and mor 'natural' … Fifth time… After you got your license… How about now? you can just jump in the car, and you don't even have to think about it it seems 'automatic' to be able to drive.

Reason: The Sub-Conscious mind is doing the driving for you, while your conscious mind time travels into the past, and future, an automatic program (driving) is played back.

This is a basic example of how automatic programs rule your life; this applies to everything!!

What other programs does this apply to?

• Anger

• Pain

• Sadness

• Frustration

• Violence

• Guilt

• Resentment

• Jealousy

To name a few…

The Same principle applies to all the emotional states (programs) listed above. You have learnt these behaviours so well that now it’s an automatic program — a very reactive state — that when triggered, you become unconscious and the program plays out.

Please take a moment to digest this info...

#LETS PUT IT TOGETHER

I. New experiences make new nerve cells — connections.

II. We can call these connections memories.

III. Memories are chemical blueprints —Love or Fear (Stress).

IV. Repeating the same experiences (same emotions).

V. Strengthens neural networks (Fire together, Wire together).

VI. This is called learning — Mastery over what we repeat.

SO IF YOU REPEAT:

Anger

Hate

Sadness

Violence

Self-pity/sabotage/doubt

Anxiety

Any negative emotions.

You will become a master at it!

PUNCH LINE: You no longer have to think about it… because you are it !!

The architecture of our brain is designed to reflect everything we experience; every bit of information coming in from our senses is being hardwired into what we call a memory.

We have forgotten what it feels like to have a panoramic perspective on life; forgetting how it feels to live in total harmony and joy.

SOURCE - Evolve your brain
SOURCE - The Rewired Brain
SOURCE - brucelipton.com
SOURCE - calmdownmind.com
SOURCE - drjoedispenza.com

The Effects Of Stress On Neuroplasticity

Living in a fast-paced society promotes stress and anxiety due to the stressful demands of daily life — which are

are all being stitched away into the recess of our gray matter as memories.

There is a very likely probability that we have programmed our brain to be in a highly aroused state of stress. Running the risk that this imbalanced state can become our status quo.

There are times where you may feel okay, but it doesn't take long for the stressful energy to resurface. This can take over our bodies, consume our thoughts, and bring us our of alignment with the present moment.

Other factors that impact your level of stress:

• Diet

• Lifestyle choices

• Emotional diet

• Sleeping patterns

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW IS THAT OVERACTIVE STRESS HORMONES RUN HAVOC ON YOUR BODY’S NATURAL ORDER OF BALANCE!

Chronic stress decreases the number of stem cells that mature into neurons and might provide an explanation for how chronic stress also affects learning, memory, and health.

Common side effects of a body full of stress or a brain that is functioning under stressful programming are:

• Excessive thinking

• Unhealthy sleeping patterns

• Waking up and being unable to get back to sleep

• Easily frustrated

• Easily irritated

• Inability to control anger or negative emotions

• Lack of cognitive control

• Unstable moods

• Lack of energy

• Unstable energy

• Rarely feel joy or happiness

• Inability to get the joy out of simple pleasures in life

• Rarely present

• Consumed by thoughts

• Constant dwelling on, or rehearsing negative or worst case scenarios

“Stress has not only been proven to kill neurons and neural connections, but it actually prevents the formation of new neurons and neural connections. ”

The unconscious programs that are ruling your life, that hold you back from being your potential, can be “pruned” away.

In meditation, you shift your attention into a state of awareness — the act of observation.

Once you become the conscious observer, you are no longer your thoughts/programs, so they slowly start to lose their charge over you.

Non-identification is a faster and more effective way to reprogram your brain.

“Neurons that don't fire together, don't wire together”

#PLEASE NOTE

You don't have to meditate to reprogram your brain.

Self-awareness - paying attention to your programs/thoughts will allow the charge to weaken.

HOW?

By being self aware through non-identification you become the witness to your programming as opposed to succumbing to the programming. which will in turn prune away the useless connections you don't want.

However the stronger the charge, the stronger the connection ; so it will take repetition, practice of non-identification to weaken the charge.

CHARGE -

The stronger the program the stronger the charge, the reaction of the individual will determine the strength of the charge/program. For example people that have an anger issue will have a program that is strongly charged “anger”.

A weaker charge would be someone that feels anger but doesn't allow the anger to take over their mind and body.

Ultimately the more in control you are over your emotions the less vulnerable you are to programs taking over your conscious awareness.

Meditation heightens your self-awareness so you can be more alert to unconscious programs that no longer serve you.

Metacognition - awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

“Now you can modify your behaviours to do a better job in life.” ~ Joe Dispenza

CLICK HERE FOR OUR FREE GUIDED MEDITATIONS

We all have programs that have been hardwired into our cerebral cortex (mind) that serve us no purpose, whether it be from childhood — early development years — or unconscious mental rehearsal of experiences.

How many of us have spent countless hours, days and even longer, dwelling upon stressful emotions that have only taught our bodies to memorise such responses?

KEY INGREDIENTS

1. Have the will to develop your self-awareness.

2. Only pay attention to the thoughts you want to manifest.

3. Behave in ways that represent the highest ideal of yourself.

4. Only memorise the emotions that bring you love.

FEW KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER

• Anyone at any age can develop new habits or skills.

• Our abilities are affected by stress.

• We can work out our brains like we work out our bodies. The more effort we expend, the better our results will be.

• Our brains are made up of over 100 billion neurons which are capable of generating somewhere around 60,000 thoughts per day.

• A neural network is made out of tiny nerve cells that branch out and connect to other nerve cells forming a network.

• Our memories store a chemical blueprints (emotions) of past experiences; these chemicals are defined by our reaction or response to a particular experience (love or fear).

• As neural connections develop & strengthen, the grey matter in our brain physically changes as well.

Imagine how it would feel like to live in total balance and harmony, to have the inner freedom to experience an abundance of joy through the simple things in life. Imagine how it will feel to get that spark of natural enthusiasm back into your life.

Bring out a better version of yourself by listening to our wide selection of Guided Meditations today!

SOURCE - Evolve your brain
SOURCE - The Rewired Brain
SOURCE - drjoedispenza.com
SOURCE - The Brain That Changes Itself

The Full Power Of Meditation Breathing

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 03:22:13 GMT

Mastering Life Through Mastering Breath

The breath can be used to help manage pain, enhance mental concentration, reduce stress, improve athletic performance, and control emotions. The aim of this article is to explore the realm of breathing and how it can dramatically affect your health and wellbeing.

Before we get into the juicy content, I want you to stop for a moment.

Exhale ALL the air out your lungs through your nose.
Now inhale (through the nose) slow and strong right down into your belly, pushing your belly softly outward.
Exhale and release all of the air out of your body by relaxing your belly (slowly and naturally).
Inhale deeply by pushing your abdominal region out.

NOW you’re breathing – this is belly breathing (diaphragmatic breathing). It’s the first way beginner yoga students are taught to breathe. As you read through this article, keep breathing down into your belly.

It’s estimated that 80% of metabolic energy comes from breathing and only 20% comes from food. With our bodies so reliant on oxygen for energy it’s no wonder that poor breathing has been linked to almost every type of medical ailment. ~ michaelbalchan.com

The bodies natural reaction is to take short and shallow breathes, when any degree of stress or tension is present. Unfortunately 21st century living promotes stressful lifestyles, conditioning our breathing to be very short and rapid — we spend most of our day shallow breathing just into the upper lobes of the lungs (chest); which means that only a small amount of air is taken in – not ideal for cell optimisation.

