February | 2014 | This Way Up

“To meditate with mindful breathing is to bring body and mind back to the present moment so that you do not miss your appointment with life.”

– Thích Nhất Hạnh

I love how the universe works! After posting my last post, Your Brain on Meditation, I vowed to meditate everyday for at least 10 minutes a day through the month of March. Less than 15 minutes later I randomly found this amazing site:

Headspace

Find out how to meditate, feel happier, sleep better and beat stress. It’s as easy as signing up, sitting down, and pressing play. Then just sit back and relax as Andy guides you through a simple process making it easy to learn how to meditate. Research has shown that brain activity begins to change within just a few days of learning to meditate decreasing stress and improving your mood. Log in online or through Headspace-on-the-go App and get your Headspace how you like it – anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

So I downloaded this app onto my phone, and Voila, it not only reminds me to meditate for 10 minutes everyday, but it leads me through a slow, relaxing exercise using my breath. And it’s Andy Puddicombe leading the meditation – he has a lovely voice.

Wow! Just like that. Ask and it is given. I love it. But I have to remember to Pay Attention. As I mention in the 7 Tools – I can send out the information I want to attract to me, but I have to be open and remember to pay attention to the inspiration and information that comes back to me. And it often comes back in very random ways.

Headspace is a great site and a great app. Do try it – it’s free and it’s incredibly helpful if you’re looking for ways to be more mindful.

I’ll close with Andy Puddicombe explaining Headspace on another very cool site called Do Lectures.

Let me know what you think of Headspace, and thank you for taking the time to stop by, I appreciate it.

“People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing – and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy.”

– Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert – Research psychologists from Harvard University

There is a website I enjoy a lot, a website that “exercises the brain.” Lumiosity is a great website that “challenges your brain with scientifically designed training.” I like to think of it as wasting time playing games that are somewhat useful and not just a total of a waste of time. Recently they published an article that explains “Meditation’s Effects on Alpha Brain Waves.”

“A new study out of Brown University has found that a form of mindfulness meditation known as MBSR may act as a “volume knob” for attention, changing brain wave patterns. Originally developed by a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) is based on mindfulness meditation techniques that have been practiced in some form or another for over two millennia.”

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction was developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. And is a central tenet of the work being done at The University of Wisconsin by Dr. Richard Davidson that I have talked about a lot on my blog.

In the recent study discussed in the article on Luminosity, researchers examined how meditation affects Alpha Brain Waves, and how Alpha Waves affect cognition.

Alpha rhythms help filter irrelevant sensory inputs in the brain. Without proper filtering, the ability to carry out many basic cognitive operations can be crippled. This Brown University study is in line with other research on meditation, confirming previous findings that link enhanced attentional performance and fewer errors in tests of visual attention with meditation.

Yet another reason to meditate. If I know it’s so good for me, then why is it so damned hard to sit down and sit quietly for only 10 minutes a day?! I mean really! Why is it so hard to commit to a such a simple discipline? A discipline that is simply asking me to sit down and not do anything for such a short time each day when I know for a fact it is so good for me?

For Christmas, I gave my sister Karin and I identical date books for 2014: Live With Intention. And Karin and I decided that we would set an individual intention together at the beginning of each month for the year. So I have decided that my intention for March, 2014 is to meditate for at least 10 minutes everyday. There, it’s in writing. (*My brain immediately said “Damn – March has 31 days too, why couldn’t you have made that your intention for February!)

I want to close with a great 10 minute TED Talk by Andy Puddicombe about meditation. It comes from a fantastic TED Talk series: 4 scientific studies on how meditation can affect your heart, brain and creativity

Enjoy!