Breathing deeply through the diaphragm will send oxygen flooding into every single cell in your body. Every cell in your body absorbs oxygen via the circulation system. Thats right; every cell in your body inhales the oxygen and exhales the carbon dioxide – a process called respiration.

Question:

Do you want to connect to a higher state of mind?

Are you ready to awaken a deeper dimension within yourself?

Are you sick of past emotional patterns?

Are you ready to tap into your creative powers?

Do you want to sleep better?

Do you want to feel better?

Answer:

All the above can be achieved by mastering your breath - the essence of your breath holds the key to your untapped potential deep within your being. All the great sages of life; past and present teach us that we can transform our lives through breathing. Learning how to breathe effectively might just be the missing component in your life!

“All it takes is to bring your conscious awareness into this natural process we call breathing.”

Breathing is the most important function in our body, but the one thing we pay the least amount of attention to. A body that is oxygen rich has many health benefits, here are some:

• Reserves energy

• Improves circulation

• Oxygenates blood

• Lowers your heart rate

• Lowers blood pressure

• Relieves stress

• Supports detoxification

“Improper breathing is a common cause of ill health.” ~ Dr. Andrew Weil

SOURCE - theyogalunchbox.co.nz

SOURCE - The Oxygen Advantage

SOURCE - doyouyoga.com

What the Ancient Meditation Masters Knew

There are also mysterious powers associated with the breath that remain mostly unheard of in western civilisation. The ancient masters of India developed a science around certain breathing techniques that when applied methodically over a period of time would give specific results, such as the control of unconscious mechanisms.

They called this particular science Pranayama. Prana is the vital life force that creates various currents of energy in the body that control many of the unconscious functions which allow the maintenance of the physical body.

What role does prana play in the body?

• Maintains the quality of health of the physical body

• Maintains the stability of the intellect

• Prevention and cure of many diseases

• Regulates the circulation of blood

• Aids digestion

• Affects moods

• Decreases stress levels

“The less the number of breaths per minute, the more is the life expectancy”~ Natures Rule

Did you know - deep breathing triggers the relaxation response; synchronising all systems of the body.

TAKE IN FEW DEEP BREATHES NOW

Interesting points extracted from - quora.com

• The tortoise, who may attain the age of 300 years, takes in 12 breathes only 4 times per minute.

• Dogs breathe 40 to 50 times per minute and live up to 25 years only.

• We believe that humans can live for 100 years by breathing 15 times per minute.

• If one breathes 18 times a minute, one’s age will decrease to 83 1/3 years.

The slower you breathe - the longer you will live (Yoga philosophy)

Did you know - slowing down your breath has anti-aging benefits - the faster the breathing rate & heart beat, the faster the body metabolises and ages.

SOURCE - breathmastery.com

SOURCE - awaken.com

SOURCE - conscioushealth.net

Mouth Vs Nose Breathing

Excerpt from - coreperformance.com

Dr. Roy Sugarman, director of applied neuroscience for EXOS, says nose breathing has a range of performance benefits. “ Breathing through your nasal passage can increase CO2 saturation in the blood and slow down your breathing—both of which create a calming effect ,” he says. “It also helps warm air before it hits your lungs during cold weather workouts.”

Dr. Sugarman says that mouth breathing is associated with a host of health problems and should be avoided as best as possible. His advice is to keep the nose and sinuses healthy and the septum straight—not so easy for athletes in sports where a sudden, sideways nose-shift is common. This helps overall performance and, more importantly, helps speed up the recovery process.

# QUICK RECAP

• Our breath is one of the most basic yet powerful tools available to us.

• It truly is a master tool in the art of self-healing, which can give us a direct entry point into the chemistry of our mind.

• Practising mindfulness of the breath has long been associated with heightened levels of awareness and self-mastery.

• Throughout the day, our breathing may become sporadic and out of rhythm due to the overstimulation of the stress response.

• A breathing pattern will reflect the condition your mind is in, and the more stress you are under, then the shorter and sharper your breathing will be.

• Breathing with awareness grants access to our subconscious mind, which allows us to alter our programming and how we react to the environment through our conscious mind.

• Conscious breathing alters the state our brain is operating in from a critical, analytical process to one that is more creative and disconnected from the ego identity. It is from this state that all the hard-wiring of old habits and outdated beliefs can be changed!

Pranayama contributes to the healing of the emotional body. This method of breathing enables a person to release the locked up emotional traumas or trapped emotions.

A starting point for correct breathing

To regulate your breath and maintain a healthy standard of breathing; you need to breathe deep into your abdomen, not just your chest - diaphragmatic breathing.

Inhale through your nose, expanding your belly, fill the oxygen up through your belly, all the way up to your chest.
Hold your breath for a moment.
Slowly exhale, relaxing your belly.

Many of our guided meditations include some form of breath -work component. The effectiveness of our breathing techniques is undisputed in the ability to reduce the harmful effects of anxious energy, having an immediate effect on the production of stress hormones. CLICK HERE FOR FREE GUIDED MEDITATIONS

Your body is designed to release 70% of its toxins through breathing. If you are not breathing effectively, you are not properly ridding your body of its toxins.

#Important points

• Breathing is the key to enhancing our cognitive abilities

• Deep breathing patterns eliminate stress from the body

• Conscious breathing patterns bring the mind and body into coherence

• Deep breathing is the key to accessing higher states of consciousness

• Deep breathing improves the quality of your blood

• Deep breathing strengthens the immune system

• Deep breathing oxygenates the cells of your body

• Deep breathing releases tension

Deep breathing patterns create coherence in the following systems of the body:

• Cardiovascular

• Respiratory

• Endocrine

• Immune

• Digestive

• Lymphatic

Breathing rate & Heartbeat - the faster one's heart beat or breathing, the faster the body metabolises, the faster cells breakdown, accelerating ageing.

SOURCE - onepowerfulword.com

SOURCE - care2.com

SOURCE - naturalhealthontheweb.com

Chest Breathing Vs Belly Breathing

The three essential functions of the diaphragm:

1) It provides a platform of support between the top and bottom of the body.

2) It regulates the shift between the state of alarm and the state of relaxation.

3) It is the one autonomic nervous system function that we can consciously control!

To check how you are breathing:

1) Rest one hand on your upper chest and the other over your navel area.

2) Breathe normally for a minute or so . . .

3) Notice which hand rises first when you inhale.

If the upper hand rises first, you are using upper chest breathing. If the lower hand rises first, you are breathing with your diaphragm. If both move at the same time, you are using a mix of both.

Diaphragmatic breathing

This is the most effective and natural way of breathing. Utilising the diaphragm creates strong breaths which

activates the parasympathetic nervous system (AKA therelaxation system of the body).

Upper Chest Breathing

This can be caused by a variety of issues, including smoking, stress, poor posture, or asthma.

BENEFITS OF DIAPHRAGM BREATHING

• Relieves physical muscle tension

• Allows the mental function to slow and relax

• Body and mind connection

• Calms and centres your mind

• Activates parasympathetic nervous system

• Releases natural wastes, such as carbon dioxide

• Gives the internal organs a gentle massage

• Increases the distribution of Oxygen to all cells

• Strengthens the lungs

• Slows your heart rate

• Lowers your blood pressure

• Increases blood flow to muscles

• Improves concentration

• Reduces anger and frustration

“If we don’t practise correct breathing techniques in a stressful environment, we will become overwhelmed by the inflow of information. The daily pressures that we face may lead to disease or illness.” - Dr. Abby Doynton M.D

SOURCE - yogajournal.com

SOURCE - swamij.com

SOURCE - samvarner.com

Sympathetic Nervous System Vs Parasympathetic Nervous System

These two nervous systems are in a constant ‘tug-of-war’ trying to keep the body in balance.

Sympathetic nervous system “ accelerator ” = stress response (SNS)

For most of us, we are dominated by the SNS , which results in:

• Stress

• A nxiety

• Anger

• Feelings of suffering

• Negative emotions

This translates into:

• High blood pressure

• Constricted arteries

• Erratic and irregular heart beat

• Compromised endocrine system

• Lowered immunity

• Leads to major health issues

Parasympathetic nervous system “ Brake ” = relaxation response (PNS)

• Allows the body to relax

• Keeps the body in a state of growth and repair

• Regulates the health and upkeep of the organs of the body

• Promotes digestion

• Promotes sleep

• Decreases heart rate

• Decreases blood pressure

• Resistance to infection

• Promotes feel good chemicals

#ESSENTIAL NOTES BY ANDREW WEIL M.D

“Breathing is the only function that can be completely voluntary or completely involuntary.”

“The general rules are you want to make your breathing deeper, quieter, slower and more regular; these are the four qualities of breathing you want to develop . . .”

“In addition, breathing is the bridge between the body and the mind. Between the conscious and the unconscious mind. It is a key to regulating emotions, and it is a gateway into spiritual development.”

“All of these aspects of breathing have to be learnt; they do not come automatically . . .”

SOURCE - healthyliving.azcentral.com

SOURCE - yogajournal.com

SOURCE - yogapedia.com

The Wim Hoff Method Of Breathing

Wim Hof (pictured above) is a Dutch world record holder ,adventurer and daredevil, commonly nicknamed the Iceman for his ability towithstand extreme coldness. He holds nine world records including a worldrecord for longest ice bath. Wim broke his previous world record by staying for1 hour 13 minutes and 48 seconds immersed in ice at Guinness World Records2008. Hof describes his ability to withstand extreme cold temperatures as beingable to turn his own thermostat up by using his brain. ~ superhumanhealth.org

SO,HOW DOES HE DO IT?

Wim Hof hijacks his autonomic nervous system usinghis certain breathing techniques calledthe “Wim Hof Method.”

The Method

Excerpt from - highexistence.com

“The Wim Hof Method is similar to Tummo (innerheat) Meditation and Pranayama (yogic breathing). Yet it is something elseentirely. While Wim has studied yoga and meditation for many years, thistechnique primordially comes from what he terms ‘cold hard nature.’ By subjecting himself to the bitter conditions of nature, he learned to withstandthe extreme forces of cold, heat and fear.” ~ Jordan Lejuwaan

When the body is in harmony; the heart, lungs,hormones, chemicals, and gut are all in-sync, working in conjunction tomaintain the overall health of our bodies. Learning how to breathe moreeffectively is the key to better health and vitality.

We have extracted the core principles from the ancient practice of Pranayama; modernising it to make it easy to learn. We recognise the importance of breath; integrating ancient and modern breathing techniques into our FREE guided meditations.

Try (Pranayama) Guided Breathing Meditation

Led by Chad Foreman From Day 7 of The 21 Day Meditation Challenge

Harnessing The Power Of The Placebo Effect

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:15:06 GMT

What Is The Placebo Effect?

The placebo effect is a mind-body phenomenon that starts in the brain. Research studies and trials suggest that the mind has an unlimited power to heal the body. The aim of this article is to explore how the mind contains a limitless supply of creativity, and a vast amount of untapped potential.

"A placebo is a substance or other kind of treatment that looks just like a regular treatment or medicine, but is not. It’s actually an inactive “look-alike” treatment or substance. This means it’s not a medicine." ~ cancer.org

" The placebo effect refers to the impact that a placebo has on an individual. In other words, even an inert and inactive treatment can produce a measurable, positive health response. This outcome may fly in the face of common sense but it has been repeatedly demonstrated." ~ medicalnewstoday.com

Placebo effect: "Also called the placebo response. A remarkable phenomenon in which a placebo -- a fake treatment, an inactive substance like sugar, distilled water, or saline solution -- can sometimes improve a patient's condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. Expectation plays a potent role in the placebo effect. The more a person believes they are going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that they will experience a benefit." ~ medicinenet.com

Placebo (a Latin word) “I will please” = Placebo refers to any medical treatment that is inert or inactive.

Placebo effect = Improvement in symptoms through the belief of receiving an “active” treatment.

The placebo effect taps into the body's natural pharmaceuticals.

Did you know - placebos can cause real biological changes in the body — release of hormones and chemicals.

THINK ABOUT IT?

Humans have been healing themselves for eons, long before modern medicine was integrated into society. Native shamans or witch doctors have been facilitating healing practices for thousands of years. Through certain rituals and “healing” methods, patients believe, “expect” they will be healed, which then initiates changes in the physiology for the body to heal.

#ESSENTIAL POINT by Dr. Joe Dispenza

“How we perceive and interpret the data we receive from our sense as factual information — whether that information is actually true or not — and the meaning we give it produce significant biological changes on a genetic level. Thus, our genes interact with our conscious awareness in complex relationships. We could say that meaning is continually affecting the neural structures that influence who we are on the microscopic level, which then influences who we are on the macroscopic level.” ~ You Are The Placebo

TRUE OR FALSE?

Your brain doesn't know the difference between what is real and what is not real. Your consciousness defines what is “real.”

ANSWER: Whether real or not real. The above quote is only true if you define it as “truth.”

You define reality through your perception. Truth is subjective and only what you believe it to be.

#IMPORTANT POINTS:

YOU ARE THE CREATOR OF YOUR REALITY.
YOU GIVE MEANING.
YOU GIVE TRUTH .
BELIEVE IN YOUR POWER.

SOURCE - mercola.com

SOURCE - psychologytoday.com

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

The First Medical Discovery Of The Placebo Effect

“While treating wounded American soldiers during World War II, Henry Beecher ran out of pain-killing morphine. Desperate, he decided to continue telling the soldiers that he was giving them morphine, although he was actually infusing them with a saline solution. Amazingly, 40 percent of the soldiers reported that the saline treatment eased their pain.

Today, scientists better understand why those soldiers felt better. Beecher gave the soldiers a placebo — a substance that may look like a real medication, but isn’t. Placebos can take many forms. The most common is a “sugar pill,” but placebos can also be injections, devices, procedures — even just a doctor telling a patient that he or she will soon feel better. “

~ United States National Libary of Medicine

The Major Components Of The Placebo Effect

EXPECTATION

Could it be that the body accelerates its healing process on an inert level from the expectation of feeling better?

Example:

We have been conditioned from a young age to associate doctors with healing. So when a doctor prescribes you medicine, chances are you expect it to work. No doubt the medicine will have some substantial effect.

BUT...

How do we really know if the healing has come from the active treatment or placebo effect?

How can we be 100% sure or pin point exactly what is doing the healing? Our belief or the medicine?

Maybe it’s a combination of both?

Or, perhaps sometimes it’s the pill, and other times it’s the placebo effect?

THE POWER OF EXPECTATION TO BEND REALITY

Scenario - You are in a wine tasting event and a particular bottle of wine you’re about to taste has been said to be from a premium range — this is based on the price tag and critics reviews.

Question: When you take a sip from this glass of premium wine will your experience change to meet your expectation compared to tasting a cheap wine?

ANSWER: Yes. Based on your expectation of the wine being a quality wine the level of activity in the reward centres of the brain actually change.

Extracted from - Scientific American

#Please note

There is a certain degree of truth here. At some point, wine will taste so cheap that our taste buds will spit it out even if the price tag says $1 million dollars.

Expectations allow your body to shift into a new paradigm. Just assuming we are taking a more quality-based treatment compared to a cheap one will have a better effect on our body.

MORE EXAMPLES FROM - Scientific American

“ Highly trained weight lifters can outdo their personal best when they believe they’ve taken a performance booster.”

“People who wear taller, better-looking avatars in virtual reality games behave in ways that taller and better-looking people tend to act. For example, they approach better-looking potential dates, and they are more aggressive in negotiations, both in the virtual world and after the game's headgear is removed.”

“In lab and field experiments, people who stand in powerful poses (think Superman) for a minute or two have similar hormonal changes compared to people who are given actual power and authority over another person, and they exhibit the same sorts of behavioural changes.”

THE POWER OF BELIEF TO CREATE REALITY

Belief - personally choosing something to be valid or true in our own minds. The stronger we hold this truth beyond all reasonable doubt, the stronger our belief.

You can expect something to happen , but until you start to believe in your expectation, your body will not respond.

Belief supercharges expectation into a whole new level of creation.

“The more you believe in the cause, the better the effect.”

SOURCE - scientificamerican.com

SOURCE- harvard.edu

SOURCE - psychologytoday.com

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

How Does The Placebo Effect Work?

“Typically, for a placebo to work, you have to believe it’s a “real” drug. Why is that? Expectations, it turns out, play a crucial role in recovery from illness. There’s a link between your mind and your body, and when you expect a pill (or surgery) to do something, your body yields to your expectation by producing the requisite brain chemicals. Needless to say, the stronger your belief or expectation, the more likely you are to experience the desired result.”

~ Dr. Mercola

EXAMPLE

CONDITIONING RESPONSES

Day 1) Headache - Aspirin

Day 2) Headache - Aspirin

Day 3) Headache - Aspirin

Day 4) Headache - Sugar pill (in aspirin packaging)

RESULT:

Some studies have used a protocol to reduce medication by inserting placebo treatments interspersed with actually taking the pill — as an example, you might insert the placebo every third day — and what they found was that the efficacy of the drug stayed the same, even though the total drug amount decreased. They’ve done this immunosuppressants, corticosteroids, and ADHD medications.

PAVLOV’S DOG EXPERIMENT - comments by Dr. Joe Dispenza

“ When Pavlov rang the bell, and the dog heard that sound, it created the image from the past experience of what was to take place in the present moment. The dog’s body autonomically, automatically, physiologically, chemically, subconsciously began to change in preparation for the event.

The dog’s body was beginning to believe it was in the experience, ahead of the actual experience.”

“ Many placebo studies are primarily around pain, depressions or asthma. You can give someone some type of substance that they think is the real substance because it looks like it their body starts to produce the same chemicals by conditioning just like Pavlov’s dog.”

“You can substitute a pill that someone has been taking with another pill that looks just like the pill they have been taking. And by the law of association, the moment they see that pill, their body starts to biologically and chemically change in preparation for that event.”

“Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated — from the pinch of a shot to a doctor's white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones. ” ~ Scientific American

# Key points

• Our beliefs influence our body chemistry.

• Self-belief plays a significant role in healing.

• Emotionally charged thoughts have the power to induce physical and psychological responses.

• Many studies show us that through the placebo effect, we have the power to heal the body.

• Expecting to feel better has a positive effect on the body’s response to a broad spectrum of disease.

FAMOUS PLACEBO STUDY - Mr. Wright

“His physician, Dr. Philip West, finally agreed and gave Mr. Wright an injection on a Friday afternoon. The following Monday, the astonished doctor found his patient out of his death bed, joking with the nurses. The tumours , the doctor wrote later, had melted like snowballs on a hot stove .”

PLACEBO - MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ANTI-DEPRESSANTS?

Extracted from - You Are The Placebo

“Kirsch and his colleagues did a second meta-analysis, this time on the 35 clinical trials conducted for four of the six most widely prescribed antidepressants approved between 1987 and 1999. Now, looking at data from more than 5,000 patients, the researchers found again that placebos worked just as well as the popular antidepressants drugs — Prozac, Effexor, Serzone, and Paxil — a whopping 81 percent of the time. ”

SOURCE - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

SOURCE - medscape.com

The Opposite Is Called The Nocebo Effect

Okay, so my thoughts can make me feel better, even heal my body…

BUT...

Does that mean my thoughts can make me sick as well?

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF NOCEBO

Our thoughts are equally powerful in both directions. In contrast to the Placebo effect, it has a polar opposite known as the Nocebo Effect . We may personally experience the nocebo when we expect a negative result to happen and as a result, we experience a deterioration of our health, or a pre-existing condition becomes worse.

Similar to the placebo effect, in which a fake medication can give patients the benefits of having taken the real drug, the nocebo effect is the little-studied fact that patients taking a fake drug can also experience real negative side effects.

"In one remarkable case, a participant in an antidepressant drug trial was given placebo tablets — and then swallowed 26 of them in a suicide attempt. Even though the tablets were harmless, the participant's blood pressure dropped perilously low." CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

“In many of the experiments they analyzed, the suggestion or expectation of pain brought about significant increases in the amount of negative side effects experienced by participants. For example, in one study , 50 people who suffered from chronic back pain were given a flexibility test. Half were told beforehand that the test might cause some pain, while the others were not. Afterward, the first group reported a significantly higher amount of pain, despite enduring the exact same procedure.” ~ Joseph Stromberg

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

SOURCE - bodyinmind.org

How Can I Use The Power Of Placebo In My Life?

"Science has recognised that at least one-third of all healing, including drugs, surgery, and other allopathic interventions, has nothing to do with the process but has to do with the Placebo Effect." ~ brucelipton.com

What are you mentally rehearsing all day?

What are you feeding your body emotionally?

How are you managing your stress levels?

Be aware of your thoughts . . . Realise that thoughts have the power to elicit subconscious mechanisms in your body.

Once you back your thoughts up with belief and expectation, then it becomes supercharged. Giving it the power to influence your body’s physiology.

Your are only harming yourself. . . remember this next time you get angry or upset — before you start emotionally charging thoughts and fuelling your body full of stress — know that your cells pay the ultimate price.

FEED YOUR BODY LOVE . . .

LOVE is such a powerful energy that we all possess, so why not use it to feed your cells?

Life is energy — once we look down a quantum microscope to the micro level of reality we find life is made out of atoms which accurately described are moving energy.

The expression of atoms come from energy; your mind is an incubator of energy —thoughts are an intangible force of energy.

Understanding the science of the placebo effect means that you recognise the power of your thoughts and emotions.

What you feed your body emotionally matters! You don’t necessarily need to heal to be using the placebo to your advantage.

Negative thoughts can stress the body potentially leading to illness — positive thoughts can not only heal the body but keep the bodies immune system resilient to illness.

Bathing your body in love and feeding your mind positive thoughts not only is catalyst for a placebo effect but also a trigger for epigenetic changes.

Having an optimistic attitude towards life can shape your experience on all levels:

• Mental

• Emotional

• Physical

• Spiritual

• Environmental

The most important message from this article is that

Self belief combined with a positive attitude can really help change your life for the better. Some benefits are:

- Enhanced stress management

- Better health

- Self-confidence

- Better decision-making

- Increased focus

- More success

- Attract positive experiences

- Less fear

*It's important to note that the following steps should be considered to help support a positive attitude:

6 STEPS FOR EMPOWERMENT EMPOWERMENT:

1. Let go of emotional blockages by liberating your past.

2. Practice regular mindfulness and meditation.

3. Practice positive affirmations.

4. Don’t pay attention to self-sabotaging thoughts.

5. Realise you are not your thoughts.

6. Practice self love.

Believe in your power. . .

We all make mistakes, and when we hold onto negative emotions from the past we only poison our own bodies.

Forgive yourself and discharge the thoughts the may be creating a nocebo effect in your body.

“It’s often possible to feel better just because your mind subconsciously believes it's time, or your subconscious alters body processes in response to the placebo treatment without you even being aware of it. As often as possible, always try to use the placebo option first . This is a new way of thinking about healing for most people, but can be extremely powerful, especially when combined with a healthy outlook and disease-preventive lifestyle.” ~ Dr. Mercola

Take control of your self beliefs by defining your self from this present moment and liberate all negativity from the past. You are the placebo, and your belief can create your own reality.

“The placebo effect should be the subject of major, funded research efforts. If medical researchers could figure out how to leverage the placebo effect, they would hand doctors an efficient, energy-based, side effect-free tool to treat disease. Energy healers say they already have such tools, but I am a scientist, and I believe the more we know about the science of the placebo, the better we’ll be able to use it in clinical settings.” ~ brucelipton.com

#N ote

There's no denying that the placebo effect is real. It reveals you hold a great deal of the power of healing within yourself — unlimited power that you can tap into. Recognising this inherent self-healing power of the mind can improve your natural ability to heal from various diseases and illnesses.

Our thoughts and beliefs are more effective in response to the placebo effect than what we typically believe, and it is in our best interest to harness this power that comes from within .

There is unquestionably a phenomena associated with the placebo — the body's ability to change its physiology through the power of the mind. Our meditations are designed to tap into the power of your thoughts, creating a fresh and healthy perspective in life. Try one of our meditations today and experience the effect of a placebo mind - FREE GUIDED MEDITATIONS

3D Sound Meditation With Binaural Beats

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 07:11:14 GMT

What Are Binuaral Beats?

Ready to learn how to biohack your brain waves for more efficient thinking, better memory, and increased retention? The secret lies in binaural beats.

These simple tones can naturally shift the way your brain processes information. And they can be used for a variety of purposes, from increased productivity to better, more restful sleep.

Here’s what binaural beats are and how they work.

Binaural beats are a tone created in the brain when it’s presented with two different frequencies at the same time.

In 1837, a physicist named Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered that listening to certain tones of sound could actually induce certain states of mind. If you listen to a tone of 410hz in your left ear and 400hz in your right ear, your brain will make up the difference and hear an imaginary tone of 10hz. This tone is the binaural beat.

The state of your brain directly affects how well you perform activities and process information. If you want to achieve a meditative state, get a better night’s sleep, activate your body’s natural healing processes, or become more focused and productive, you simply need to change the state of your brain.

Believe it or not, it’s actually pretty easy to safely alter how your brain is functioning. Without taking any medication or drug, you can naturally shift the speed and intensity of your thoughts by listening to specified tones that induce different brainwave states .

Once you learn how the brain works and how binaural beats affect the brain, you’ll see that it’s a natural and easy process.

How Does the Brain Work?

How does the brain work?

Your brain is a powerhouse of activity. It helps to think of your brain like the internet —all across the world, people (similar to your neurons) communicate with each other at nearly instantaneous speeds.

Neurons are tiny little cells in your brain that get excited, light up, and fire off information. The neurons in your brain talk to each other over a complicated network. Unlike internet networks that can get congested when there’s too much traffic, your brain’s network is a beautiful and harmonious symphony of exchanged information.

When those neurons fire off, they release small amounts of electricity, which we can measure using an EEG. And what scientists discovered long time ago was that your brain produces frequencies that we call brainwaves .

The higher the brainwave frequency, the more alert, awake and reactive you feel. Lower brainwaves represent stages of rest and sleep.

How Do The Different Brain Waves Make You Feel?

To achieve a desired state of mind, you simply need to get your brain to imagine that it hears the frequency associated with the state you want to be in. Of course, to do this, you need to know your brain frequencies and how they make you feel:

38hz-42hz – Gamma

Spiritual awakening, universal love, harmony.
Gamma brainwaves are actually a bit of a mystery. They’re the highest frequency you can achieve, but scientists are a little dumbfounded by them.

Unlike Alpha and Beta, Gamma brainwaves don’t’ really translate to feeling active and alert. Rather, what’s been discovered is that in Gamma, neurons are firing so harmoniously that people often feel like they have a spiritual experience.

This brainwave state has been associated with expanding consciousness and understanding the value of universal love and harmony.

12hz-38hz – Beta

Reaction, engagement, sensory experiences.
These brainwaves take a lot of energy to produce, and you’ll feel really productive and focused when you’re in this state.

Your brain in Beta is actively engaged, aware, and reactive. This is a great state for short-term problem solving or being engaged in exciting activities. But it’s not a great state for long-term decision making or really thinking through your actions.

8hz-12hz – Alpha

Present, focused, aware.
If you’re operating in Alpha mode, you’ll feel very present and in the moment. You might be somewhat reactive to the world around you, but you’ll feel like you have time to process what’s going on rather than just react on instinct. This is a wonderful state to achieve when meditating or doing something that requires coordination, focus and learning.

3hz – 8hz – Theta

Dreamy, otherworldly, surreal.
You may have experienced Theta right before drifting off to sleep, during a lucid dream, or during a deep meditation.

In Theta, you no longer sense the outside world, but you are aware and conscious of your internal world.

All of your subconscious fears, hopes and judgments are hidden in the Theta state. Theta is a difficult state to achieve because you often drift out of it very quickly either becoming conscious in Alpha or moving on to the deeper state of Delta.

By staying in Theta, you can learn endless information about yourself and your consciousness.

5hz – 3hz – Delta

Asleep, regenerative, healing.
You won’t recall ever being in this state, but it’s an incredibly important brainwave for your health.

In this state, you will be deeply asleep, but not actively dreaming. Your body needs this state to heal and regenerate.

On a daily basis, you’ll need to achieve this state when you sleep at night to make sure your body can heal itself. When you’re feeling really sick, or your body and mind are working hard, you’ll want to stay in this state a little longer.

Binaural beats can be a great addition to your daily activities. For example:

Meditation
Sleeping
Studying

They also help:

Reduce anxiety
Lower stress
Increase relaxation
Increase focus
Promote creativity

So, if you want to try binaural beats and promote any of the above states, we encourage you to give them a try!

To learn more and enroll in The Way of Meditation's Binuaral Beats Meditation program CLICK HERE

4 Ways To Use Facebook As A Meditation Practice

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 07:33:37 GMT

Facebook is the most popular social media in the world with over one billion users. It’s easy to criticise Facebook as a mind numbing activity of arguments, opinions and pictures of what people are eating, but there is another way; the way of meditation . I have been caught in arguments and mind numbing scrolling too, but it occurred to me to use Facebook wisely and include it in my spiritual practice.

I recently wrote a blog called the four main practises of Tibetan Buddhism where an outline for spiritual development is sketched as a gradual approach to enlightenment. I would like to use those four practices and apply them to something hundreds of millions of people do every day, scroll through Facebook.

If you just leave your spiritual practice on the cushion or just in church you don’t utilise the rest of your time effectively for bringing about deep transformation and self realisation. As one Zen master says spirituality is what you are doing in every moment anything else is a fantasy, and since I spend so much time on Facebook and so many others do too it is reasonable to bring meditation and spiritual practice into this common modern activity.

4 Ways To Use Facebook As A Meditation

1) Mindfulness

Mindfulness has taken on a whole new dimension in modern times that leaves a lot out from its original use, at least from the Buddhist tradition where it originated. Today’s mindfulness is often described as observing the present moment without judgement, but that is just the first step as I talk about in meditation is just the beginning .

The beginning of mindfulness meditation is grounding yourself into a non judgemental awareness, I do this by paying attention to my breath while I am performing my daily activities and also monitoring bodily sensations in an open way. This helps to calm the mind and bring some space into any event, but space for what? If you just work at detaching more and more regressing into a neutral observer you will ‘zombify’ yourself or even use it to escape from uncomfortable suffering and thereby desensitise yourself from others suffering too. Or you can use the space created through open awareness to engage in the moment in a way that is congruent with your values.

On Facebook you can learn to consume and participate with information in a mindful way. Firstly by trying to include awareness of breathing. Try it right now. As you’re reading this also just watch how the breath is moving in and out, or even take a deep slow breath to activate some calmness. Notice the effects it has and the space it opens of in your being and also bring some awareness to your body and it’s posture.

Now you are ready to mindfully engage. Part of the basic ethic of traditional Buddhism is to use mindfulness as a means to move away from non virtue and move toward virtue. Non virtues are states of mind like anger, jealousy and selfishness. Virtues are states of mind like love, compassion, intelligence and patience. So you can mindfully choose which posts you open with awareness of how they effect you. Will they increase your anger and resentment or stimulate virtue and inspiration?

Try to instead of mindlessly scrolling you can go to a Facebook page for a particular purpose. It’s ok to use Facebook to laugh and have fun. Go to the funny cat pages or the cute animal stories, but do it intentionally. Choose to go to a trusted and reliable news source to raise your awareness of current events. Or reconnect with a friend by sending some love. The key thing is to do it intentionally and mindfully by choosing what you look at and choosing what you scroll past with the awareness of how it effects you personally.

Buddha taught to use mindfulness to help engage in positive actions, positive speech and even positive livelihood. One way you can be virtues when you post or respond on Facebook is to ask yourself before you say anything:

Just like we have so many thoughts through-out the day it’s the role of mindfulness to create the space to choose which thoughts to feed and which to starve of your attention. Buddha advised to feed the positive thoughts and starve the negative. The results are immediate and powerful.

Another mindfulness trick or hack is to be aware of the environment around you at the same time you are on Facebook. If you’ve ever tried to get someone’s attention who is lost in their phones you know people get completely consumed by digital media. Try and keep a fraction of your attention for some situational awareness , be aware of where you are and what’s going on around you.

Being mindful is also paying attention to how much time you spend on Facebook, be aware of hours slipping away when you could be doing something else like exercise, play or even some sitting in meditation. At the end of the day Facebook is a blank slate with nearly infinite potential, just like life, it’s up to us to consciously and mindfully engage with it in a positive and inspiring way.

2) Love and Compassion

As we learn to bring mindfulness, intentionality and purpose into our Facebook use we can then have the space to always choose love. Sometimes it’s wiser to be kind instead of right. This is especially pertinent on Facebook where so many people are have different opinions.

The first thing is to understand completely is how powerful love and compassion are for transforming suffering, bringing peace, health and happiness. There is lots of scientific research that proves as much. Once you are convinced of the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual benefits of love and compassion it’s time to put it into practice . A powerful meditation for transforming suffering into love and compassion is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation called Tonglen where you actually imagine you breathe in the suffering of others taking it away from them and then send light and love back out in return. This is a powerful practice which goes against our usual tendency to avoid suffering. It takes courage and has remarkable results on your entire being.

As we scroll through Facebook mindful of our breath and intentionally consuming information we can pause on a tragedy and open our hearts, cry a tear before we move on. Soften yourself to the hardships people are facing, open your heart to the strangers parading in front of your eyes and send streams of love directly from your heart to places in the world that need it. Believe it or not this can actually have an effect on people around the world through our deep connection through a unified conscious field of energy .

At very least you will reap the benefits of developing loving kindness and compassion and all the benefits of having empathy and being sensitive to others. As the Dalai Lama has said if you want to be selfish be wisely selfish by thinking of others first because this brings enormous benefits to your own heart and mind .

Next time you see an angry friend on Facebook reach out with a personal message and ask how they are going and if they are ok. Offer an ear that listens and a heart that cares.

On the bases of mindfulness we can choose to respond with kindness and understanding of others opinions. There has never been anything like Facebook in the history of humanity and it’s a unique opportunity to develop your communication skills. Sure you can be loud, opinionated and righteous but you can also be diplomatic, empathetic and show loving kindness and support for others at every turn. Choose to raise the vibration, increase the compassion and be a bigger person by not taking things personally and try to follow this wise advice:

3) Transformation

Transformation is an effective way to use the raw emotion that Facebook can evoke and transform it into something positive and enlightening. The idea of transformation is an ancient one found in Tantric teachings, alchemy and magic. Hate can be turned into love, ignorance changed to wisdom and lust purified into inner bliss and freedom.

Let the hate stop with you. When you feel angry you can easily react with harsh words back or you can transform the emotion into understanding, empathy and stop the cycle of violence by responding with kindness. This is where mindfulness is essential to catch yourself before you react angrily and instead use a conscious moment to transform the anger into kindness.

Through Tantric practice when you see an image on Facebook that evokes a response of sexual arousal, use that raw energy and breathe it up from the lower chakras into the higher chakras of the heart, creativity and intuition. The lust becomes a powerful fuel that transmutes into feelings of connectivity, love and spiritual bliss.

Next time you feel stupid because you don’t understand the electoral process, political negotiations or world events, take a moment to do some research from several different sources and educate yourself. Self directed education can be very rewarding and inspiring and with all the information at your finger tips ignorance these days is a choice. Be sure to look at both sides of the debate which encourages an open and intelligent mind willing to entertain the complexities of any situation. Don’t make your mind up too quickly and look at it from all angles. In this way you can transform ignorance into intelligence and wisdom.

Nearly every emotion can be recognised, channelled and transformed into understanding, love, bliss and wisdom. It takes practice and the initial mindfulness to create the space to engage in the transformation but it is worth it and turns Facebook into a powerful tool for enlightenment.

4) Self Enquiry

This is one of my favourites. Self enquiry is a direct inner exploration looking for the quality or nature of the person or self. Who am I? is perhaps one of the most important spiritual questions we can ask ourselves. Finding the real self or at least the real illusion of our imagined self is the final goal of many ancient spiritual traditions.

Self enquiry can be done sitting quietly in a special place but like all the meditations suggested in this blog it can also be done on the go while your on Facebook. As I emphasised above mindfulness is the beginning and foundation of all the practices, noticing your breath, gaining some perspective and opening an inner space with infinite choices available.

As you scroll down your news feed ask yourself the simple question – who is scrolling? is it your fingers? is it your mind? or is it something else? If it’s my fingers, whose fingers exactly? do ‘my’ fingers belong to some other inner entity that controls them? or if you respond with ‘my mind’. Whose mind? who is the one watching the mind? who is the one aware of thoughts? The key to self enquiry is the enquiring. Once we pose a question to ourselves our attention moves toward answering the question and solving the problem. We can use this mechanism in introspection which can blow wide open our assumptions and send us plummeting into a whole new dimension.

Often this level of enquiry completely silences the mind. When we ask who is scrolling the answer may come back I am, but then the next question is; who is this ‘I’? When a deafening silence comes over you try and take a moment to rest in the silence, dwell on it and immerse yourself into it. In Tibetan Buddhism there is a saying when it comes to self enquiry the best thing you can find is nothing. It is this inner emptiness, an inner void so full of presence and a sense of identity yet so spacious and boundless; so undefinable and also unfindable with our normal perceptions.

You can even use ‘ bi-directional awareness ‘. This is a technique where you direct your attention both inwardly and outwardly at the same time. It takes a bit of practice but once you have enquired within and found only open spaces and clear awareness you can keep a fraction of your attention on that inner awareness as you read and scroll around Facebook.

So next time you’re scrolling on Facebook try some of the meditation techniques listed above. Use your time wisely and maybe, just maybe Facebook can become the path to enlightenment.

Written by Chad Foreman

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has Online Meditation Coaching , delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness. Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way .

The New Science Of Human Energy Fields

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 04:50:49 GMT

BIO-ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS

Whether you are aware of it or not, your body emits a bio-electromagnetic field (body field). I believe this field is the missing link between mind and body coherence. Learning how to “tap” into this field means we can harness our full potential of energy. The aim of this article is to breakdown the science of the body’s bio-electromagnetic field.

Content Summary

INTRODUCTION
THE HEART
HEART CAPABILITY
TAKING CARE OF YOUR BEMF ( Bio Electro-Magnetic Field)
MOTHER EARTH IS ALIVE
QUANTUM PHYSICS
WHAT IS MEDICINE

Introduction

Bio-electromagnetic Medicine is coming of age in the 21st Century. The explosive growth in understanding the relationship between electromagnetism and physiology is creating amazing non-invasive diagnostic and treatment tools for a range of disease and illness that people suffer from.

BIO - signifies life.

Electromagnetic - refers to the electromagnetism generated by our body.

Field - the matrix of energy created by this electromagnetism.

All living things in the universe produce a certain field of electromagnetism composed of two main forces:

• Electricity

• Magnetism

Just like yin and yang, one cannot exist without the other.

As humans, we typically access bio-electromagnetic energy through the food we eat and the air we breathe.

Did you know- plant-like structures retain the energy of the sun and magnetic energies of the earth — making it available for absorption to every single living being.

Fact - cultures around the globe have a wide range of terms to depict the energy that encompasses us creating a body field (bio-electrical field) such as:

• Chi ~ Chinese

• Prana ~ Indian

• Ki ~ Japanese

• Ni ~ Native Indian

• Ka ~ Ancient Egyptians

• Aura ~ Western cultures

Did you know - eating raw organic food is amazing for your body’s BEM field.

#Important point

There are many different models to understand this subtle energy, which is the driving force of all living things. The bio-electromagnetic field is the closest model that western science has to explain the energy of life force

Source - heartmath.org

Source - neo-duddhism.org

The Heart

Research has also revealed that the heart communicates information to the brain and throughout the body via electromagnetic field interactions. The heart generates the body’s most powerful and most extensive rhythmic Electromagnetic field. The heart’s magnetic component is about 500 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field and can be detected several feet away from the body . It was proposed that this heart field acts as a carrier wave for information that provides a global synchronizing signal for the entire body (McCraty, Bradley & Tomasino, 2004). Excerpt from - heartmath.org

WHOAAAaa!!… now that deserves a reread.

Our heart is the epicenter of bio-electric activity within the body, sending more electrical information to the brain than what the brain does to the heart.

The biggest contributing factor that determines your field is the emotions you tune into.

E- motions - can be broken down into energy in motion which is directly linked to the bodies BEMF.

Your emotional diet can shift the bodies chemistry — determining the overall health of your body

BREAKDOWN:

Emotions — signal the heart to express a current of energy —positive or negative — altering the chemistry in the body.

By cultivating heartfelt, positive emotions, you promote a healthy environment in your body.

#Important point

When you are in a fearful, stressful state, your heart sends disrupted signals to your brain, which turns on the flight or fight response emergency mode (survival state).

What does this mean to me?

Think of your emotions as fuel for the brain — if you experience a consistent level of positive emotions in daily life then you will experience an improved level of mental functionality.

BE HAPPY - IT’S GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

“The heart is a sensory organ and acts as a sophisticated information encoding and processing centre that enables it to learn, remember, and make independent functional decisions,” ~ Rollin McCraty

Source - heartmath.org

Source - ourgom.com

Heart Capability

Recent research in the discipline of neuro-cardiology shows us that the heart is a sensory organ and a sophisticated centre for receiving and processing information . The nervous system within the heart (or “ heart brain ” ) enables it to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independent of the brain ’ s cerebral cortex. Moreover, numerous experiments have demonstrated that the signals the heart continuously sends to the brain influence the function of higher brain centres involved in perception, cognition, and emotional processing . Excerpt from - in5d.com

Did you know - The heart is an independent, intelligent organ that has its own unique capability to process and regulate information — what is known as a “ mini-brain ”; the heart is composed of approximately 40,000 neurons.

Click here to read more

Source - rcpsych.ac.uk

Keep your heart happy by NOT having:

• A stressful emotional diet

• Negative thought patterns

• Dysfunctional perceptions

• An Inactive lifestyle

• An unhealthy diet

The heart processes information about the body and the outside world through an ‘info-energetic code’— an abundant network of blood vessels and cells.

Serving not only as our circulatory system, but as an energy information gathering and distribution system — like a complex telephone network.

Did you know? - emotion can be closely aligned with electricity—it can energize or electrocute the body.

Think about it - When you are angry, there is a charge of emotions running through your body. These emotions are governed by electricity. Your nervous system is a conductor of energy—electrical impulses.

Holding in anger or not having the patience to meditate/ breathe out this toxic energy will lead to an inner explosion, violating the health of your cells. The greater the explosion, the greater the damage. Not to mention the damages caused to others around you and the ambiance of your environment.

How many times have you felt the tension in a room after an argument?

Anger leaves behind a residue of negative energy in the space that it is expressed in. The field gets disrupted and you can feel it, even days after the heated argument.

SOURCE - heartmath.org

SOURCE - betterhealth.vic.gov.au

Taking Care Of Your BEMF (Bio Electro-Magnetic Field)

Throughout a lifetime, our BEMF fluctuates in-between harmony and stress due to our thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions.

Do my thoughts matter?

Answer:

Having a field that is “ scattered ” means that the electricity running through your body has a weak pulse, due to the ill-effects of stress. People who suffer from physical and mental disease are known to have a weak pulse, and this is largely due to our thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs that have a very subtle effect on the flow of electricity through our body.

How you think and how you feel has a very real effect on our being.

Did you know - The bio-electromagnetic pulse has been measured through various scientific machines such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) machine which measures electricity and the magneto-encephalograph (MEG) machine which measures the magnetic field.

REPLENISHING YOUR FIELD

Athletes are a great example of people who have a very high pulse. There are many lifestyle habits that are harmful to our bio-electric field, depleting this vital force within us, if we don’t take the time to replenish our field or alter certain

habits.

Factors that drain your field:

• Alcohol, drugs, and tobacco

• Dead meat & highly processed foods

• Uncontrolled negative emotions

• Imbalanced sexual chakra

Factors that amplify your field:

• Exercise

• Diet (organic plant rich foods)

• Meditation

• Self-love

INTERESTING COMPARISON

The term Kundalini energy is often used in the Yoga community to describe a psychic spiritual energy. The ancient yogic texts suggest that the kundalini energy is dormant until activated, located at the base of the spine (Root Chakra).

If we translate the ancient theory into a modern perspective, we could define this energy to be a latent bio-electromagnetic energy, kept locked in the jungle of nerve fibres at the base of the spine.

Source - altered-states.net

Source - kundaliniguide.com

Mother Earth Is Alive

Our amazing planet is alive and full of electricity. Scientists suggest that at any given time, there are 100 lightning strikes occurring somewhere on earth. The space that surrounds us is constantly being bombarded by electricity from the sun.

# FACT

There is an electromagnetic field being created by the earth spinning around its own axis. This gives us the north and south poles and the magnetic field or gravity of earth.

EARTH RESONANCE

Earth has an electric pulse of its own. All living things on earth are tuned to this Mother Earth wave. Scientists use special monitoring meters to measure this very faint pulse.

“The Resonance is an Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) wave that exists naturally in the space that, in turn, exists between the Earth's surface and its ionosphere [refer to illustration above]. ‘This weak resonance vibrates at a pulse of 7.83 Hertz (cycles). This frequency of waves and its harmonics at 14, 20, 26, 33, 39 and 45 Hz form the Schumann Resonances.’” —Anthony Nick Fiorenza

CLICK HERE TO GO THE SOURCE OF THESE FACTS

The earth's resonance or wave frequency was named as the Schumann Resonance, after the man who identified these waves.

The electromagnetic energy of our body is transmitted to this field of energy and interacts with it through our movements within the environment. This greater field of energy has a subtle effect on our own field by influencing the electric charges within the cells of our own body.

LEY LINES (SPIRIT LINES)

Ley lines are the energy system of the earth; they are said to be the veins of the earth that crisscross the entire planet. Ancient monuments (pyramids) are built on these lines. They are said to have enormous power and people have claimed to have felt energy surge up their body.

Maybe…

Distorted Ley Lines are the reason why mammals (whales or dolphins) are often found stranded on the beach? This makes perfect sense if you think about; how much we abuse the natural resources of this planet, leading to a disruption expression of Mother Earth’s Ley Lines.

MY THEORY:

By connecting to Mother Earth’s resonance, we ground ourselves with the natural harmonics of life. By having a clear mind and open heart, we open up our channels to feel this subtle energy. Everything in life is energy, and we are interconnected to Mother Earth’s heartbeat. If our field is scattered, full of stress, then our connection is blocked, hence we feel separateness or anxiety.

CONNECT TO MOTHER EARTH’S HEART BEAT

SOURCE - crystalinks.com

SOURCE - innerself.com

Quantum Physics

Our hearts are 5000 times more powerful magnetically than our brains. ” —Greg Braden

Classical physics (Newtonian physics) has taught and conditioned us to believe that our mind and body are separate entities and that everything in our world is made out of matter.

This belief system teaches us that the mind cannot have an effect on the body, that everything in our world is mechanistic in nature and separate from the mind.

This machine-driven theory of how the body operates — like a machine with cogs and gears, working in conjunction with one another. Has subtly influenced our beliefs in a way that limits our ability to harness the power of our BEMF effectively.

SUGGESTIONS FROM LATEST RESEARCH

Researchers today all around the globe have confirmed that the matter which appears to be solid, in reality, is actually more energy than it is solid matter.

The reality that appears to be solid to you right now; is actually made up of pure energy which is vibrating at a specific frequency — giving matter properties like shape, size, texture.

Did you know - The cells of the body are made up of atoms, which are broken down into:

• Electrons

• Protons

• Neutrons

• Quarks

Which are all an expression of vibrating energy.

Click here to watch video on - Illustion of reality

LETS PUT THIS INTO PERSPECTIVE

When these particles vibrate in their nucleus (skin-like membrane), a small electrical impulse is generated in our body. Every individual cell in our body generates an electrical charge — all this electricity combined produces the electromagnetic field that extends all around the body for about 2-3 metres

OUT WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW

The traditional concept of science suggests that the mind and matter are separate entities and should never be seen as the same thing. However, the quantum field shows us that wherever the observer looks, an atom will appear, implying that we as conscious observers have some effect on the matter around us. This then means that on some level, the mind has an effect on our environment.

What does this mean?

If we unravel this theory even further, it is not difficult to accept that our beliefs, ideas and whatever outlook we adopt in life, has an effect on what we experience in life. The way we use our observational skills has a major influence on our way of life. The key is to learn how to harness our awareness and attention.

Click here to watch video on - Your mind affects reality

KEY POINTS:

• Everything is connected via a unified field—“Quantum field”

• Everything is in motion and has a vibration or a field

• Mind has the power to shape matter (reality)

• Mind can directly influence the body’s energy field

• Everything in our body is governed by an electromagnetic field which includes our biology

• Mind, body, and matter are all connected and intermingled with one another via fields

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter” —MAX PLANCK

SOURCE - quantumconsciousness.org

SOURCE - newatlas.com

SOURCE - nature.com

SOURCE - spiritofmaat.com

What Is Medicine?

Our medical industry has not yet integrated the new science of quantum physics or the information of the BEMF into its healing modalities. And many of the current methods of healing that we use in modern day medicine can be greatly enhanced if we did.

BAND-AID TREATMENTS DO NOT CURE THE CAUSE

Chronic pain cannot be healed through “band-aid” treatments, that do not address underlying causes.

In the long term, we run the risk of becoming addicted to synthetic chemicals — compromising the balance of the brain, which may lead to chemical imbalances, created from the ongoing artificial stimulation.

UNDERSTANDING THE NEW SCIENCE

We have to understand that the body has an electromagnetic component and this is otherwise called a bio-electromagnetic field.

This is the most effective/imaginative level of mending the human body. When we attempt and recuperate a few conditions on the physical level, it is the minimum innovative and just offers us impermanent alleviation. This is because of the way that our bio-electromagnetic field is still being disrupted by various factors like:

• Stress

• Diet

• Anxiety

• Fear

• Negative thinking/feeling

The problem with modern medicine is that when we fall victim to a disease or illness, we try and fix things like a machine — very singular, operating on the part that is affected. We never truly get down to the most creative and powerful body — the energetic body.

Through the theory of quantum physics — understanding how electromagnetic energy works — through our biology, we can begin to access new states of being. Which will change limiting thoughts from within the subconscious mind.

THINK ABOUT THI S . . .

The human body is made up of over 1 trillion cells, and that number is greatly multiplied if we start to take into consideration how many sub-atomic particles it takes to make up the human body. There are millions of chemical reactions happening within the body at any given moment.

There is an old theory suggesting that these cells find each other miraculously in the vast space of the human body for its day to day operations. This hit and hope sort of theory just does not make sense at all; what does make sense is that there is an underlying field that governs the behaviour of cells in our bodies.

HAVE YOU HEARD OF MORPHIC FIELDS?

“Fields of order, self-organizing systems that organize cells, crystals, molecules, and organisms. Underlining intelligent fields of energy that give form to all of life.” —Rupert Sheldrake

WATCH VIDEO ON MORPHIC RESONANCE

STRONG, HEALTHY, VIBRANT FIELD

We have the power to tap into the electromagnetic energy produced by the body. All disease, trauma, fear and adverse emotional reactions are present when vibrations in the body are discordant.

BALANCE AND HARMONY

When we place an emphasis on balancing and harmonizing our field, we optimize our chances of living a healthy life.

When your body is functioning at its optimum, you are in a state of homeostasis (which means balance). When the body is in homeostasis, all the systems and organs within your body will be functioning properly.

How can I achieve homeostasis?

Answer:

When you fine-tune your field through various practices such as meditation, yoga, exercise, and healthy eating habits.

BENEFITS OF HAVING A STRONG FIELD:

- Resilience to the hormones of stress

- Brings a healthy balance to all systems within the body

- Stable moods & clarity

- Promotes healthier sleeping patterns

- Stronger mind & healthier body

SOURCE - brucelipton.com

SOURCE - heartmath.org